Information-poor environments: Asian tigers - Environmental Reform in the Information Age - page 234

10 Information-poor environments:
Asian tigers
1. China and Vietnam as information peripheries
Until this chapter, most of our analyses on the consequences of
the information revolution for environmental governance have been
focused on the more developed parts of the world, or on the global
networks and flows that connect and integrate these developed parts
of the world with specific nodes, places and practices in the lesser-
developed countries and regions. It goes without saying, however, that
information flows, informational processes and information access are
not similar in all parts of the world and in all countries (cf. Zook, 2001 ;
Gunaratne, 2002 ), resulting in geographical variations in the impor-
tance and relevance of informational governance on environment. The
limited number of studies and analyses on how the information revolu-
tion and the Information Society affect environmental protection and
governance have focused on the more developed parts of the world
(see, for instance, the studies on the Information Society and sustain-
ability by the EU). These are all information-rich environments, in
which information generation, processing, access and use are relatively
abundant; and - consequently - where informational dynamics can
indeed play a significant role in environmental governance. But as this
widespread availability of (environmental) information is not found
everywhere and significant parts and spaces of the globe witness severe
information shortages, what does informational governance look like
in information-poor environments? Is informational governance at all
a relevant category in such environments? In order to start gaining an
insight in these questions we will look at two developing countries:
China and Vietnam. But we start in this section to put our case study
entities in perspective.
In current times, information is often connected to ICT and the
Internet. It has been especially the notion of digital divide that has
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