Aporias and Tensions in Environmental Justice Legislation: a Semiotic Analysis of the Aarhus Convention

The Aarhus Convention is the EU’s main legal reference in the field of environmental law. However, conflicting interpretations and non-compliance violations made it necessary to amend the Regulation implementing the provisions of the Convention. The purpose of this paper is to highlight, through a semiotic analysis of the normative text, ambiguities and contradictions intrinsic to the text’s structure, and how these contribute to failure to implement its intended provisions. The intersemiotic translations involved in the review process, which affect the actants and actors of the environment as well as its regimes of meaning and temporality, trace out a negotiable space available to environmental justice.