The Right to Environmental Information: Comparative Perspective (Il diritto all’informazione ambientale. Profili comparatistici)

This book investigates the scope of the right to environmental information in a comparative perspective. It involves the broad requirement to seek and release information about public and private concerns, although the legal norms usually fail to provide a direct access to the industrial private activities that can affect the environment. Directive 2003/4/EC (abrogating the Directive 90/313/EC) concerning access to environmental information, covers a wide range of data. Its scope extends to public nuisance, land use, planning, transport, waste, housing development and aspects of public health, food safety, building maintenance and cultural sites, energy agriculture. It introduces a new requirement to disseminate information and progressively makes available environmental data by electronic means concerning both public and private sectors. Greater disclosure and “redissemination” can generally be expected under the Directive 2003/4/EC then under the Directive 90/13/EC. European Directive partially limits the range of information covered. This book analyzes the “exceptions” and the conflict between right to environmental information, public interest, intellectual property rights and personal data protection. It also discusses environmental information as a relevant aspect in the “economics of knowledge” and points out the problems of an informed choice and the internalization of its costs by enterprises. Public debate concerning environmental issues faces also an intrinsic limitation. The book outlines how “commercial speech” doctrines and a corporation secrecy can obscure a “knowledge of danger”-based liability. For example, since the green doctrine has been used by enterprises as an added value, increasing attention must be paid to consumer protection; as to unfair and deceptive practices, false advertising and “failure to warn” cases. How to enforce the right to environmental information? Is it also a right to sue for compensative or punitive damages? This work does not provide for a unique answer as the solution depends widely on the differences between European and U.S.A. models. The U.S.A. “class action suits” are taken into account as a complementary tool of the European “command and control” approach.