Introduction: new frontiers of environmental governance - Environmental Reform in the Information Age - page 15

new to report. This is supported by economic scholars who try to quan-
tify the 'weightless economy', concluding that the Internet economy or
e-economy is still so small in terms of global GDP and so localised
especially in the United States that it does not make any serious envi-
ronmental impact in terms of dematerialisation (cf. UNCTAD, 2001 ;
Thompson, 2004 ). It also builds on existing environmental research
on the role of conventional media such as television, journals and
radio, focusing strongly on media coverage of environmental prob-
lems, the framing of environmental issues, the power of media con-
glomerates and elites in information control, as well as more instru-
mental research of effective information dissemination. Although now
the conventional information technologies are extended to new ones
(ICT, Internet, mobile phones), the kind of research, the theoretical
schemes and the conclusions are not really different
Finally, there is a third group of scholars who does start from the idea
that the information revolution does change the way we deal with the
environment: how environmental governance take place, how informa-
tion is reorganising various social processes that have relevance for the
environment, how new information processes change the power bal-
ances and resource distribution within societies and across the globe
and so on. Although this group of scholars will be our starting point
for this topic, their numbers are limited. A good example is formed
by Heinonen, Jokinen and Kaivo-oja ( 2001 ), who pay attention to
the increased possibilities of the information revolution for communi-
cating environmental information through production - consumption
chains, paying attention to especially all kind of technological devices
that enable actors to identify the (environmental) characteristics of
(half) products and use that information in more environmentally ratio-
nal behaviour. Others focus at electronic regulation (or e-governance)
on environmental issues; at new possibilities for environmental trans-
parency, accountability and legitimacy; at lower transaction costs,
larger data availability, decreased uncertainties and increased moni-
toring potentials through the digital technologies (e.g., Esty, 2004 ); or
at the enhanced possibilities for environmental activism. These per-
spectives and ideas are complemented by other scholars who empha-
sise the drawbacks of the information revolution on environmental
governance: the overkill of information, the growing and structural
uncertainties that paralyse environmental state authorities as well as
citizen-consumers in taking environmental action, the new (digital)