Introduction: new frontiers of environmental governance - Environmental Reform in the Information Age - page 9

of environmental information by various kinds of state and nonstate
actors is not really problematised; only the lack of information, the
information gap, misleading information, poor dissemination and fail-
ing interests are criticized.
In the 1980s, a third, critical perspective emerged on environmental
information. It has been especially the work of social constructivists
and the studies related to Ulrich Beck's ( 1986 ) Risk Society hypothesis
that brought environmental social science scholars to critically focus
on the role of science and information in environmental crises. Schol-
ars in this tradition investigated the changing role of science, scientists,
and experts, and scientific information in social practices and institu-
tions, focusing on the loss of authority of and growing ambivalence
towards scientific knowledge and information. Discussions of the role
of scientists, science and scientific knowledge in decision-making pro-
cesses flourished already for quite some time but basically internally,
within the scientific domain. It was the opening of these discussions
and ambivalences to wider domains in society that resulted in increas-
ing (feelings of) uncertainty among decision makers and lay actors
in society. The recent discussions with respect to Lomborg's ( 1998 )
study The Skeptical Environmentalist , but also discussions on genet-
ically modified organisms (GMOs), food crises and climate change,
seem to give evidence and underline the uncertainties some claim to
be inherent in today's scientific studies, monitoring practices and mea-
surement and abatement strategies on the environment. In addition
to governmental decision makers at all levels facing conflicting inter-
pretations and uncertainties, citizens and consumers are almost on a
daily basis confronted with contrasting claims with respect to the envi-
ronmental or health consequences of products and social practices,
without having one clear authority that sifts true from false informa-
tion and claims. This critical perspective questions the standard idea
that scientific insights, knowledge production and information collec-
tion and dissemination contributes to better environmental governance
and reform. More scientific information, according to these critics,
contributes rather to more debate, uncertainties and doubts on prob-
lem definitions, abatement strategies and environmental risks. Is more
environmental knowledge and information paralysing environmental
protection and reform? Or, to put it more sociologically, are we con-
fronted today with only “regressive uncertainty so that the more we
know, the more uncertainty grows” (Urry, 2004 : 10)?