Access to Public Information

How to access information?

Regarding environmental issues, society´s access to information is the basis for participation and public management success. Therefore, it should be guaranteed that citizens and public administrators have access to the same environmental information.

Some specifications:

• Free access to environmental information is not the same as the State's duty to generate and offer environmental information. While the former is just an exercise of the right to access the documentation administered by the State that is relevant for the environment, the latter is a duty that deals with the generation of environmental information and must also be public.

• The State's duty to generate and offer environmental information is restricted to specific documents and public information operative systems.

Thus, for example, this duty is the basis for:

• The preparation of "periodic reports about the environmental condition".
  They are periodic diagnoses, to be read easily, about the environmental condition: the quality of air, groundwater and surface water; noise pollution; collection, treatment and disposal of household and industrial wastes; green spaces, fauna and flora, etc.

Such reports then form the basis of environmental information used by the State structure in its strategic planning functions and to define priorities for public action, the private or public research system, the education system and for the actions of any societal organization.

The advantage of preparing this kind of environmental report lies in the eventual development of an "environmental record" that will improve our understanding of the way in which problems have been identified, the initiatives that have been addressed to solve them, and concrete results achieved or not. These reports can be prepared at the local, provincial or state, and national government levels.

The creation and operation of an environmental database, being publicly accessible, is another way to achieve the fulfillment of the government's environmental information duty. These databases may be useful to keep a large variety information, such as:

• Environmental resources
• Environmental research
• Environmental regulations (proposed and actual)
• Environmental claims
• Environmental laws
• Public organizations with environmental jurisdiction

The possibility of creating and operating environmental information databases depends entirely on the available budgets of the different State bodies.

Lastly, it must be pointed out that the State's duty to give "environmental information" is supplemented by the following specific documents:

• Information generated by environmental impact assessments resulting from different projects (eg. information from environmental impact assessments carried out for the construction of highways, airports and hydroelectric dams, etc.).

• Information that might emerge from environmental audits of different kinds of firms (for example, mining companies, industrial companies, public service companies, etc.).

 

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