United Kingdom

This call for evidence seeks views on the UK’s compliance with the Aarhus Convention’s access-to-justice provisions (Article 9), focusing on three issues raised by the UN Aarhus Compliance Committee about Northern Ireland’s justice system: Costs protection – ensuring justice is not prohibitively expensive, covering the effectiveness of current regulations, appeals and cost caps, shared caps, cross-undertakings in damages, and costs...

Lough Neagh, the largest freshwater lake in Britain or Ireland, is vital to local communities but faces long-standing management issues. These include environmental damage from unregulated sand extraction, habitat loss, declining fish and bird populations, and serious water pollution. Recent concerns have sparked calls for public ownership. This briefing explains the current ownership situation, why it's problematic, and suggests alternative...

This independent research report titled ‘The Environment, Human Rights and the Windsor Framework’ was commissioned by the Northern Ireland Human Rights Commission and authored by Dr Ciara Brennan, Dr Mary Dobbs, Dr Orla Kelleher, Ms Alison Hough BL and Dr Lisa Claire Whitten. The report examines the relationship between Article 2 of the Windsor Framework, which deals with the rights...

Brexit poses a significant threat to environmental governance on the island of Ireland due to regulatory divergence between Northern Ireland (UK) and the Republic of Ireland (EU). This divergence—differences in laws, standards, and implementation—risks creating regulatory gaps, enforcement issues, funding loss, economic imbalance, conservation problems, cross-border cooperation difficulties, and transboundary pollution. There are three main areas of divergence: Covered by...

The 2023 Linking the Irish Environment (LIE) Report examined cross-border environmental cooperation in Ireland and recommended creating an all-island civil society forum, which was held in 2024. The forum highlighted ongoing questions about environmental governance and the evolving complexities introduced by post-Brexit arrangements, particularly under the Windsor Framework. This short report aims to clarify these legal and political developments affecting...

The following statement on behalf of the Environmental Justice Network of Ireland will highlight some key recent challenges to Access to Justice and upcoming developments. These include the presentation of a Bill in Ireland that seeks to drastically reduce access to justice in environmental matters, in the name of speeding up the planning process, a review of the missed opportunities...

This presentation summarises issues identified in two separate but related collaborative research projects on cross border environmental co-operation and justice issues : 1) “Finding Common Ground” an all-island study of the implementation of the Aarhus Convention in Ireland/Northern Ireland which was conducted collaboratively with Irish and Northern Irish NGOs and academics 2) “Linking the Irish Environment”, this research sought to...

A background paper regarding access to information on emissions in a cross-border context on the Island of Ireland post-Brexit.