Environmental state and information politics - Environmental Reform in the Information Age - page 150

The topic provides an interesting, detailed and critical analysis of the
way in which scientific information is used and applied in regulatory
processes, calling for various changes and budget increases. But the
study has been used, for instance, by Singer ( 2000 ), to vehemently crit-
icise and discredit the EPA for its use of science and information and
to call for taking scientific research and budget out of the U.S. EPA.
Indeed, this is another example of the ways in which data, information
and knowledge (and with that science) have become central environ-
mental battlefields with the emergence of informational governance.
5. Participation, trust and transparency
A second main line of dealing with environmental controversies and
uncertainties in an era marked by information flows and disenchant-
ment with science is through participation.
Participation has been part of environmental governance - and called
for by policy makers and stakeholders - ever since industrialised soci-
eties faced major disturbances of their sustenance base. For a long time,
however, public participation followed - aside from normative com-
mitments to democratising policy making - the 'information deficit
model'. Although participation was seen as essential for effective pol-
icy measures, the public was believed to be ill-equipped to take actions
and decisions in the interest of the environment. In persuasive logic,
the objective of participation is to provide further information to the
wider public to make their actions fitting the implementation of gov-
ernmental measures and policies. Recently, with growing complexities
and interdependencies, with new roles and positions of environmen-
tal states and environmental science/scientists, and with the emergence
of uncertainties and unstructured problems on the political agenda,
the call for and practices of participation in any program of envi-
ronmental governance have been changed dramatically. In both sit-
uations, the old and the new, there remains a straight line between
information and participation. But although in the 'information deficit
model' participation is only possible through more information from
one side (science and government), under current conditions participa-
tion is needed to close information controversies coming from different
sides. Whereas the DQA aims to close information battles primarily by
distinguishing sound (scientific) information from poor-quality infor-
mation, a participative strategy makes no such distinction and treats
different sources of information as in principal equally relevant. Not