Environmental state and information politics - Environmental Reform in the Information Age - page 152

maximum public access and accountability, and the best solution for
controversies. Open and highly participatory decision-making systems
do much better at producing large amounts of information and endless
duelling between experts of different kinds than at ending disagree-
ments and solving controversies on uncertainties. It is especially the
increasing complexity and scientific-technical nature of environmen-
tal information that puts participation and openness in conflict with
solving disagreements. Participation does not resolve questions such
as which problems are most salient; whose knowledge is most believ-
able; and who and where is the authority located to end debates and
controversies.

Trust and transparency

So, in the end, with the increasing flows of environmental information
and the changes in the old institutions that were believed to be able to
distinguish right from wrong and truth from fiction, trust has become
of key importance. New forms of informational governance relate truth
claims with trust in the bringer of the claim. In contrast to the DQA, the
inherent quality of information is not seen as decisive, but, rather, the
quality and trustfulness of the information provider and generation.
Carolan and Bell ( 2003 ) are correct in suggesting that truth has thus
become a social relation and as such an essential part of the solution for
dealing with informational uncertainties. Governance is not to make
truth less social but make it more (explicitly) social. It is only via trust
that truth and fiction can be and are separated.
But trust has changed in the Information Age. Trust in individual per-
sons and leaders has become less and less relevant and is increasingly
replaced by trust in institutions, in procedures, and in social/experts
systems. The various opinion polls (such as those by the Eurobarome-
ter ) 24 that rank reliability of institutions in their informational role in
environmental governance provide clear indications of where trustful
and reliable - and thus powerful - institutions in informational gover-
nance are located. The constant high credibility and reliability of NGOs

24

Cf. European Commission ( 2005 ), The Attitudes of European Citizens towards
Environment , Eurobarometer No. 217 (carried out by TNS Opinion and
Social), Brussels: DG Environment EC. The investigations among
approximately twenty-five thousand citizens in twenty-five member states were
done between 27 October and 29 November 2004.