The Procedural Right of Access to Information as a Means of Implementing Environmental Constitutionalism in South Africa

The aim of this paper is to show how the judgment handed down pursuant to the Alliance’s campaign, Company Secretary of Arcelormittal South Africa Ltd v Vaal Environmental Justice Alliance (VEJA), is an instance of the horizontal application of a procedural environmental right to access to information that advanced environmental constitutionalism in South Africa. In VEJA the court brought substantive environmental rights issues to the fore, notwithstanding that a procedural environmental right was invoked by a community exposed to the polluting industrial activities of ArcelorMittal. In doing so, VEJA fostered enhanced levels of corporate compliance, accountability, transparency and responsiveness to environmental harm and the communities affected thereby. The conclusion of this paper is that the approach to the implementation of procedural environmental rights adopted in VEJA is particularly important in South Africa because it stands to contribute towards our project of transformative constitutionalism and the promotion of social justice.