Informational governance - Environmental Reform in the Information Age - page 103

processes and pressures states to look for new modes of governance. At
the same time, conventional institutions of state and science have lost
their undisputed monopoly position in dealing with (environmental)
controversies. All these developments have been supportive or facilita-
tive for informational governance practices, and they contribute to our
understanding why information, knowledge and informational pro-
cesses become increasingly important in environmental governance and
politics.
But, at the same time, these developments do not determine or define
informational governance, in terms of its modes, forms, effects, geo-
graphical reach, winners and losers, and successes and failures. In that
sense, informational governance and politics is not a next step in an
evolutionary process that is unfolding automatically. It is bound up
with struggles, debates, experiments and diverging interests, which all
make the concrete outlooks, faces, modes and forms of informational
governance not only contingent but also time-space specific. Hence,
four key dimensions (power, uncertainties, state authority and global
inequalities) have been elaborated to delineate the contours of the infor-
mational governance playing field, and thus the 'degrees of freedom'
in forms and modes that informational governance can take.
In exploring actual outlooks of contemporary informational politics
and governance, the next six chapters will be less theoretical in nature
and more substantive. They will focus on concrete modes, examples,
dimensions, and debates of informational governance in practice. What
do contemporary informational governance practices look like? What
role do various actors (business, media, states, NGOs) play in envi-
ronmental information, collection, handling and strategic use? What
tendencies can we witness in informational governance in various sec-
tors? Is there a new role to play for the media, now that information
is moving to the centre of environmental politics? How do these infor-
mational developments with respect to environmental governance and
politics differ among countries, particularly the developed and devel-
oping? Can we say anything on how these new modes of environmental
governance relate to environmental sustainability? It is these kinds of
questions that will guide Part II of this volume.