Environmental Engineering Reference
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or condemnation, one should first of all understand the logics and
backgrounds of (the emergence and functioning of) these innovations
and changes in environmental governance.
The scholars working on (new) modes of governance, as were intro-
duced in Chapter 1 and at various other places throughout the topic,
would to a significant degree agree with this discontinuity analysis.
This literature on shifts in (environmental) governance has pointed at
the discontinuities in modes of governance following wider develop-
ments in society, paying special attention to the inclusion of nonstate
actors, larger flexibilities, multiple levels, new steering mechanisms
and dispersed loci of authority, among others. These shifts in gover-
nance - largely moving away from a monopolistic, nation-state-based,
command-and-control environmental governance - resemble ideas of
informational governance. But what informational governance adds
to the existing insights and frameworks of (new) modes of governance
is the centrality of information, informational resources and informa-
tional processes. One cannot understand fully the contemporary shifts
in environmental governance if informational processes, dynamics, and
resources remain unaddressed. The (environmental) governance liter-
ature did look into and analyse various developments that also prevail
in this topic, and we have used their insights on voluntary regulation,
information regulation, disclosures, innovative monitoring programs,
joint environmental policy making, standards and labels and the like.
But only through informational governance glasses one starts to under-
stands the common denominator of these tendencies, and the crucial
importance of information and knowledge in contemporary environ-
mental politics. Only then can we grasp the partial relocation of power
struggles in environmental politics, understand the restructuring of
power relations, assess the full importance of the information revo-
lution for the environment, see how crucial informational resources
in environmental struggles are, and recognise the need to analyse net-
works and (nonmaterial) flows in environmental governance.
Notwithstanding this emphasis and parallel to what the (shifts in)
governance literature emphasises, at the moment informational gover-
nance is not fully replacing conventional modes, forms, arrangements
and resources of environmental governance. Informational gover-
nance only partly competes with and replaces conventional state-based
institutions and arrangements, whereas to a larger extent it comple-
ments and adds to continuing conventional environmental regulation.
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