4. The Aarhus Convention and Cases of Non-compliance with Environmental Impact Assessment Requirements: The EU and Japan

An environmental impact assessment (EIA) is a process to ensure that a given decision’s impact on the environment will be considered before such a decision is made. The Aarhus Convention includes rules stipulating the form of judicial review for environmental assessment violations. In conjunction with the ratification of the Aarhus Convention, the EU has enacted laws necessary for its implementation, some of which involve amendments to the Environmental Impact Assessment Directive to add new rules on judicial review. After reviewing the judicial review standards introduced by the rules of the Aarhus Convention, this paper examines how the EU’s Environmental Impact Assessment Directive was amended by the Aarhus Convention, and how EU case law applies to the amended portions. In doing so, I hope to demonstrate that these standards will lead to new international standards in judicial review of environmental assessment violations that will constitute fundamentally new international standards from the perspective of international law. While EU efforts to address judicial review of environmental assessment violations are fairly advanced, Japan has been strongly criticized, in both academia and elsewhere, for its relatively slow response in these matters. The lethargy in Japan’s response can perhaps be attributed to the special nature of these new international standards. I will explore the implications of the new environmental assessment violation standards on international law introduced by the Aarhus Convention, while also addressing the state of judicial review of environmental assessment violations in Japan.