Aarhus Convention The author of this report has been asked to answer two distinct questions. Both of the questions pertain to the Aarhus Convention. The first asks the author of this response to answer to what precisely the Aarhus Convention and why it is important to citizens. The second asks the author to answer to what the Turkish Government's response is to the same. The Aarhus Convention is actually a two-pronged item that focuses on two very important things, those being climate change and the public's access to information about the same. While reasonable people can disagree about climate change and how important it is, the government's behavior when it comes to revealing information about the subject and the behavior of the voting public in general when it comes to holding the governments of our world accountable is rather stirring and disturbing.

Analysis

As stated on the Transparency International handout that the author of this response became privy to, the main desired outcome of the Aarhus Convention is to ensure that the public has a deciding voice and a palpable amount of participation when it comes to climate governance. The ostensible reason for a focus on this matter is two-fold. First, the subject of climate change has been at the top of many people's proverbial lists when it comes to global challenges. While others focus on things like economics or terrorism, there are others that think that climate change and the associated governance are the main...

The second aspect that is focused on by many is the fact that voter participation is edging lower and lower, as described in the TED video conducted by Alessandra Orofino (Orofino, 2016). The outlook is not entirely bleak. For example, there was a strong contingent of people, both regular workers and businesspeople alike, that rallied against the construction of coal plants in Texas (YouTube, 2016). Indeed, those two examples as well as the work of Arnstein prove that there are varying levels of participation when it comes to the citizenry. Arnstein asserted that there were eight levels. In order, those levels are manipulation, therapy, informing, consultation, placation, partnership, delegated power and citizen control. The lower third of the ladder is non-participation, the middle third is tokenism and the upper third is when citizens wield and use their power (Arnstein, 2016).
The big concern is that governments are making decisions about climate change governance and that the populace is just along for the ride instead of being an active participant in what happens, what does not happen and why. Even worse, the public that does want access to statement transcripts, events at government conferences and so forth are not able to do so even if they wanted to. Even when states are required to report what they are doing, this information being fed to the public only occurs as a hodgepodge a lot of the time rather than being something that is openly revealed…