Environmental state and information politics - Environmental Reform in the Information Age - page 134

federal law was a congressional reaction to a number of incidents,
most notably the 1984 Union Carbide incident in Bhopal, India, in
which two thousand people were killed. But this law is part of a much
broader set of activities, protests, pressures and claims in many coun-
tries in the 1970s and 1980s, brought together under the right-to-know
denominator. In a significant number of OECD countries, this resulted
in right-to-know legislation in the 1980s (even six had them installed in
the 1970s). In general, European countries were much later with right-
to-know legislation; and within Europe especially the Nordic countries
and the Netherlands were clearly preceding countries such as the United
Kingdom, France, Germany, other Mediterranean countries and Cen-
tral and Eastern European states (cf. Sand, 2002 ). Overall, we can wit-
ness in time a development from right-to-know policies and activities
to active information disclosure.
From right-to-know legislation to active
information disclosure
The U.S. Emergency Planning and Community Right-to-Know Act
of 1986 formed the start of a new wave of information disclosure
programs and policies, which matured especially in the 1990s. These
disclosure programs and policies of the 1990s and beyond - which
will be further elaborated later in this chapter - differ from right-to-
know policies and practices of the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s in their
proactive publication of environmental information, without specific
requests being made to do so. Before the 1990s, information was in
principle accessible under the right-to-know legislation but often diffi-
cult to obtain in practice, as a time- (and resource-) consuming march
through the (legal) institutions was often needed. More specifically,
these earlier policies gave only fragmentary information and were not
helpful for users to compare products systematically, to rank risks or
to judge easily their own exposure. Second, the kind of environmental
information is also different. The new disclosure systems collect infor-
mation - also or even primarily - with the goal to inform the public,
whereas the 1970s and 1980s information was just collected to inform
the government. This makes the type, format, completeness and direct
and instant access of today's environmental information very differ-
ent from its predecessor. Third, and finally, the new disclosure systems
hold polluters responsible for their action as well as for the correctness