A/HRC/28/61 law in 2006 to require a public consultation period once a draft EIA is prepared. The law in Trinidad and Tobago provides the public with the opportunity to submit comments on an EIA for at least 30 days after notice for comment is advertised. In the United States, agencies must provide public notice of hearings related to EIAs, and the public may provide comments and seek judicial review of EIA decisions. 45. Some States have taken additional steps to promote informed participation by those most affected by environmental harms. Antigua and Barbuda based its Sustainable Island Resource Management Zoning Plan on extensive stakeholder consultation. In 2009, the Government of Finland implemented the Action Programme on eServices and eDemocracy, which was designed to develop new tools for citizen participation in land-use planning. One aspect of the programme is Harava, an interactive map-based application used by local governments to collect feedback from citizens, including by marking on an online map where they believe a new protected area should be located. Another programme, called Alvari, has been adopted at the subnational level in Finland by the city of Tampere. It created public advisory groups that have participated in more than 350 planning-related decisions since 2007. 46. Mexico has established consultative councils for sustainable development, which can provide forums for designing and evaluating public policies on environmental issues, as well as helping to reach consensus among interested parties in environmental decisionmaking. Currently, Mexico has a national council and six regional councils, each of which is composed of representatives of civil society organizations, academia, the corporate sector and government agencies. In the United States of America, the Environmental Protection Agency has established “community advisory groups” to provide a public forum for local community members to express their concerns relating to the clean-up of hazardous waste sites, and to provide the Agency with community preferences for site remediation. 47. Civil society organizations can also play an important role in facilitating public participation. In Mongolia, the Asia Foundation has worked with government agencies, citizens and corporations to create Local Multi-Stakeholder Councils (LMSCs) composed of representatives of mining companies, local governments and communities. The objective of the LMSCs is to ensure a balanced ecosystem and responsible resource use through active participation of many stakeholders. As of 2013, the project had facilitated the establishment of 31 LMSCs. In a number of African countries, Namati, a non-profit organization, has trained “community paralegals” to empower individuals and communities to protect their lands and national resources. For example, in Myanmar, Namati and a local partner organization have trained more than 30 paralegals to help families to register and protect their land rights. 48. At the regional level, a good example of facilitating public participation is the Joint Public Advisory Committee (JPAC) to the North American Commission for Environmental Cooperation. The JPAC is composed of 15 citizens, five from each country in North America, who come together to advise the Commission. The JPAC holds meetings and workshops throughout the year in different locations within the three countries. Decisions of the JPAC and records from its meetings are available on the Commission’s website (www.cec.org). 49. An often overlooked aspect of the obligation to facilitate public participation is the value of assessing the effectiveness of different approaches to such participation. In Mexico, the environmental agency has created an index (the Indice de Participacion Ciudadan del Sector Ambiental, or IPC) that evaluates citizen participation in various institutions relating to environmental decision-making, on the basis of indicators in four main categories: public participation; transparency; inclusion and equality; and citizen complaints. The agency published the first IPC in 2010, and subsequent IPCs have used the 2010 report as a baseline in order to assess whether public participation is improving. 10