Right to Information and Sustainable Development: a Development Agenda for Sri Lanka

Abstract

Right to Information has been accepted as a fundamental right in International Law. In the modern democracies right to information has emerged as a sine qua non of transparency and public participation and to encourage participation for better discourse in the development process to ensure sustainable development. The main objective of this research is to analyse the significance of right to information in environmental protection in Sri Lanka. The research problem is to identify why right to information law is crucial to attain the sustainable development goals and to identify the correlations between right to information and sustainable development in Sri Lanka. The research also would engage in an analysis of the existing framework of law in Sri Lanka relating to environmental protection to identify whether those laws have incorporated the principle of sustainable development. This research intends to focus on the concept of sustainable development as an important requirement of any development agenda and to analyse how right to information would be the stepping stone to realising the principles of sustainable development. For this end the research would also anaylse the components of sustainable development, to identify the relevance of right to information in each component. The research will also analyse the conceptual relationship between sustainable development and right to information, through an analysis of the international instruments relating to sustainable development. Moreover the focus of the research would also include an analysis of the institutional structure relating to environmental protection and climate change with a view to appreciate how they have included public participation, good governance and free flow of information in to the system; and an analysis of the judicial decisions on the subject with the objective of critically analysing the attitude of the judiciary towards these concepts. The research methodology would involve the legal research methodology, based on qualitative data including the primary sources of law such as the international instruments and constitutional provisions, statutes and case law of the relevant countries; and secondary sources of law such as text books and scholarly articles on the relevant concepts of law and development.