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Honduras

Region

Latin America and the Caribbean

1.29

Environmental Democracy Index Score

Honduras scored well on the Transparency pillar, with fair scores on the Justice and Participation pillars. For the Transparency pillar, the law establishes the right to access environmental information; however, only a minimum amount of public health and environmental information must be made proactively available to the public. For the Participation pillar, the law provides the public the right to participate in a wide range of environmental decisions, while the requirement that government agencies account for public comments during decision making could be strengthened. As for the Justice pillar, the law recognizes a broad public right to access courts and challenge government decisions on the environment, but there are no assistance mechanisms to ensure that the poor and marginalized can access justice. By addressing these issues, Honduras could ensure that the public can obtain access to environmental information, that public comments are incorporated into environmental decision making, and marginalized groups can access courts to challenge government decisions that infringe on their environmental rights.

Visit the Environmental Democracy Index to explore the EDI score.

The TAI coalition in Honduras seeks to understand and improve the current state of access rights in order to achieve the implementation of Principle 10. More specifically, TAI partners in Honduras focus on advocacy to protect communities and the environment from the impacts of the mining industry.

The TAI Honduras coalition is led by the Instituto de Derecho Ambiental de Honduras (IDAMHO), a civil society organization that seeks to defend and protect natural resources by promoting respect for the law, environmental awareness, and the empowerment of citizens to participate in the decision-making process. IDAMHO specializes in environmental law, and through this lens they are able to contribute to the process of sustainable development, environmental justice social equity, and human rights.

IDAMHO and other TAI partners in Honduras have actively used the legal system to challenge laws that do not respect access rights. IDAMHO successfully brought a case to the Supreme Court of Honduras that found several articles of the 1998 General Mining Law unconstitutional. They continue to work to challenge the new mining law, which includes several provisions that were declared unconstitutional in IDAMHO’s court case. The TAI coalition in Honduras has also been actively participating in the Principle 10 process for Latin America and the Caribbean.

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