Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
informational governance, strongly influenced by the national political
cultures, policy styles, political and legal systems and the like. Infor-
mational governance in China or Japan will look very different from
informational governance in the United States or the European Union.
Transparency policies, national systems of accountability and legiti-
macy, public and private systems of verification, the (private or public)
structure of the national media, to name but a few, are all contributing
to these national variations in informational governance. At the same
time, these national specificities are constantly and increasingly chal-
lenged by transnational networks that push towards and call for larger
harmonisation in a globalising world.
With respect to globally integrated networks, conventional modes of
environmental governance are to a larger extent complemented, chal-
lenged and sometimes even replaced by new modes of informational
governance. With respect to global product and natural resources trade,
transnational investment networks, air and train mobility networks
and flows, and the like, conventional authoritative resources based on
national or international laws, treaties and agreements govern to some
extent the environmental side effects. But informational governance
arrangements such as global labelling schemes (MSC, FSC, fair trade),
companywide environmental reporting of TNCs, environmental infor-
mation flows through transboundary economic chains and networks,
monitoring of and reporting on unsustainable FDI in developing coun-
tries, and developments in global sustainable tourism (e.g., van der
Duim,
2005
) are much less influenced or backed by nation-states. The
predictability and structured stability of these network relations make
conventional environmental governance modes not impossible, but
the transnational character, the mobile flows through these networks
and the limited place-boundedness restrict the possibilities of conven-
tional modes of nation-state environmental governance. Informational
politics and struggles, changing power relations, questions of reputa-
tion and legitimacy and so on are not unique for this modality, but
the absence of strong (state-related) legislators, arbiters and/or judges
give informational governance more independent room for manoeu-
vre. Regarding these modalities, informational politics and controver-
sies are less easily settled by nation-states or passed by conventional
resources.
Finally, global fluids miss the structured, stable and predictable
relations that characterise globally integrated networks and are thus
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