Informational governance - Environmental Reform in the Information Age - page 92

environmental perspective, in line with theories of ecological moderni-
sation or environmental sociology of networks and flows. This pro-
vides us with an additional - now environmental - argument and logic
to understand this informational mode in the field of environmental
reform.
As explained in Chapter 3 , the ecological modernisation literature
has interpreted the changes in processes of environmental reform in
industrialised societies from the mid-1980s onwards in terms of the
growing articulation (or differentiation or growing independence) of
an ecological rationality (cf. Dryzek, 1987 ; Mol, 1995 ; Spaargaren,
1997 ). In practices of production and consumption environmental con-
siderations, ideas and interests are more and more articulated inde-
pendently from other (economic, political and social) rationalities or
interest, resulting in the environmental redesign of these practices, or
the institutions that govern these practices. This emerging ecological
rationality can and should be distinguished from a (still) dominant
economic rationality in consumption and production processes.
In modern processes of production and consumption, the dominant
economic rationality and interests have always primarily been articu-
lated via markets and prices. Economic preferences, economic interests
and economic power are articulated and coordinated in terms of money
and markets. Ecological modernisation scholars (cf. Andersen, 1994 ),
but also environmental and ecological economists (cf. Ekins and Speck,
2000 ), have worked on questions of articulation and coordination
of environmental rationalities along similar lines of money and mar-
kets, for instance, via environmental taxes and other economic instru-
ments, via economic valuation of environmental goods and services
and via green niche market development. Although effective and valu-
able in a number of cases, in the end this is an indirect, incomplete and
also criticised way of articulating environmental rationality and inter-
ests. 9 With the growing importance of information in production and

9

Different kind of methodologies (willingness-to-pay, green GDPs, etc.) for
expressing environmental values and preferences in monetary terms have been
heavily debated, especially in those cases in which it is pretended that all
environmental interests and values could be included in such monetary terms
and could thus be subjected to market coordination processes. More limited
and pragmatic approaches in using monetary terms to shift markets (both
demand and supply) in more environmentally sound directions have proven
useful and sometimes effective.