May 10, 2011 Aarhus Convention Secretariat Environment Division

1. May 10, 2011 Aarhus Convention Secretariat Environment Division United Nations Economic Commission for Europe Palais des Nations, Av. de la Paix 10 1211 Geneva 10 Switzerland Dear Ms Behlyarova The Latin-American Access Initiative Network, part of the Global TAI, is composed of 15 National Civil Coalitions. Some of its members are part of the Core Team of TAI, and some are part of the project´s global “Rio+20 Task Force”. We are very pleased to contact you and to congratulate the Aarhus Convention Secretariat and its members for the enormous efforts and achievements in setting and applying the standards for Principle 10 implementation for almost a decade. In regard to the Rio+20 process and the upcoming MOP4, we also welcome the opportunity provided by the Convention´s Secretariat and the Bureau to open up publicly for commenting the Draft Chisinau Declaration. As part of TAI, we fully endorse the comments sent to you by our European TAI colleagues and the TAI Task Force on behalf of the whole network at the end of March 2011. We are already certain that the outcomes of the “Chisinau Declaration” will be very useful to the rest of the PREPCOM RIO+20 process. Particularly for our region, which, as you may know, has had significant improvements in the implementation of some of the Earth Summit 1992 outcomes. Especially in some areas related to institutional development and the capacity building around public participation and access to information (unfortunately we cannot say the same of the access to justice, which shows very little progress). The “Chisinau Declaration” and other related policy documents, such as the Bali Guidelines for National P10 implementation, among few others will help us in the set task of approaching our governments´ representatives to Rio+20 to lobby an initiative to include a direct reference to “the need of discussing through the regional UN bodies the necessity of regional conventions such as Aarhus” in the Rio+20 Declaration, to further and successfully implement the Principle 10, whose three pillars are now, in the context of the Rio+20 themes (Green Economy and Institutional Framework for Sustainable Development), are now more fundamental to act upon. In the context of our own region, in TAI in Latin-America we believe that the idea of a separate regional “Aarhus type” Convention needs to be considered, as a means for strengthening once and for all the implementation of the Access Rights. For this initiative it is important to say, we have got a positive response from ECLAC, and we are soon expecting similar responses from some governments too.

2. Lastly, we would like to wish you all success in the MOP4 meeting; and also thank the opportunity f or TAI to hold a side event and to participate in your process; to encourage your strategic efforts in engaging more parties and our high hopes that Rio+20 sets a stronger and more effective international frame to fully incorporate the social and environmental dimensions into the course of this century. Sincerely yours Latin-America TAI