1. The Aarhus Clearinghouse for 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

2. What is a clearinghouse anyway?

3. Everyone knows what a marketplace is …

4. ... a place not only to buy and sell goods, but to exchange information

5. 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

7. 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

8. 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, ENGLISH
Coastwatch Europe Network, 2006.
BODY OF TEXT
LANGUAGE
YEAR OF PUBLICATION
SOURCE OR PUBLISHER

9. 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

10. Dynamic ranking of 10 top resources for any entry categoryh a c e d N v i g t o

11. 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

12. Features The database is trilingual Allows multiply searches by
 language
 year of the report
 country name
 question

16. 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

17. 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?

18. Thank you for
your attention