Balancing informational perspectives - Environmental Reform in the Information Age - page 275

11 Balancing informational
perspectives
1. Introduction
In its 2005 report Towards Knowledge Societies, the United Nations
Education, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) discusses
to what extent the emerging knowledge societies are risk societies.
UNESCO concludes that knowledge societies are rather the answer to -
than the cause of - risk societies, as they constitute one of the most
effective means of dealing with new complexities and risk. But, by the
same token, UNESCO accurately describes - in their own words -
the challenging issues at stake in where knowledge societies are con-
fronted with risks and unsustainable development (UNESCO, 2005 :
142):
The concept of knowledge societies and the central role played by networks
correspond very precisely to these new requirements of collective action,
capable of mobilizing all the resources of governance and science in real
time as well as in the long term, with a pluralistic international approach in
mind. [. . .] In the fields of sustainable development, environment protection
and global health, the complexity of the data and the stakes involved exclude
any possibility of a single response or a unique viewpoint, particularly where
experts are uncertain when confronted by a new issue. The need here is
to institutionalize, as it were, the fact that any question on a global scale
is, initially in any case, too complex to command unanimity, even in the
scientific world.
This diverts not too much from the central subject and analysis in this
volume. Against the background of intensifying globalisation processes
and an information revolution, both of which we have most likely
only witnessed the early phases, this topic has explored the changes,
challenges and innovations in environmental governance. The core
assumption behind this exploration was that core transformation pro-
cesses of the modern order, such as globalisation and the information
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