The Aarhus Clearinghouse for Environmental Democracy

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The Aarhus Clearinghousefor Environmental
Democracy

• Presentation by
• Michael Stanley-Jones
• Environmental Information Management Officer
• UNECE Aarhus Convention Secretariat
• Mini-conference Agenda 21 and the Information
  Society Sixth meeting of the Task Force on
  Electronic Information Tools
• Geneva, Switzerland 13 December 2007

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What is a clearinghouse anyway?
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Everyone knows what a marketplace is
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... a place not only to buy and sell goods,
but to exchange information
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• The Aarhus Clearinghouse for
• Environmental Democracy
• is a place to exchange ideas, good practices,
• projects and other information resources for
• implementation of the Aarhus Convention,
• its Protocol on Pollutant Release and
• Transfer Registers and principle 10 of the
• Rio Declaration globally

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(No Transcript)
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Clearinghouse Resource Directory Currently
1155 separate entries tagged with one or more
thematic attribute Type of Resource Topic
Events Access to Information
Experts Access to Justice Funding
Convention Compliance Legislation Electronic
Tools Media GMOs Policy PRTRs Procedures
Public Participation Projects Strategic
Decision-making Research Also by
Training materials Source
and Geography
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Anatomy of a Resource Entry
TITLE / URL hotlink
Aarhusing the Official EC Complaint Procedure.
Calls for reform of the European Community (EC)
Official Complaint procedure over the past
decade have included calls for complainants to
participate in open meetings with the EC and
government, to clarify and resolve issues faster.
Four open meetings dealing with select Irish
complaints were held in 2006 as part of a pilot
and a model approach to dealing with
complainants identified by the NGO participants.
A summary and full accounts of these meetings
are available on request from Coastwatch Europe
Network. Contact Karin Dubsky, email
kdubsky_at_coastwatch.org ENGLISH Coastwatch Europe
Network, 2006.
BODY OF TEXT
LANGUAGE
YEAR OF PUBLICATION
SOURCE OR PUBLISHER
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Clearinghouse Upgrade Project September 2006
February 2007 UNECE Secretariat and
GRID-Arendal New design of Clearinghouse
launched during Information Society Cluster
Week at side event to the annual meeting of
the Commission on Science and Technology for
Development, in May 2007
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Dynamic ranking of 10 top resources for any
entry category
E n h a n c e d N a v i g a t i o n
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• National Implementation Reports Online
• Purpose and Scope
• Build and launch NIRs database to facilitate
  access to National Implementation Reports online
• ? Contributing to transparency of implementation
• ? Promoting sharing of good practices
• ? Facilitating comparative analysis of national
  and sub-regional gaps and needs
• Online reporting system integrates 2008
  entries by national focal points into online
  database in the Clearinghouse

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• Features
• The database is trilingual
• Allows multiply searches by
• ? language
• ? year of the report
• ? country name
• ? question

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Capacity-building

• Workshops on Electronic Information Tools and
  the Clearing-house Mechanism for national nodes
• and NGOs
• REC (Szentendre, Hungary), 8-9 March 2007
• Targeted for node administrators
• Held in English
• SEE, EU and other countries invited
• Financial assistance for SEE and NGOs
• Hands-on training
• Green Spider Network, REC, TF experts assisted

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Capacity-building 2

• EECCA workshop held at CAREC (Almaty,
  Kazakhstan)
• 11-12 June 2007
• In English and Russian languages
• Future workshops for Western EECCA / South
  Caucasus?

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Thank you for your attention
http//aarhusclearinghouse.org