Over 125 participants from 37 countries will be attending the Third Global Gathering of The Access Initiative (TAI) taking place in Kampala-Uganda from October 28th to 30th 2010. This gathering marks the 10th anniversary for the TAI network, as well as the first international TAI partner meeting in Africa. For the last 10 years partners from the TAI network, the world’s largest network of civil society organizations working to ensure that citizens have the right and ability to influence decisions about the environment and natural resources that sustain their communities, have helped create, implement and ensure environmental governance changes within their respective countries. The Kampala Global Gathering will be organized around the theme: Access Rights, Poverty and Environmental Democracy Worldwide. It will be a rallying call for civil society organizations to increase their advocacy and outreach work in four areas that have been identified by the network as having significant implications for environmental sustainability and democracy in the 21st Century; climate change governance, Environmental justice and poverty, extractive industries with particular emphasis on oil governance and renewing the call for environmental democracy: the Rio Principles at 20.

In addition, the Kampala 2010 TAI Global Gathering will provide an opportunity for the network to look ahead in preparation for the Rio+20 Earth Summit by ensuring that the international community recommits itself to the implementation of the principles of environmental democracy that ensure people have the right to access information, to participate in decision-making, and have access to redress and remedy. The Kampala 2010 Gathering builds on the tradition of TAI following on the first global gathering held in Bangkok, Thailand in 2006 and the second global gathering held in Sligo, Ireland in 2008.

The overall goal of the Kampala 2010 TAI Global Gathering is to formulate and adopt a forward looking Global Plan of Action to accelerate the implementation of access rights as a strategy to achieve greater democracy and environmental sustainability at the national level, with a particular focus on themes identified above.

As the first international gathering of TAI to be held in Africa, the meeting provides an additional rare opportunity to examine the above thematic issues from an African perspective and the role of African civil society organization in environmental governance.

This year’s Global Gathering will be a place to celebrate the successes of the TAI network over the last ten years. To read more about these successes please see the attached documents.