Abstract
This article explores the promise of institutions and infrastructures associated with democracy to limit the worst consequences of climate change. The article highlights the apparent conflict between expert governance on the one hand, and, on the other hand, calls for democratization that reflect the diverse perspectives of groups whose rights and labor have been exploited over historical timescales. Drawing on the history of bureaucracy and governance, this article argues that the apparent contradiction between the two poles of discourse can be reconciled by a system of information infrastructure designed to create a robust, accountable system of environmental data monitoring that also accounts for the work of inclusive community groups as stewards of landscapes. The article concludes by recommending a 6-point “Outline of an Information Infrastructure for Responsive, Accountable Governance of the Environment,” which includes the following recommendations: (1) broadcast efforts to enlist communities—especially vulnerable communities on the front lines—in efforts to document environmental degradation and the effects of climate change; (2) equitable and sustainable solicitation of the voices of populations underrepresented in traditional science; (3) centralized preservation of the data in an archive where it can be found, retrieved, revisited, and implemented for action; (4) analysis of the data by both community participants and laboratory scientists; (5) the creation of accountability through the establishment of centralized, powerful organs of governance capable of holding polluters to account on the basis of data collected by both citizens and scientists; and (6) transparent mechanisms for negotiation.
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Notes
Harrison writes: “Although [environmental justice] advocates and agencies’ [environmental justice] staff have proposed many regulatory reforms that could protect poor, minority, and Native American communities from dangerous environmental hazards, agencies have implemented few of them.” https://publiclab.org/notes/mlamadrid/12-05-2017/what-s-happening-with-government-agencies-environmental-justice-work.
An example of thinking about democratic monitoring on the international level is Frank Biermann et al., “Navigating the Anthropocene: Improving Earth System Governance,” Science 335, no. 6074 (2012): 1306–1307; for a proposal that integrates global environmental monitoring with local democratic supervision, see “Citizens’ Assembly,” Extinction Rebellion (blog), accessed October 2, 2019, https://rebellion.earth/act-now/resources/citizens-assembly/.
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This article is part of the topical collection “Critical and historical perspectives on usable climate science,” edited by Deborah R. Coen and Adam H. Sobel
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Guldi, J. What kind of information does the era of climate change require?. Climatic Change 169, 3 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10584-021-03243-5
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10584-021-03243-5