"Advancing the right to a healthy environment in Southeast Asia: addressing implementation gaps and opportunities", 8 April 2025

Key messages:

• Advancing the right to a safe, clean, healthy and sustainable environment (RtHE) in Southeast Asia requires improving the implementation of procedural rights to access environmental information, public participation in environmental decision-making, and access to justice for environmental harms.
• Unclear requirements and broad exemptions for public disclosure limit access to accurate and comprehensive environmental information. Efforts in Indonesia and Thailand promoting public information and data sharing aim to address these challenges.
• Public participation processes for environmental impact assessments could enhance meaningful participation by adopting community-driven approaches. These approaches, emerging in Lao PDR, the Philippines and Thailand, ensure that social and environmental impacts are assessed from the perspective of local needs and values.
• Specialized judicial bodies for environmental cases exist in some Southeast Asian countries but face challenges such as slow processes, limited resources and lack of expertise. Strengthening judicial capacity and independent grievance mechanisms can better address environmental harms affecting communities.
• Future policy and research efforts should focus on improving the implementation of RtHE’s procedural rights, linking sustainability and environmental justice. The ongoing development of a regional instrument for RtHE implementation provides a critical entry point for Southeast Asia…