Informational governance - Environmental Reform in the Information Age - page 84

new tendencies, recently emerging trends and innovations in the mak-
ing, we can expect to see mixes (hybrids) of continuities and changes.
But the emergence of informational governance does mean that the
way societies deal with and try to govern environmental challenges
is changing, and these changes can only be understood if we include
information and informational processes.

Constituting developments

To further understand the logic, reasons and backgrounds of the idea
that informational governance is emerging, I elaborate on four wider
social developments that enable, condition, strengthen and structure
such a new mode of environmental governance: a new technologi-
cal paradigm based on information and communication technologies,
globalisation, a redefinition of the nation-state, and disenchantment
with science. 1 These wider backgrounds are often not environment-
specific and are furthering more generally an enlarged role of informa-
tion in governance processes.
First, this new informational mode of environmental governance
and reform is strongly dependent on and triggered, enabled, facili-
tated and structured by new information and communication tech-
nologies, which enhance capacities of environmental information gen-
eration, transmission, access and application. With the revolutionary
developments in ICT, the capacity has increased among actors to col-
lect, handle, store, spread and access (environmental) information over
increasingly larger geographical scales in shorter amounts of time. It
is thus not so much the substantial content of environmental informa-
tion (e.g., better information, high quality information, more detailed
information) that makes a difference and begins to give environmental
information transformative capacities. The transformative capacity of
information in environmental reform is, rather, caused by the enhanced
possibilities and capacities of environmental information collection,
processing, transmission and use; the increase in the number of people

1

It is too simple to see informational governance as the effect, caused by these
four developments. Although these developments enable, trigger, facilitate and
structure informational governance, it is not a simple linear relationship of
cause and effect. There is also a reverse influence of informational governance
and politics on for instance the nation-state, and the further need for and
development of information and communication technologies.