The Access Initiative (TAI)
Ensuring that citizens have the right and ability to influence decisions about their natural resources.
The Access Initiative is the largest network in the world dedicated to ensuring that citizens have the right and ability to influence decisions about the natural resources that sustain their communities.
Access to information, access to public participation, and access to justice (the three “access rights”) are practical means of ensuring that decisions by governments consider sustainable development concerns and the interests of the poor.
An informed and empowered public monitors government and corporate performance, is alert to problems, challenges the conventional wisdom of government or corporate decision-makers, discusses the issues, organizes social and political change, and demands improvements. Where independent courts supply remedy and redress without political interference, the public can better hold decision makers accountable.
TAI NETWORK
The TAI network encompasses more than 250 civil society organizations in over 50 countries worldwide, from Argentina to Zimbabwe. Learn more about TAI partners and view an interactive map of the TAI network. Each TAI country Chapter is independent of each other (and from WRI), is led by a TAI partner organization and consists of individual experts and civil society organizations who are members of that Chapter. TAI Chapters promote environmental democracy at the national level and undertake evidence-based advocacy, engagement and programs that they develop and implement. World Resources Initiative (WRI) serves as the global secretariat for the TAI network.
The TAI network is led by seven civil society organizations known as the Core Team, which act as regional leads. The Core Team members include:
- Cameroon: Bioresources Development and Conservation Programme Cameroon (BDCPC)
- Ecuador: Centro Ecuatoriano de Derecho Ambiental (CEDA)
- India: Legal Initiative for Forest and Environment (LIFE)
- Ireland: Friends of the Irish Environment
- Kenya: The Institute for Law and Environmental Governance (ILEG)
- Mexico: Iniciativa de Acceso - Mexico
- Philippines: Ateneo School of Government
World Resources Initiative (WRI) serves as the global secretariat for the TAI network. The Core Team contributes to TAI policy-making, provides support to TAI activities at the regional and national levels, and supports the operation of the global TAI network. Learn more about the Core Team here.
Recent Outcomes
Our work has laid the foundation for numerous advocacy successes including:
- The creation of a fully functional and accessible National Green Tribunal in India;
- The declaration to begin working on a regional convention on Principle 10 at Rio+20 by 10 Governments in the Latin America and Caribbean region;
- Chile’s inclusion of enhanced participation for the poor in cornerstone environmental regulation, a first for Latin America;
- Increased access to environmental justice in the Philippines;
- The adoption of guidelines for the development of national legislation on access to information, public participation and access to justice in environmental matters by the United Nations Environment Programme’s Governing Council.