On May 21, 2015, five years after the BP Deepwater Horizon oil rig explosion, John Knox and Manish Bapna wrote an op-ed for Thomson Reuters about the increased need for public access to environmental information, public participation in environmental decision-making, and enforcement of environmental laws. Access, participation, and justice, Knox and Bapna say, create the basis for environmental democracy and help ensure the protection of human rights. They describe the World Resources Institute's recently released Environmental Democracy Index, which evaluates 70 countries' environmental laws based on standards set by the UN Environmental Programme.