Uncovering the Environment: The Use of Public Access to Environmental Information

Professor Colin Reid (School of Law) and Dr Jonathan Mendel (School of Geography) have been awarded funding from the Economic and Social Research Council for a project titled "Uncovering the Environment: The Use of Public Access to Environmental Information".

Assisted by the Centre for Freedom of Information and in collaboration with the Scottish Information Commissioner, Scottish Natural Heritage and the Scottish Environment Protection Agency, the project seeks to examine how the right of access to environmental information is utilised in Scotland and whether it contributes to public participation in and the substantive outcomes of environmental decision-making processes and environmental regulation.

Outcomes of the project

The project’s findings indicate that there are two distinct categories of users: “personal users”, who use the right in a personal capacity, and “professional users”, who use the right as part of their job. While these two categories of users, and the users within each category, engage with the right differently and for different reasons, both categories rely on proactively disclosed environmental information as a key source of environmental information from public authorities.

Read the project report

Publications from the project

The Right of Access to Environmental Information 

(Cambridge University Press, 2021 Examining how the right to access environmental information is guaranteed in England, the US and China, the book seeks to examine the impact and normativity of the Aarhus Convention and the ability of jurisdictions to act as sources of legal reform in this area of law.

Breathing life into the right of access to environmental information: comparing aims and practice

The article highlights that while the Aarhus Convention envisions that users of the right will seek to access environmental information to participate in environmental decision-making procedures, with an aim of protecting and enhancing the environment, in practice users rarely comply with this idealised use. This, the article contends, has left a disconnect between users, who seek environmental information for multiple purposes, and public authorities, who judge users against the "ideal" set out by the Convention.

The citation for this article is S Whittaker, C Reid and J Mendel, "Breathing life into the right of access to environmental information: comparing aims and practice" (2020) 25(6) Environmental Liability 299-234. It is available on the Environmental Liability website, and the Open Access version of the article is available from the University of Dundee.

Uncovering the Environment: The Use of Public Access to Environmental Information

As part of the "Uncovering the Environment: The Use of Public Access to Environmental Information" project Dr Sean Whittaker (Dundee Law School), Dr Jonathan Mendel (School of Geography) and Professor Colin Reid (Dundee Law School) published an article which sets out some of the project's initial findings. The article focuses on both how users and Scottish public authorities engage with the right and the Environmental Information (Scotland) Regulations 2004. The article highlights the motives that drives users to seek out environmental information and the types of environmental information that are most sought out under the Regulations. In the context of Scottish public authorities, the article explores their performance in meeting the obligations contained in the Regulations and their fee charging practices.

The citation for this article is S Whittaker, C Reid and J Mendel, "Uncovering the Environment: The Use of Public Access to Environmental Information" (2019) 193 Scottish Planning and Environmental Law 57-59.

Back to Square One: Revisiting How We Analyse the Right of Access to Environmental Information

This article was published as part of the early findings of the "Uncovering the Environment: The Use of Public Access to Environmental Information" project being conducted at the University of Dundee. Written by Dr Sean Whittaker (School of Law), Dr Jonathan Mendel (School of Geography) and Professor Colin Reid (School of Law), the article sets out the current literature examining the right to have environmental information proactively disclosed and the right to request access to environmental information. Arising from this analysis, the article critiques the common trends which have dominated analysis of the right of access to environmental information and highlights the need to adopt different approaches to analysing the right.

Charging for environmental information: does practice meet theory?

Arising from the research conducted under the "Uncovering the Environment: The Use of Public Access to Environmental Information" project, this article examines how Scottish public authorities levy charges for environmental information under the Environmental Information (Scotland) Regulations 2004. Written by Dr Sean Whittaker (School of Law), Professor Colin Reid (School of Law) and Dr Jonathan Mendel (School of Geography), the article highlights that Scottish public authorities rarely charge for the disclosure of environmental information. This finding contrasts with the stated positions of most Scottish public authorities' fee schedules. The article concludes that this variation between the fee schedules and the practice of Scottish public authorities may actually dissuade users from submitting requests for environmental information.

The citation for this article is S Whittaker, C Reid and J Mendel, “Charging for environmental information: does practice meet theory?” (2018) 30(4) Environmental Law and Management 91-94.