A/HRC/43/53/Add.2 C. Economy and political structure 17. Norway is not a member of the European Union, having voted twice against joining. It belongs to the European Free Trade Association (EFTA), which also includes Iceland, Liechtenstein and Switzerland. Through the European Economic Area agreement, Norway, the European Union and the other EFTA countries except Switzerland form the European single market. Norway regularly consults with the European Union on a range of political, trade, environment and security-related issues. 18. Norway is a constitutional monarchy with a unicameral parliamentary system. The King is the Head of State while the Prime Minister leads the executive branch of the Government. The Storting, or parliament, has 169 members elected by party-list proportional representation. There are 88 district courts, 6 courts of appeal and the Supreme Court of Norway, with a chief justice and 18 associate justices. 19. In 2018, Norway ranked second out of 214 nations with regard to United Nations Rule of Law Indicators.8 The United Nations Rule of Law Indicators capture perceptions of the extent to which people and organizations have confidence in, and abide by, the rules of society, and in particular the quality of contract enforcement, property rights, the police and the courts, as well as the likelihood of crime and violence. The World Economic Forum ranks Norway second in the world in terms of gender equality. 9 20. Norway is one of the wealthiest nations in the world, with a per capita income of some $81,807 and a government pension fund worth approximately $1 trillion. 10 The services industry accounts for 53 per cent of the country’s gross domestic product (GDP), followed by industry (45 per cent) and agriculture (2 per cent). Of the labour force of 2.8 million persons, approximately 76 per cent work in services, 21 per cent in industry and 3 per cent in agriculture. Important sectors in the economy are oil and gas, tourism, food processing, shipbuilding, shipping, chemicals, paper products, metals, timber and textiles. Norway has low rates of poverty (8 per cent) and unemployment (4.3 per cent). 11 With great wealth comes great responsibility for protecting human rights and the environment. III. Fulfilling the right to a clean and healthy environment 21. In many respects, Norway has a strong environmental record. In 2018, it ranked fourteenth out of 180 nations on the Environmental Performance Index published by Yale and Columbia universities. 12 Procedural environmental rights (information, participation and access to justice) are well respected. Air, water and food quality are generally good, most environments are non-toxic and Oslo is a shining example of urban sustainability. However, Norway faces human rights challenges related to climate change, biodiversity, indigenous people and businesses. A. Information, public participation and access to justice in environmental matters 22. There is a tremendous amount of environmental information available from the Government through various websites, reflecting a commendable degree of transparency. The right to information is guaranteed in the Constitution (art. 100) and there is a general Freedom of Information Act. More importantly, Norway has an Environmental Information Act, which provides enhanced access to information specifically related to the environment. 8 9 10 11 12 6 See https://databank.worldbank.org/source/worldwide-governance-indicators. See also www.theglobaleconomy.com/rankings/wb_ruleoflaw/. The Global Gender Gap Report 2018 (Geneva, 2018). World Bank, GDP per capita, available from https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/ny.gdp.pcap.cd; and Norges Bank, https://www.nbim.no. Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), “Poverty rate”, available from https://data.oecd.org/inequality/poverty-rate.htm. See https://epi.envirocenter.yale.edu/epi-topline.