Environmental Engineering Reference
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in global modernity, which strongly condition and structure new modes
of environmental governance in which information and informational
processes become crucial elements. And with this growing importance
of information and informational processes new questions emerge with
respect to environmental governance: for instance, questions related to
access to and control over information and informational processes;
questions related to quality, reliability, uncertainty and verification of
information; questions related to new power relations between non-
state actors and state authorities and questions related to new institu-
tional arrangements to govern the environment in an era marked by
information centrality. It is these kinds of questions that this topic aims
to address.
2. Information explosions
Knowledge and information on the environment have been of crucial
relevance for environmental policy making, governance, and reform
ever since Rachel Carson ( 1962 ) started a new wave of environmental
concern and reform with her path-breaking work on pesticides. By
revealing how pesticides in agriculture accumulated in food chains and
endangered natural ecosystems and human health, Carson not only
gave scientific proof of their toxicity but also started a public campaign
that put environmental side effects of (simple) modernisation strongly
on the public and political agendas. Environmental information, and
especially natural science - based knowledge and information on the
natural environment, has been - and continues to be - an important
factor in designing environmental reform measures and strategies. It is
dazzling to imagine the amount of environmental data, information,
and knowledge (cf. Box 1.1 ) being collected almost in a routine way
on a daily basis through environmental examinations of air and water
quality, through state-of-the-environment reporting programs; through
information gathering on species, ecological systems and their vitality;
through inspections on toxic substances in food and other products;
through emission monitoring of companies and farms; through the
domestic metering of water, electricity and even waste flows in and
out of households and so on. The EU provides even a wider definition
of environmental information. Environmental information then refers
not only to information on the state of the environment, or on the
'additions and withdrawals' (the emissions and exploitation of natural
resources). The recently adopted EU Directive 2003/4/EC on public
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