Mr Chairman, Excellencies, Ladies and Gentlemen,

Democratic, participatory and transparent governance is a precondition for protecting our environment.

The Aarhus Convention constitutes a major achievement in international environmental law, by focusing on the role and rights of individuals and NGOs.

In a democracy criticism should be recognized as something good. Lack of opposition makes bad governments. Good opposition forces governments to perform better.

Public access to information, participation in decision-making processes and access to justice, have long and strong traditions in Norway. The right to environmental information is also protected in our Constitution.

But everyone can perform better. In order to implement the Aarhus Convention, the Norwegian Ministry of Environment has carried out a full review of all aspects of our legislation, with regard to public as well as private sector responsibilities.

In the spirit of Aarhus we formed a broad based committee to make proposals on how to further develop and modernise our legislation. The Committee had representatives from central and local authorities, from various sectors of society, including businesses and NGO's.

As a result, one month ago, we presented a proposal for a new comprehensive act to the Parliament, based on their recommendations.

The process has been a truly participatory one. I am also pleased to tell you that we in several respects go significantly further than required – as the Convention itself recommends.

• We propose clear obligations for both public authorities and private enterprises to provide information on any aspects of their activities that may have an impact of the environment. All areas of economic activity are included – industrial production as well as public and private services, agriculture and forestry.

• We require that all public authorities and private enterprises have up-dated knowledge and make the information easily available to the public.
• We propose that an appeal board consider complaints related to the practicing of the act. The board will consist of representatives from environmental and consumer organisations, media and industry, and will contribute to setting the right standard for compliance.
• We limit the possibility to exempt information with reference to confidentiality .
• We strengthen procedures in dealing with requests for access to information, by demanding that the information must be provided within a maximum of 15 days.

To demonstrate our eagerness to inform, we have made a few photocopies of the English version of the press release on our new act available in the lobby…

As a consequence of the proposed new act – awaiting the approval of the Parliament – Norway plan to ratify the Aarhus Convention as early as possible in 2003.

Mr. Chairman, The Aarhus Convention is clearly a major step in promoting participatory democracy and citizens environmental rights.

But the UN Secretary General has challenged us to "rededicate ourselves to meeting the challenges ahead".

The fine principles must now be translated into daily practice.

The Convention must be implemented in a way that the public actually is able to exercise their rights.

Norway supports effective compliance-mechanisms for international environmental conventions, and welcomes the advanced compliance-mechanism that has been developed and proposed for adoption here in Lucca.

The mechanism should assist the parties in their efforts to comply with the convention. However, additional and stronger measures may also be needed to ensure compliance.

International support for tailor made training and capacity-building programmes will be essential to promote the implementation of the Convention.

We must now join forces to ensure adequate resources to realize such programmes.

Finally, Mr Chairman, I would like to acknowledge the very constructive contribution by the NGO's in developing the Convention and their efforts to promote and assist in the work towards its ratification and implementation.

Still, ratification of Aarhus is not the end of the road. Now the time has come for all public authorities and the public who get new rights to make Aarhus work.