Environmental state and information politics - Environmental Reform in the Information Age - page 146

processes, and information technologies in conventional policy pro-
cesses, and with that the transformation of these conventional pro-
cesses. With the growing role and 'power' of information in policy-
making, rule-making, and decision-making processes new questions
emerge and old questions are being put in a different light. Here we
will focus on the ways in which policy makers deal with new questions
of uncertainties and informational controversies.
Uncertainties have always been present in environmental gover-
nance, whether they were uncertainties on the sources of environmen-
tal pollution, the quantity of natural resource reserves, the (short-
and long-term) environmental and health effects of practices and
substances and/or the effectiveness of policy measures and strategies to
combat these. A wide literature has explored how these conventional
uncertainties transformed and - according to some scholars - radi-
calised under conditions of late, reflexive or global modernity (Wynne,
1992 ; 1996 ; Jasanoff, 1996 ; see Chapters 2 and 3 ). Decreasing author-
ity of science; increasing amount, speed and distances of information
generation, transfer and availability; and the transformation of state
authorities in policy processes are crucial factors in failures at clos-
ing controversies around environmental risks and in continuations of
uncertainties. Once information becomes of crucial importance in envi-
ronmental governance, these uncertainties are more than just unwel-
come side effects of an unquestioned governance model. States, public
policy makers and scientists cannot but address these new challenges
and in doing so they develop various strategies, new arrangements and
suggestions. Here we will focus on two - not necessarily independent
or mutually excluding - ways in which policy makers deal with issues
of uncertainties and informational controversies: better information
and more participation.
The call for information quality: the U.S. Data Quality Act
One typical reaction, especially strongly felt in Anglo-American policy
cultures, is the quest for further certification of the quality of infor-
mation used in environmental governance. The increasing amount of
information circling around governmental interventions calls for pro-
cedures to distinguish useful from useless information, especially in
times when information is becoming so powerful. The U.S. Data Qual-
ity Act (DQA) is a typical example of this type of reaction.