미국의 환경정보공개제도, 그리고 그 평가와 시사

The characteristics of environmental problem is to provide any form of the resolution of management even without a sufficient evidence on necessity or validity since scientific knowledge in the environmental measure is not sufficient. In order to take measures on the response of management, the interested parties’ participation during the process of decision-making and disclosure of environmental information under their involvement become important. In case of the US with said prospective, it had already recognized the importance of the disclosure of environmental information long before, and it developed and established the universal and systematic laws. In the US, people have constructed the most exemplary system of the disclosure of environmental information. From the beginning of the laws, it was the regulation after the fact to warranty the safety of employees. It changed into the toxic substances release invention (hereinafter referred as ‘TRI’ as one of the regulation before the fact. It has completed the basic form of the disclosure of information which any person can claim through the enactment of the Freedom of Information Act of 1966. What is more, establishing the regulation of the Environmental Protection Agency and individual environmental laws such as Clean Air Act and etc made the disclosure of environmental information strengthened. The common of the laws related to the disclosure of environmental information based on the right to know as the ideology of laws. Besides, they introduces civil suit on the violation of the said laws and they are the system of self-conclusion to secure the effectiveness in practice. Especially, the system of TRI makes the environmental management against the release itself of the source of pollution the prevention system of management before the fact. Furthermore, it is a customized system on the disclosure of environmental information through the voluntary and derivative participation of companies which operate the environmental facilities. OECD even recommends other countries to introduce TRI system as pollutant release and transfer registers(hereinafter referred as ‘PRTR’) since TRI is evaluated as the most epochal method to prevent environmental pollution under the conception of communication of the environmental risk including a local community and non-government organization. To conclude, the Republic of Korea has established a lot of separate, environmental laws as a general law on the disclosure of information such as laws on the disclosure of information of public institute, the basic law of environmental policy, the environmental effect evaluation law and etc. What is more, the toxic substances management law partly introduces TRI system. However, these laws in practice have a limit since they did not adopt the discriminatory characteristic of environmental information from general information. Furthermore, they are not sufficient to fulfill the prior condition as the interested parties’ participation in the process of a decision-making.