Environmental Democracy

Discussion forum	Give your opinion	Other  opinions	Number 26 - june 2000

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Editorial

The end of technocracy

The maxim «Everything for the people but without the people» —to which most technocrats subscribe— has become obsolete at the birth of the information society. Technocracy, the system that lends technicians and experts great weight in the government of a country or community, has very little credibility nowadays. The system of representation characteristic of western democracies is also in crisis and is crying out for an injection of creativity to bring about its transformation. It is, undoubtedly, the best system Man has ever invented but it cannot afford to stagnate: it must evolve. Democracy, since its inception, has changed to adapt to new social and economic realities. Now it must take a step forward.
Led by an interconnected society, the idea of participative democracy appears on the horizon. It is a system which gives precedence to the participation of the people in decision making, which encourages debate and therefore contributes to the blossoming of social creativity. Easier said than done. Why? There is a widespread conviction that the public is passive, that they find it very difficult to take part. But we should be asking why this is so. Those who take part not only want to be heard, they also want their opinions to be considered. Otherwise they feel it is all a waste of time. The truth is that the technocratic attitude still abounds in our government offices. They don’t believe in this taking part stuff, and in many offices the public is likened to a crowd of visionaries who don’t know what they are talking about.
 However, an analysis of reality, as published in this issue of Medi Ambient. Tecnologia i cultura, shows the opposite is true. Nowadays, social creativity and new ideas are not confined to the offices of the powers that be or the generations in government; they are on the street, in the NGOs, flowing through telecommunications networks...
The subject of participative democracy is connected to the roots of our planet’s environmental problems. Experience has taught us that without consensus, dialogue and participation it is almost impossible to make decisions in pursuit of sustainability and the improvement of the environment. This issue contains five articles and an interview that constitute a framework for reflection on the future of democracy and, more specifically, environmental democracy. Jordi Bigues —journalist and distinguished  ecologist —, Jordi Sánchez —political scientist—, Pere Torres —biologist and politician—, Christian Morrón –lawyer—, Ramón Sitjà —teacher and ex-mayor of  Manlleu— and Tomás Rodríguez Villasante —sociologist, and expert in social movements —, paint a mosaic of reflection on environmental democracy. Undoubtedly: «Everything for the people and with the people». •

Lluís Reales
Editor of Medi Ambient. Tecnologia i cultura

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Environmental democracy:  a tortuous path

Jordi Bigues

Journalist and ecologist. Manager of the Documentation Centre of the Environment and Consumption of Barcelona and editor of the magazine “Democràcia Ambiental”.

The Spanish Constitution does not consider the right to the environment as a basic right  but rather as a guiding principle of social and economic policy. Different social movements in Spain and throughout the world strive to attain it and also to study environmental democracy in depth. That is, the citizens’ right to know and take part. A path towards concerted regulation that democratises decision making.

On 19 May 1999, the Parliament of Catalonia voted unanimously to adopt the Declaration of Principles regarding Human Rights and the Environment. This ratification, very likely made our Parliament the first in the world to proclaim the universal human right to a safe, healthy environment and in good ecological condition. According to article 45 of the Spanish Constitution, everyone has the right to have a suitable environment in which to develop as a person and has a duty to conserve it.
The first thing that draws the attention is its placement within the basic regulation of the Spanish State, that is the Constitution. Article 45 is included in the first section devoted to basic rights and duties.  However, it is included in the third chapter and under the heading «Guiding principles of social and economic policy.» Throughout the process of drawing up the Constitution, the article went from position 28 to 38 to become, finally, number 45. Article 53.2 leaves us in no doubt: the right to the environment is not a basic right in the Constitution, not strictly speaking, but is only a guiding principle of social and economic policy.
With the adoption of the Declaration of Principles regarding Human Rights and the Environment, the campaign has started to convert the right to protection and improvement of the environment into a basic right, something which would lead to the reform of the Constitution which, despite being a recent text, in this respect was born behind the times. At the same time, in the Basque Country, the Regional  Council of Biscay adopted an institutional declaration on 2 June 1998 in which it proposed that the right to a healthy environment be considered a human right. Later, the Declaration of Biscay regarding the Right to the Environment was adopted on 13 February 1999, with the aim that UNESCO and the United Nations take up this new right.
The campaign to have the right to protection and improvement of the environment incorporated in international legislation was led by environmentalist lawyers and activists of the UN Subcommision on Prevention of Discrimination of Minorities. In 1989, a coalition led by a long-established American ecologist group, The Sierra Club Legal Defence Foundation, convinced the Subcommission to nominate Fatma Zohra Ksentini as reporter for an international study of the relationship between human rights and environmental issues.
At the end of August 1994, the final report gave documentary evidence of ecological injustice throughout the world and pointed to the convergence of the political proposals of ecologists and defenders of human rights. Months before, on 16 May, a group of experts involved in the campaign, who were meeting in Geneva, presented the Declaration of Principles regarding Human Rights and the Environment. These two initiatives are, even now, the most important tools available to get the General Assembly of the United Nations to draw up an International Pact, similar to the one on Civil and Political Rights and the one on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, which protects environmental human rights.

Problems of approach

Part of the persistent indecision shown by human rights activists when approaching the question of ecological justice, stems from the historical division within the movement itself, as mentioned in a report on ecological justice from the Worldwatch Institute. Since  the adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948), rights have been divided into two independent categories: individual civil liberties, which include from freedom of expression to the prohibition of torture; and the more general rights to health, food, housing and work. The two groups of rights came into effect via the International Pact on Civil Rights and Politics (1966) and the International Pact on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (1966). The first are easier to define, enforce or decry non-fulfilment. For this reason, for fear that extending recognised rights may, in the end, weaken the effectiveness of the movement as a whole, people are somewhat disinclined to consider the environment a human right. And this despite the fact that both these pacts include explicit references to ecological aspects.
Human rights depend on environmental protection. At the same time, in order to be effective, environmental protection must be based on the exercise of human rights, such as the right to information, to participate, to claim or receive compensation for damages. This must be said because, frequently, the media give the impression that ecologism is a movement with authoritarian and fundamentalist tendencies. By contrast, ecologists, consciously or unconsciously, promote participative democracy, which includes women’s values and rights and promotes critical thought, banished by some anecdotic and improvised enlightened ideas. It could be said that social ecologism needs environmental democracy like a fish needs water: it is its natural environment.
For historical and thematic reasons there is a tendency to speak of generations of human rights. The first refers to individual rights, the second to cultural, economic and social rights. The third is the generation of collective and peoples’ rights, also called rights of solidarity. These are rights which may be invoked or claimed, but which, in any case, can only be achieved through the concerted effort of all the social actors. This means, collectively, states and citizens and public and private entities. Currently, there is even talk of a fourth generation - that of rights of Nature, the biosphere, the Earth, future generations or animals (rights with a heavy environmental load, but which are outside the scope of this article).
Now, when a substantial part of multinational, productive, financial and commercial powers seeks the complete dismantling of current regulation mechanisms, both environmental and social, which they label as excessive and inoperative, and confrontation therefore exists between the self-regulators (“we do what we think best and duly publicise it») and administrative regulation (“the state, aided by international bodies under the major states”) we should adopt concerted regulation; environmental democracy, a dynamic path. A proposal for navigating safely in the computer age or a new reading of “think globally, act locally”.
Working for the recognition of a new collective right, the right to enjoy a healthy environment, the right to the protection and improvement of that environment, necessarily requires the movement in defence of civil rights to abandon its traditional priorities. The four generations of rights are not necessarily four steps in a flight. In fact, more and more ecologist movements are admitting that one of the best ways to guarantee the enjoyment of collective environmental rights, consists in defending basic individual political and civil rights. The first generation of rights is largely concerned with procedure; the second, substantive: people can exercise their individual rights, such as freedom of expression, to protect their collective and community rights regarding the environment. Both the ecologist movement and the human rights movement work, inevitably, for both types.
Those who should really be worried are antiquated local government offices, as most states have serious environmental problems. For instance, in Europe, the recognition of this right as a basic right may imply serious demands which would give rise to a change in the  administration system by giving the sectors involved a say. In other cases, those responsible for deteriorating the environment or any ecological offence would be considered guilty of committing a crime. Contrariwise, maintaining the current consideration, the sense of impunity, makes the most critical sectors despair, causes environmental confusion and undermines the legitimacy of democratic institutions, whilst impeding sustainable development.
Despite the mistrust, the interaction of the two movements is already  underway and has its precedents. In 1992, the prestigious Human Rights Watch and the Natural Resources Defence Council (NRDC) of America published the report “Defend the Earth: abuse of human rights and the environment», which contained documentary evidence of violence against environmental activists. Later, Amnesty International recognised Mordechai Vanunu as a prisoner of conscience, this following considerable controversy, as he had been accused of revealing state secrets (a charge or sentence which  does not admit the status of prisoner of conscience). Vanunu, a nuclear technician, was kidnapped in Rome in 1986, by the Mosad (the Israeli Secret Service), sentenced to life in prison by the Israeli State Court and put into solitary confinement for revealing that the nuclear power plant at Dimona was manufacturing nuclear weapons. Following the murder of Ken Saro Wiwa (1997), Amnesty International and Sierra Club published a joint condemnation of the relationship between the abuse of human rights and environmental degradation.
This consideration of individual victims of environmental injustice is on the increase. Chico Mendes, captain of the frigate Grigori Paskü, accused of informing on the dumping of radioactive waste by the Russian fleet in the Pacific; or the captain of the ship Alexandr Nikitin, sentenced for collaborating with an environmentalist group in denouncing the abandoning of nuclear warships from the Russian fleet in the Arctic, are the best-known examples. The murder last March of Erwin Aroldo Ochoa and Julio Armando, two Guatemalan lawyers, for investigating the illegal felling of forests in the Atlantic region of Guatemala, is the most recent.
Protecting threatened activists is one of the major concerns of the environmentalist movement. On the one hand with conventional systems, and on the other by highlighting the profile of this type of attackers and their victims. Greenpeace has published in the USA a Guide to Antienvironmental Organisations which includes five groups of  private entities: public relations firms, corporate groups, legal foundations, pressure groups of charitable appearance and violent groups such as Wise Us, to which we should also add paramilitary and police groups and local authorities that do not think twice before violating human rights to discourage and scare  activists.
Another way to protect these activists is to give them an award in recognition of their example, to make known their causes and protect them with a distinction. This is the example of Prizes for appropriate lifestyles, the so-called Alternative Nobel Prizes awarded in the Swedish Parliament the day before the official prizes, in response to the fact that the Awarding body does not wish to  incorporate a new prize. It must be said, however, that this institution incorporated the Nobel prize for Economics well after the others. Another lesser-known prize in Europe is that awarded by the Goldman Foundation every Spring directly to persecuted activists.
Yet another reason why ecological justice should be expressed in the language of human rights is that the international system of human rights is more accessible than most international legal frameworks. Thus, in 1987 the Cree Indians of Lake Lubicon in the state of Alberta, northern Canada, gained the support of the UN Human Rights Committee against gas and oil prospecting by the State. An International Pact, similar to the Pacts for Civil and Political Rights and Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, to protect human environmental rights would take the matter even further. It is logical, then, that inertia and vested interest should stop such a pact from coming about. Let’s hope it does not take a catastrophe to solve the problem.
But the defence of Nature can also outlaw human rights. Some badly thought-out environmental conservation projects have violated basic human rights in local communities, which forces us to understand that civil and political rights and economic, social and cultural rights must all complement each other.
In fact, it is becoming increasingly obvious that rising environmental awareness regenerates and creates a new sense of community, beyond national identities and borders. It simultaneously integrates democracy and justice as a way of doing, deciding, enjoying and guaranteeing human rights and duties. Duties do not always involve rights, but rights always involve duties.
In this respect, and taking up again the Agenda XXI adopted at the Rio de Janeiro Summit (1992), there is work for everyone: local, regional, state and continental government offices. For social movements too, of an initially reactive character, and environmental organisations, some of which have still to practice what they preach in order to face up to the lack of democracy and transparency.
The first few paragraphs of this article contained references to concepts such as: ecological justice and injustice, environmental rights or environmental democracy. These are terms we are not very familiar with, because neither the environmental authorities nor the social movements, nor the jurists nor the media use these terms in Catalonia to explain environmental conflicts. The non-existence of environmental observatories and the lack of interest of those that do exist does not help much either.
So for example, there is no record of environmental activists who have been detained, tried, repressed for defending the environment, nor is there any public monitoring of the regulations regarding free access to environmental information. This despite the fact that the ombudsmen of the Valencia Region and Catalonia both mention complaints about the violation of free access to environmental information in their annual reports.
The branch of the Spanish Civil Guard specialised in nature surveillance and protection (Seprona) arrested 491 people, processed 106,896 complaints and drew up 9,725 reports in 1998. In Catalonia, in 1999, 3,099 complaints were filed for assault on the environment. The Mossos d’Esquadra (State Police of Catalonia) have had a Central Environmental Unit since 1990, which investigates crimes against the environment at the request of the Environmental Prosecutor’s Office of the Prosecutor’s Office of the Catalan High Court of Justice, on its own initiative or at the request of individuals. It is an investigative unit that studies  offences in the industrial and natural environment. In 1999, it made 4 arrests and carried out 93 investigations.

The ABC of environmental democracy

The most important actions taken in Catalonia in favour of environmental democracy are: the presentation of the Declaration of Principles regarding Human Rights and the Environment in the Catalan Parliament, on 22 December 1999, ten years after the murder of Chico Mendes, leader of the rubber workers and member of the Green Party in Xapurí (Acre), the publication of a bulletin by the Centre for Environmental Information Studies or CEIA on human rights and the environment, coinciding with the 50th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and a series of lectures held in the winter of 1998, at EcoConcern.
Nevertheless, we could also include the many separate efforts of the different social actors that in the future will have to fashion this civil, pleasant conspiracy, aimed at achieving a democracy faced with the challenge of environmental crisis and globalisation. In other words, environmental democracy is the seat belt we need to ensure that on the journey towards sustainability we get there in one piece.
What is environmental democracy? The answer is a first definition we all know by heart. And it was written by a woman, Dr Susan Hazen, Head of the Department of Environmental Assistance of the US Environment Agency. She said: “In the same way that consumers demand clear identification of what’s in the food they eat and the medicines they take, people are now exercising their right to know what’s in the air they breathe, the water they drink and the ground they live and play on». She also pointed out that this concept is permanently evolving. Therefore, we can say now that as a right of access to environmental information, environmental democracy must be understood as the right to know, the right to take part and the right to take co-responsibility.

The right to know

Procedural environmental rights are basically the right to take part in environmental decision-making and the right of access to environmental information, along with the right to accessible and effective jurisdictional remedies. This article does not cover the treatment of legal mechanisms for the defence of the environment, but cannot fail to quote the first line of an article on environmental rights published in Integral  magazine; (an article which, by the way, was voted the best of 1998 by readers): «One has the feeling that  justice is like a spider’s web, that traps flies but lets the sparrows go».
The right of access to environmental information is established in the European Directive of 7 June 1990, regarding freedom of access to  information in environmental matters. This directive was much criticised by ecologists because of its restrictions, which are multiplied when transposed to the respective legislations of the member states, apart from a few exceptions. It must be pointed out that the right to obtain information from government offices is not considered a basic right under the Spanish Constitution and, therefore, is not directly protected by it.
The lack of interest on the part of governments was obvious from the delay in transposing the Directive to local legislation, outside the stipulated period. Information is not only available data we can request. It is much more than that: in addition to being available, access must be direct, easy, free and in real time if necessary, and no less important in the existence of such information. Let’s consider an example: the Official Radioactivity Surveillance Network (Revira) gathers data on the radioactivity present in the atmosphere in real time and centres it in Madrid. This data is stored to be dumped later on the Internet. It is obvious that, in this case, public resources are allocated to freezing access to environmental information in real time. Thus, a citizen with access to the Internet can know, in real time, how much radioactivity there is near an American nuclear power station but not near Vandellós, Cofrents or Ascó.
Since 1978, in the United States, the Right to Know Programme contributes key information regarding facilities and specific places. The “Toxic Release Inventory”(TRI) database  gives access to  information on emissions into the atmosphere, air and water, to the amounts transported away from the source for treatment, and to the amounts managed, recycled, incinerated, etc. for six hundred toxic chemical substances.
There is a joke that goes: A man is standing staring at the ground. Another asks him «What are you looking for?» and the first man answers «I don’t know, I haven’t found it yet». The right to know has something to do with the question on what. If there are no indicators which have been fully agreed upon, data can have little relevance, however many noughts there are. Indicator culture is really an important democratic expression. Thresholds, alarm levels, information mechanisms, the public’s response to an alert are the instruments of a democratic society. Concealment, on the other hand, is an example of the persistence of obscurantism. In fact, what is usually alarming is the concealment itself, as happened recently with the nitrate pollution of the water supply in several regions, or the famous radioactive cloud from Algeciras that was detected over the Alps.
The European Environment Agency itself admits that the right to the environment includes the chance to access reliable and comparable information. Environmental information is necessary at every level: local, regional, national, European and global. Ensuring that information is gathered and flows through all socio-political areas is no easy task and, as experience in Europe has shown, it requires considerable resources at every level. Like almost everything, it is largely a question of political will.

The right to take part

It must be pointed out that the right to obtain information from government offices is not considered a basic right under the Spanish Constitution and therefore is not directly protected by it. In spite of this, as information and the public’s participation are undoubtedly related, it is worth remembering that the Spanish Constitution (articles 23.1 and 9.2) recognises the citizens’ right to take part in public matters and the Authorities obligation to make this participation possible.
It is not by chance then that, for example, the State law of associations is still the one passed under Franco or that the right of social groups to access the public media announced in article 20 of the Spanish Constitution was recently claimed. The Platform for the Right of Access is an example of this increasing demand before this lack of constitutional right and the need to seek public mechanisms that stop environmentalist movements wasting their energy on campaigns in which they resort to confrontation or spectacular  direct action in order to get what they want. In short, as happens with some of those involved in the controversy over wind energy development in Catalonia, the point is not so much to score a goal but to know what game we are playing.
Right now, the mechanisms of participation at local, national, state and European level are pending revision. The so called greatness and paltriness of partici-pation mechanisms, of participative democracy. Meagre and formal most of the time, they are put together in separate experiments, which are very enlightening. An advanced democracy is given a title: municipalist, associative, labour, territorial, consultative, participative, class and sectorial. A health democracy, for example, is a series of mechanisms of information, participation and co-responsibility necessary to make the right to health effective. The adjective environmental tacked on to democracy is, in my opinion, something more than the result of a growing, unstoppable awareness, of environmental limits, of the crisis and its global character from a constructive point of view. It is our chance to set foot on a tortuous, but not necessarily difficult, path of proposals for concerted regulation. •

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The paltriness and the greatness of taking part
Jordi Sánchez
Political scientist. Assistant director of the Bofill Foundation

Since its inception, democracy has undergone constant evolution. In the not too distant future it will take on forms and mechanisms of participation that we today cannot even imagine. Political systems will have to have channels of deliberation and  participation –including all that refers to decisions regarding the environment– to improve the working of democracy.

The implementation of democracy, as we know it today, was slow in time and unequal in territorial distribution. The democracy we enjoy today does not respond to a product designed by a few theoreticians in a few books that a few politicians put into operation at a certain point in history. The liberal, representative democracy we enjoy today is the result of constant modifications that have taken place since the end of the 18th century. Modifications, some of them so drastic, that what we now call democracy bears hardly any resemblance to what the promoters of theories of democracy understood it to be 150 years ago.  In this respect, for  example, it is no wonder we find it paradoxical that the so-called fathers of democracy should protest, in the mid-nineteenth century against universal suffrage or that, years later, well into the second half of the 20th century, the principal precursors of universal suffrage should defend the so-called qualitative vote, which simply means that the votes of some (those with an education or property) had twice, three or four times the value of the votes of the rest of the population. These examples serve to reinforce the idea that, in only a hundred and fifty years, democratic practice in our societies has undergone a profound change, so much so that even certain proposals, that not even the most radical democrats defended in the last century, go unquestioned by even the most reactionary elements in modern political circles.
I wanted to begin this article with this reflection in order to predispose the reader to the idea that what is habitual practice in our democracies today will not necessarily be so in a few years time. It is reasonable to think that in the not too distant future democracy will take on forms and mechanisms of participation that not even the most daring amongst us today can imagine. Not  only because of the consequences the digital revolution will have for all of us and for the working of our societies, but also because ours is a society that is increasingly mature, educated and informed. These characteristics imply that public demand must also increase in all that refers to the perception of and relationship with government institutions. Maintaining the democratic game only in a series of regulations and procedures with the aim of choosing people to represent and govern us, is to undervalue a potential that could easily be defined as typical of our civilisation. Democracy, in the immediate future, will have to be ready to answer those people who do not resign themselves only to the chance to take part in the election of government members. Twenty-first century politics can no longer be thought of unless it is from the real possibility of public participation in their design. This statement should not incline us to think that the public will be permanently active in processes of political deliberation. This is a possibility that is undoubtedly very unlikely, but that does not rule out the fact that democratic political systems should have more numerous and better defined channels of deliberation and participation to be used with ease by the public whenever they see fit. The future of democracy in our societies includes considering the era of the blank cheque culture to be over, which the electoral process was actually turning into. A model must be promoted in which the chances of participation are more varied, visible and accessible to the population in general than at present.

1. The participation crisis

1.1 Electoral participation
It is a fact that the demand for a more participative democracy clashes, apparently at least, with social and political reality. This seems to incline towards scant participation and involvement of individuals in public matters. It is widely known that in the last few decades the critical bulk of society interested and involved in political activity has got steadily smaller. Several variables indicate as much. One of the most shocking facts about this tendency can be seen in statistics on voting. As we can see from Table 1, the number of people voting in elections in Catalonia has fallen gradually since 1977 and in general for all types of elections held.
Table 2 shows the increase in abstentions in elections. If we establish two periods, the first up to 1988 and the second from 1989 to 2000, and we compare the average abstention in each period, we can see the drop in participation. The average abstention increased by almost 7 points, a level which is certainly relevant, and forecasts increased disinterestedness and confronted concerns between the public and political activity. It is true that some authors, particularly Americans, take abstention to mean the exact opposite; they interpret it as tacit acceptance of the government. That is, people don’t vote because there is no need to: everything is all right. However, this is not the most common interpretation of abstention in Europe. As shown in the assessments made once the polling stations have closed, abstention is largely seen as negative, proof of lack of interest.

1.2 Civic participation
This lack of interest can also be seen when we analyse other forms of participation that do not involve going to the polls. Associative participation is, in all probability, the other great yardstick used to measure the participative vitality of a community, in the sense that the societies with most civic associative fabric should be considered far more participative. Catalonia has traditionally been considered a society with a strong, dynamic associative sector. This was especially true in comparison with the rest of Spain, although in comparison with most European societies, particularly those rooted in a protestant culture, Catalonia is much further down with respect to associative density. In recent years, however, one has also begun to question the superiority of Catalan social capital compared to the rest of Spain. Several studies have undertaken to show another version in which associative reality in Catalonia is not as rich as some would have us believe, to the point where one starts to speak of a certain stagnation of associationism in general.
There is an unquestionable fact which is the scant social involvement in certain organisations, not only political and trade union formations with far fewer members than similar organisations in the rest of Europe, but civic associationism is not very high either. «In Catalonia, association membership is similar to that in the rest of Spain. This means that we are not the area with fewest members nor with the most. Compared to Europe, our associative reality is low, on a par with Greece and Italy, countries where the association index is low.»1 Another study promoted by the Fundación Encuentro, this time of the whole of Spain, shows that associationism in Catalonia has dropped from 19.2% in 1979 to 15.4% in 1997. This does not paint too bright a picture for participation in associative fabric. In fact, if we had data available on socio-political associationism the result would be, in all probability, more negative. Actually, the only indicator we do have of this are statistics on public opinion gathered in studies commissioned by several entities that assess public attitudes towards politics with a certain frequency. All these studies coincide in the fact that between 70% and 75% of people questioned state that they have little or no interest in politics, whilst no more than 5% say they are very interested2.
I have pointed out all these elements because they are very often used as arguments to slow down possible reforms of our democratic system and make it more participative. But actually, and without wishing to contradict the statement that we do not need more areas of participation if we do not make the most of the ones we have already, it can be argued the other way, that is, that political participation is low and lack of interest considerable because society has lost faith in political actors due to the great distance and lack of transparency they have established. The fact is that democracy, as we know and practice it today, holds no attraction for large sectors of the population. The current democratic system extends no invitation to take part, it has no plans for channels of participation beyond the almost liturgical ceremony of elections. It may thus be considered obvious that a considerable number of the population feel no inclination to take part. In the same way that precious few things today make the average citizen feel a part of the political process, it should not surprise us that he views politics with remarkable indifference. At this point, it must be pointed out that this tendency towards indifference cannot be confused with a distancing of society from the most elementary democratic principles, principles that govern the organisation of our society.
Democratic values are widely shared. What is not shared is the way the system works. It is considered too distant and out of touch with new styles and new demands being expressed, particularly amongst the younger generations. Out societies are evolving towards a system of values and attitudes which are noticeably different from those that prevailed for much of the 20th century. Some authors have described this process as a genuine silent revolution as despite the fact that it seems that nothing changes (the processes of radical change in the established orders are not visible), the values and attitudes which were clearly hegemonic up to now are gradually being replaced by new ones. The stars of these changes in most cases are members of the younger generation coming into adulthood. This new way of seeing and conceiving the world 3 brings with it, amongst other things, a questioning of the way in which hierarchical structures work and an aspiring to greater involvement and participation. Proof of this can be found in the appearance of new social movements and the growth of non-governmental organisations (NGOs). Society’s harshest critics and most restless members (a  minority) are those  who set up new organisational forms; the rest, the vast majority, lives politics from the outside and from the point of view that nothing the institutions discuss, decide or do affects them and, consequently, they are not interested.
This is probably democracy’s great failure: not having achieved complicity between the governor and the governed. A complicity that makes the average citizen feel that any public issue affects him personally. Civic virtue has been lost, a virtue defined as a shared concern for matters in the common interest. Getting it back is, probably, one of the requirements for renewing democracy. Because when we say that we must recover civic virtue we mean we must find instruments to reinforce democracy. In an interview published a couple of years ago, Norberto Bobbio, the great Italian thinker and essayist, summed up perfectly the idea that democracy needs a citizenry involved in collective affairs when he said that «the more a democracy is based on active citizens, the stronger it is, when the problems of living together freely and peacefully are taken seriously. The increase in the number of passive citizens in a democratic state is a sign that the divide between the governor and the governed is widening»4.
 

2. The Participation debate: food for thought

Public participation, despite what one may think, does not always have a good press. The way our institutions work, on the one hand, determines and conditions the norms of behaviour –the weight of tradition– and the complexity of many of the political decisions these institutions have to make, on the other, justify reducing the decision-making core–the weight of technicality. Both factors lead to the circulation of ideas which openly oppose, or at least question, reformist positions that seek new areas of public partici-pation. In an article published at the beginning of 1998, Joan Subirats5 pointed out a series of arguments which stem from the supposed goodness of participation or of the acriticism that very often comes with participative proposals. Subirats’ warnings are summarised in Chart 1.

Chart 1.- Some arguments against participation

Participation slows down decision making. Consulting more people means, to a greater or lesser extent, having to accept more points of view, which makes the process longer and more complicated
Participation increases the costs of decisions. Public participation, in all cases, makes the process longer and very often the inclusion of new points of view means projects must be modified. These two aspects (time and more resources) mean greater expense
Participation does not give the decision an added value. The fact that people lack specific knowledge of the issues about which decisions must be made, means there is no added value in participation and no technical improvement of the decision to be taken
Participation causes an excess of particularism Opening up the process to the public gives rise to viewpoints amongst those taking part in the debate, which are excessively particularist. The people taking part tend to give priority to their own interests to the detriment of general interests. Only the institutions and their representatives can guarantee the defence of society’s general interests in decision making
Participation only considers the short term. Immediacy is what guides the defence of private interests and this situates any discussion in the short term, and hinders other medium to long-term possibilities which would probably be of more benefit to the general interest
Participation erodes institutions and parties. Participative processes outside the representative channels encourages mistrust of traditional institutions and parties
It is obvious that there are plenty of reasons to reject new processes of participation and also that the force of tradition drives us to continue to fully operate our channels of representation, with no need to introduce new participative processes. But the debate on the health and future of our democracies is open and allows us to think that enriching proposals will come of it that will complement the systems currently prevailing.

2.1 Some arguments in favour of participation
A) Overprotection by governors
The history of Mankind is full of examples of groups of people who think they have superior knowledge and skills to the rest and so are entitled to enjoy government of the community without too much opposition, a position from which, thanks to this knowledge, they can govern more accurately and sensibly. That is, this attitude shows a refusal to accept that most of the population is capable of ruling themselves. It is funny how these arguments, used throughout history to deny the right to universal suffrage, are used again today to hinder the opening up of participative processes. Current attempts at protection come from some members of the political class, who fiercely defend a personal position from which they deal comfortably and consequently, do not want to risk changing. They also come from another sector, representing part of the administration, which is technically qualified and above all able to exert control over all bureaucratic processes which lend them exaggerated power and very often places them beyond any democratic control. Although hidden behind an apparently democratic speech and a feigned professional solvency, the truth is that very often we are faced with a resistance to change in habitual decision-making procedures, which can only be explained by the sticking to the tradition of the workings of our representative democracies.
Political decisions do not only depend on technical knowledge. It is obvious that government actions and political decisions are not the same as actions of scientific precision. With varying intensity, depending on the decision, any political act causes priority to be given to certain values over others and to a position in which scientific criteria may carry weight but are by no means the only ones to  be considered.
One must consider adults capable of making decisions. If we accept that political decisions do not depend on scientific or technical criteria and at the same time, we accept the existence of a principle of equality as a constitutive feature of our societies, we ought to accept that, in theory, there is no person or group of persons with a special virtue that allows them to aspire to governing and making decisions without the aid of the population.

C) The mirage of efficiency
The economy based speech dominates a large part of the actions of our institutions. Amongst the resources most used to justify certain decisions is the principle of efficiency. It is true that, on equal terms, priority should always be given to the cheapest way if it also guarantees the achievement of proposed objectives. In politics, however, costs are very often generated through a lack of ability to interpret social demands on a particular matter and also the lack of consensus when seeking solutions.
Efficiency is not at odds with participative processes. The chance to articulate processes of deliberation on particular matters requiring a decision, allow the collective construction of a view of the problem that enables the sharing of solutions.
An imposed solution tends, in the short term, to be less efficient than one that has been agreed upon. Decisions based on only one view of the problem and do not include other viewpoints or give priority to a technical response that has little consideration for social perceptions of possible alternatives, may cause reactions that force us to face exorbitant costs and end up making the decision made into a totally inefficient one.

C) The error of sufficiency
Representative democracy works on mechanisms of delegation. Consequently, chosen institutions have a formal undeniably legitimacy to make all sorts of decisions for which they have legal authority. In the game of politics there is a tendency (which is fortunately becoming less frequent) for institutions and their representatives (and also ours) to become filled with a sense of their own importance that leads them to refuse to create areas of debate and public participation. Understanding that public participation conflicts with the interests of democratic institutions and their representatives is tantamount to asking the public to merely vote and stay out of the rest of the political process.
Public participation can be a complement to the working of representative democracy. The processes of participation do not have to be included in a model of direct democracy that shrinks from representativeness. The existence of institutions of representation is not being questioned, but the exclusive use that is made of political debate.
Parties play a central role in the democratic political system, but do not have a monopoly on poli-tical action. Parties play a very important part as they channel the will of public representation  towards the institutions and are responsible for selecting governors and presenting proposals of government. Their inflexibility and lack of concern for taking on the new social demands has meant that these organisations have faced a crisis. The appearance of new forms of social organisation with political aspirations has caused a certain amount of rivalry. Other considerations aside, it demonstrates that in political issues there are other actors, apart from the parties, that must also be taken into account.

3. The bases for a more shared democracy: a vote in favour of deliberation

Thinking of a more shared democracy amounts to effectively giving the people more power. It is not, however, a question of giving, more power centred on decision-making mechanisms (voting, referenda). Obviously, these would have to be there, but the great opportunity we have today, that we didn’t have a few decades ago, is to build a democracy where the people have more elements of reflection available to help them form their opinion. With the information society at its height, it may seem like stating the obvious to affirm that we have channels to transmit and access all kinds of information available today that create expectations in many areas, amongst them public debate. It is also true, as I mentioned at the beginning of this article, that our societies have never before had so many qualified people as we do at this point in time. The ability to access, process and contrast information is considerable in a large proportion of the population. This predisposes us to think of the great potential for opening up to new experiences of public participation.
Unlike 70 or 80 years ago, an extension of democracy today does not include achieving universal suffrage.  Suffrage is internalised in our society and forms part of an habitual practice and, consequently, it is logical that new challenges arise. The most attractive is probably that of converting democracy into a genuine process of deliberation. It is true, as Fishkin6 points out, that one of greatest challenges faced by our demo-cracies today is combining the depth of political equality of all citizens with favouring the processes of deliberation. At least apparently, promoting one option seems to work to the detriment of another. The demands of a reduced measure of demos to be able to go into deliberative aspects in greater depth is a direct attack on the people’s political equality. But at the same time we are aware that the complexity that frequently underlies the questions posed to the public or the problems that may arise require deliberation before a solid opinion can be formed. It is obvious that deliberation en masse, by the whole of the population, is materially impossible with the resources currently available and it would be very difficult for new technologies to resolve this matter satisfactorily in the short or medium term. Even so, there are proposals drawn up by eminent professors and scholars of democracy who propose the drawing up of processes of multitudinous  deliberation interconnected by digital networks for a considerable length of time (1 year)7. Other proposals, earlier than Robert Dahl’s, have moved forward along the lines of specifying possible electronic municipal assemblies considering that reasoned, informed and widely-shared opinions  require discussion. It is in the Minerva project, an obvious reference to the goddess of political wisdom, where Etzioni develops specifications for these assemblies8. In any case, the question is how to make political equality compatible with deliberation. This is certainly not a new problem. Greek democracy, the first community known to have used democracy, faced similar problems. In Greece, contrary to what most people think, the Assembly was not the main instrument of government. The oft-mentioned direct democracy of Athens subjected the Assembly itself to the decisions of a small group of citizens chosen by a draw  who made the so-called juries. They were not courts in the modern sense, but representative bodies of the whole polis who incorporated a process of deliberation, which could not have come about within the framework of the Assembly.
Including deliberation as a criteria in participative processes, is thus, a widely-supported demand. In our immediate environment we are starting to have experiences in which the mechanisms of participation that incorporate these elements are being promoted. The most important are citizens’ councils, a variation on the citizens’ jury, where members of the public chosen at random are immersed in a process of information-reflection-debate-opinion. The methodology has a clear deliberative intentionality, although at the end of the process an opinion is also sought. We have had few experiences of this type in Catalonia and in other nearby countries. Germany, Great Britain and the United States (though with different objectives and methodologies) have experience of participation in this form of citizens’ juries. It is true that they could be perceived as over-experimental and somewhat artificial within a society’s democratic political activity. One of the elements that leads to arguments over citizens’ councils or any other mechanism based on the principle of random selection of members of the public who will be subject to a process of information prior to giving an opinion, is to what extent the verdict may be considered as representative of the population. In the first place because a very small number of people take part in proportion to the population. This leads some to refuse to accept the sample as representative. In the second place because the process by which they come to give an opinion is so unusual and implies the participants being armed with so much prior information that their knowledge is in no way comparable to that of the rest of the population. Therefore, they say, the result can never be representative of the opinion of the entire population.
This is reasoned criticism, although in my opinion it does not delegitimate these processes as new instruments that bring balance to the unsatisfactory working of the system are exactly what they are looking for. It must be said in defence of the citizens’ jury model that, in theory, they do not seek to represent the whole population but rather a way to make it possible for groups of citizens who are political laymen to become involved in the discussion and solution of matters that affect the community, and furthermore, to do so with sufficient knowledge to be able to give an informed opinion. The experiments carried out so far in Catalonia (Rubí, 1997; St. Quirze del Vallès 1997; Calafell, 1998; Corbera, 1998; Montornès del Vallès, 1998 and 1999) can be considered fairly positive inasmuch as both the process and the acceptance in these towns, the participants’ ability to become involved and take on the role for which they had been chosen, in a responsible manner was satisfactory.
There are many9 different mechanisms of public parti-cipation and it would be a mistake to try to reduce participation to a single model. The system itself contemplates a few options such as referenda, popular legislative initiative, advisory commissions and public hearings that can counteract the tendency of the system itself to become too distant and opaque for the public.  It is true that  the great difference between systems already provided by law and the  experiments being promoted by some, mostly local, institutions is that the latter incorporate processes of deliberation. Allowing them to become consolidated and gain ground may be a sensible option to improve the working of our democracies. •

References
1 Fundació Ferrer i Guàrdia (1999) Joves i participació a Catalunya. Barcelona: Generalitat de Catalunya, Departament de Cultura (p. 157)
2 There are several studies on political culture that may be consulted. In Spain, the CIS (Social Research Council) has data available for the analysis of this and other indicators (http:/www.cis.es). In Catalonia, the ICPS (Catalan Social Research Institute) has carried out regular studies of this type. Their findings are published in Sondeig d’Opinió (Opinion Poll) by the ICPS every year. Analyses of this data can also be found in the following articles:    • Maestro, Jesús (1998). La Cultura política dels catalans in El sistema polític de Catalunya. M. Caminal and J. Matas (ed.), Barcelona,  Tecnos, edicions UB i Servei Publicacions UAB. (p. 79-101)  • Sánchez, Jordi (1998) Identitats col·lectives i cultura cívica dels catalans in La Societat Catalana, S. Giner (ed). Barcelona: Generalitat de Catalunya (p. 1108-1121)
3 These values have been defined as postmaterialist values. An in-depth study of this theory can be found in R. Inglehart (1991) La revolución silenciosa. El cambio en las sociedades postindustriales. Madrid: Centro de Investigaciones Sociológicas
4 Interview with Norberto Bobbio, published in the Babelia- El País book, 11 July 1998 (p. 8-10).
5 Subirats, Joan (1998) Nous mecanismes participatius i democràcia: promeses i amenaces in Àmbits magazine, January 1998, Col·legi de Doctors i Llicenciats en Ciències Polítiques i Sociologia (p. 20-24)
6 Fishkin, J. (1995) Democracia y deliberación. Nuevas perspectivas para la reforma democràtica. Barcelona, Ed. Ariel
7 Dahl, R. (1992) La democracia y sus críticos.  Barcelona: Ed. Paidós
8 Etzioni, Amitai (1972) Minerva: An electronic Town Hall in Policy Sciences 3 (p. 457-474)
9 Font, Núria (1998) Democràcia i participació ciutadana. Barcelona: Ed. Mediterrània, Fundació Jaume Bofill.

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Environmental information in the democratic society of knowledge

Pere Torres
Biologist. Director General of Environmental Promotion and Education of the Department of the Environment of the Government of Catalonia

“Administration has nothing to do with guessing but with knowing. Those in positions of responsibility must have the information they need to make wise decisions”. Al Gore

Environmental democracy demands the extensive representative participation of the social structure. This article contains an in-depth study of the concept of information and the responsibility of each of the social actors  when making environmental information accessible. Using information and communication technologies to afford sufficient valid knowledge, is the way to mobilise society towards sustainability

It is trite to say that we are entering an information society. As it also is to say that  we want to advance towards sustainable development. It is a trite remark because we are not saying anything new, in either case. It is hardly a new concept—the term is already  part of the common language of politicians, experts, journalists, leaders of opinion, engineers, etc.— nor are we giving  it its true practical meaning. Current times force us to go beyond conceptual formulations and pay more attention to praxis. Repeating non-stop, through every channel, that the information society is coming does not necessarily prepare us to understand the extent of the transformation the world we know is to undergo.
In fact, it is possible that we do not quite know the ultimate meaning of information. The mathematician Keith Devlin says that our current understanding of information is comparable to the understanding Iron-Age Man had of iron1. In spite of this, not knowing what iron was did not stop him making practical use of it or the development of a widespread technology based on this metal. It is conceivable then that we are currently in a similar situation; that is, that our ability to use information is ahead of our discovery of its true meaning2.
For this reason, we can see the logic of Kevin Kelly’s sentence (editor-in-chief of Wired magazine) in which he said that the main event of the 21st century will be the overthrowing of information. He admits it himself by paraphrasing George Gilder, a technologies analyst who was pretty peculiar, given his ultraconservative3 stance, who stated that that the main event of the 20th century was the overthrowing of matter. Therefore, to understand Kelly, we need to understand Gilder. Let’s try it.
This author considers that, during the 20th century, we have come to control matter in the sense that  it is no longer a barrier to technological progress. This leap was previously taken with energy. Kelly believes the same thing will happen with information4. As well as inevitable, it is a necessary leap, because more information is circulating than can be understood and consequently, there is a risk that it will reach maximum levels and become toxic for the system.
It is a difficult situation in many respects, but we could highlight education. Some teachers have already warned that children have never before received so much information that was not previously filtered by adults close to them (teachers or relations). Will this affect the future workings of society? We do not know because this is a new experience. However, everything justifies that the great effort of the new century should be to domesticate information in the same way as we have domesticated energy and matter in the past.
In any case, one must ask what implications the information society will have for the shape of the democratic system and, in particular, for what could be called environmental democracy. This is, in short, a way of conceiving social involvement and participation in real knowledge of the world and decision making  using this knowledge. It is not a new idea. One of the fathers of American independence, James Madison, said: a government of the people without information for the people or without the means to achieve it, is merely a prologue to farce or tragedy or both.
We cannot deny that, today, we have experts and politicians who are able to define and  apply strategies of government on the basis of knowledge and, specifically, environmental knowledge. However, we cannot, nor is it advisable to,  change the social paradigm and model of development when in minority, however select it is.
There is a now classic distinction between individual knowledge and social knowledge, in the sense that the knowledge of each individual is limited  but society’s knowledge is extraordinarily vast5. Important decisions are currently made on the basis of social knowledge, in the hands of the scientific and technical elite. It is a step forward with regard to governing efficiently and even  sensitively, but environmental democracy  demands an approximation of  individual and social knowledge in a range of  essential issues. This will facilitate the understanding of problems and the involvement in solutions taking place in the central body of society and not only on the fringes.
In environmental democracy, a dense network of interconnections must be built between governments and people. It is not enough for governments to be the fruit of periodic free elections. In many areas, the legitimacy for making decisions afforded by parliamentary representativeness should be subordinated to the drive of  processes of co-decision and co-execution with society. Doing so is not necessarily easy. There are many hidden landmines that can lead to failure. Let’s look at two.
Participation must be real. The co-decision processes tried out are usually voluntary and voluntaristic. Those that join are usually those who are more socially minded, militants in a given area and those wishing to defend a specific interest. Quantitatively —and on occasion, qualitatively— they represent a thin slice of society. This is not meant as a slight upon the people involved in these processes. On the contrary, their commitment and availability are praiseworthy indeed, but environmental democracy demands more extensive participation, which is more representative of the social structure.
Thus, the first landmine is that environmental democracy is confined to formal aspects—those that allow participation— instead of affecting the structural aspects —those that stimulate and guarantee society’s real participation. Reflections on this question, however, lie outside the scope of this article.
The second landmine is that the process is not based on information but on intuition or prejudice. This is the problem we will develop below. In the first place, we will analyse the characteristics environmental information must have. Then, we will concern ourselves with the use of information by organisations, essentially companies and public administration.
One more introductory observation: in the shaping of the society of knowledge, there is usually an initial phase in which public and private efforts centre on the distribution of knowledge, that is, on creating sufficient infrastructure for communication that allow the citizens free and egalitarian access to information. It is the phase in which technologies and networks excel. It is a very attractive phase because it only requires investment in logistics and, yet the results are tangible. Logically, a lot of attention is paid to this and it is well-publicised. The green book on information of the public sector in the information society, drawn up by the European Commission6, following a few general reflections on principles and rights, itself quickly centres on the functional aspects.
In the second phase, however, action should be directed more towards content, to favour active, recurrent and flexible lifelong learning. The information society must be, above all, a learning society, in both the  professional and civic areas. The continual surprise new technologies give us should not make us lose sight of the fact that they are only tools. Their spectacularity could distract us, however. As we have seen, the metaphor not only describes but also forms our relationship with technology7. If we see  technology as a global system, we will end up trapped inside it. On the other hand, if we see it as a tool, we can control it. This is a more delicate exercise because a tool is only useful and only makes sense when you know how to use it and, above all, what for.

Brief analysis of information

It is advisable to distinguish between two different concepts which are often mixed up and confused in common language: information and knowledge. Let us do so using authoritative definitions contributed by Manuel Castells8:
Information is data that has been organised and communicated (Marc Porat).
Knowledge is a series of organised statements of facts or ideas (data then,) that present a reasoned judgement or experimental result, which is transmitted to others systematically through a medium (Daniel Bell).
The basis, therefore, is data that can be organised in a communicable fashion to become information. The interpretation of this information so that it becomes a thesis, however humble, is the step towards know-ledge, which is an activity that generates new data, thus constituting a self-feeding cycle, as can be seen from figure 1.
In this article, we will focus on information and not on knowledge, although the objective of any informative policy must be knowledge. In fact, the question we would like to answer is what should environmental information be like in order to make possible, necessary, sufficient and valid knowledge so that society as a whole may react in such a way as to make sustainable development feasible.
Thus, in the dissemination of information, it is advisable to distinguish two variables:
• Amount of information
• Value of the information
There may be different situations, as shown in figure 2. The most recommendable combination is the one that  supplies high quality information, that is, that which offers the greatest value for the smallest amount. On the other hand, poor quality information  —because there is too much of it or it is of too little value— can erode the open participation of the different social groups and the systematic questioning of the working and of future initiatives of the issuer.
Some of the features that determine the quality of information are as follows:
Relevance. The only useful information is that which brings value to the matter to be settled at a given time. If the environmental information necessary for each decision is not carefully selected, the natural tendency is to leave it one side and then you get into the habit of doing without it.
Plurality. Informative plurality is essential for democracy. Although it is up to the public authorities to validate environmental data, varied and different sources of information must exist. The environmental authorities themselves must be interested in having several sources available. Although, with plurality, the circulation of poor quality information is inevitable, this risk is preferable—which in the long term would have negative repercussions on the aforementioned information—to an informative monopoly.
Comprehensibility. Language plays an important role. For example, a pilot scheme showed that people understood purification of gases better when, instead of telling them about scrubbers and washers, they were told clearly that pollutants were removed from the gas and transformed into a solid waste9. Unless thought is given in each case to the baggage of knowledge and interests carried by those at whom the information is targeted, the informative process could be non-existent or even counterproductive.
Representativeness. Faced with such an abundance of data, information gains in quality when representatives are chosen and, furthermore, it is clearly specified whether it is information resulting from measurement or an estimate. It is essential to avoid arithmetic negligence, which is an attitude consisting in making statements without contributing sufficiently consistent data or without checking that the statement is necessarily deduced from the data available10.
Comparability. Generally speaking, it is very difficult to appreciate the absolute value of a piece of environmental information: it requires scientific or technical ability that is not given in either the public or the decision makers. The process of comprehension can be made easier if one ensures that the information is comparable—to the same variable throughout time or to other similar situations closer to the  knowledge of the addressee.
Accessibility. The cost of information is a measure of the difficulties in compiling and analysing environmental information conveniently. Most regulations on environmental information stems from the idea that the lower the cost of information, the better informed the addressees will be and that, in this way, there will be greater involvement or a better relationship with the issuer11.

Information must be relevant

Informative poverty has been a classic power strategy: the citizen is  kept in the dark, lacking information to avoid his being able to evaluate each situation  and make autonomous decisions. Now, however, we have gone to the other extreme with similar effects. We are passing over to informative opulence, that is, to an overabundance of information that we cannot digest or verify, that has a deal of background noise and ends up causing a general lack of interest towards most issues of importance12. The states of being under- and over informed have the same practical result in the end.
Donald A. Norman explains a case by way of illustration13. Early aeroplanes had very few controls in the cockpit. As technology advanced, the number and variety of controls shot up until they filled all the available space, as in the case of Concorde. However, the latest models have eliminated part of the controls because so much information was useless to the pilots, who were unable to take it all in.
We run the same risk in environmental matters. To give an example: the Atmospheric Pollution Surveillance and Forecasting Network —which controls the state of air quality in Catalonia- generates millions of data every year. Although it is easily accessible and is presented in a comprehensible way, the sheer amount of this type of information makes its real use unworkable outside a circle of specialists.
The idea underlying these examples is, thus, the need for efficiency of information, towards which we are advancing by two paths:
Greater selectivity of information. From the vast bulk of gross data, we must know how to select those that can have a real meaning for decision making–whether in institutional or corporate spheres, or in personal spheres.
The creation of indicators and indices that integrate information in values that show the state and tendency of an issue so they can be understood at a glance and, furthermore, fit easily into the work scheme of decision makers.
In short, we must emphasise relevance. But can we make the relevant information available? New telecommunication technologies offer obvious advantages for the dissemination of information. Paradoxically, they are also useful to avoid it. Governments will find it increasingly difficult to keep an eye on the activities of the large organisations that delocalize their productive centres and marketing networks14 –and consequently, all the information derived from them which is necessary for many public functions: from environmental to fiscal inspection, to name a couple of examples.
In the private area, for example, for years the concept of competitive intelligence has been gelling. It is defined as a systematic, ethical programme to capture and analyse information on competitors’ activities and the general trends of the business with the aim of promoting the company’s own purposes. It is not industrial espionage but a concerted effort to process the floating information in existence in order to draw conclusions that may help in decision making. No doubt the environmental authorities should start promoting programmes of this type if they want to have the relevant information available for their strategic decisions: it is increasingly obvious that there is a lack of data obtained to this end with administrative procedures.

Environmental disclosure
Environmental disclosure is understood to mean the series of explanations enclosed in business or institutional information which are necessary or useful for its interpretation. Environmental explanations may result from both voluntary and compulsory action. Thus, in 1997, an ambitious project was put into operation in the  United States — the Consumer Information Disclosure Project— to promote environmental explanations in electricity bills15. At the same time, the aim was to protect the consumer and make the electricity market more efficient. So, the conclusion was drawn that the two essential factors for a good electricity bill were:
• That there be enough varied information to satisfy the basic interests of the different types of consumer;
• That the information be presented in language which is comprehensible for most of the population.
As a result of the process, the bill model shown in figure 3 was recommended.
Likewise, the nature of environmental explanations in the American chemical industry has been studied16. The main features of the information are:
• A non-technical nature;
• Qualitative;
• Special emphasis on pollution-related issues;
• Without constant reference being made to legality.
Environmental explanations are not harmless. A clear example of this is a case in Catalonia: from the moment when, instead of containing an amount to be paid, the water bill was broken down into the different items that make up the price of water, some sectors of society interpreted it as overtaxation and a social movement of fiscal objection was started.
In any case, this route should be further explored, to make consumers aware of the effects of their purchasing  and empower them, at least on paper, to direct companies’ offers towards products and services with greater environmental demands.

The responsibility of the issuers

If we start from the premiss that quality information is beneficial for society as a whole and that, in certain aspects, it has become a collective right, it is obvious that responsibility for its circulation lies principally with those who possess it. Environmental information is above all in the hands of businesses and public administration. We will analyse them separately although a large part of the information on the latter comes from the former.

Companies’ environmental information
In the case of the business world, there are four basic attitudes:
• Passive, which corresponds to applying the primary philosophy of getting by.

• Reactive, a state of permanent adaptation to regulations staying just within the limits, with regard to both demands and the period in which they are to be applied.
• Active, that is, respectful and complying with regulations, but seeing it as an unavoidable social obligation.
• Proactive, aware that company environmental analysis offers a new view full of opportunities to plunge into a new more productive, more modern business model.
This last attitude understands external communication as an essential company value. In fact, it has been seen that the participation of companies in voluntary processes of environmental improvement is normally encouraged by its potential repercussions on public opinion17. There are still very few companies that have incorporated sustainability as a strategic component. In any case, there are plenty of indications that they will get there eventually.
There is an agreement between the attitudes outlined and the generation and dissemination of environmental information:
• Passive companies tend to be unaware of it;
• Reactive companies give the information required by regulations;
• Active companies start to draw up and circulate reports on their environmental behaviour;
• Proactive companies turn environmental information into an essential  part of  their ordinary decision making, that is, not only environmental decisions.
Various systems have been developed to show the environmental information:
Eco-balance. This shows the company’s entries and exits over a given period, with all the flow of energy and material involved in product manufacture, as well as the environmental impact of the different stages of the productive process.
Eco-audit. This is a systematic periodic control of company management from an environmental viewpoint. It also includes an assessment of how to optimise management. The eco-audit is currently determined by the system advocated by the European Union known as EMAS (Environmental Management and Audit System).
Life cycle assessment. Instead of concentrating on the company or the productive process, like the two above, this system concentrates on the product, evaluating its environmental impact from the extraction of its raw materials to its use by the consumer and the management of subsequent waste.
Environmental compatibility. This transforms the company’s environmental behaviour into costs chargeable to the different accounting entries, to put environmental management on the same level as other facets of production.
We could mention others, such as eco-control, risk analysis, the waste balance, product line analysis, etc., developed by various institutes and researchers.
There are more daring approaches, however, inspired by consolidated financial methodologies. For example, in accounting, the following principle is applied: the effects of transactions are recognised as accounting items when they take place and not when material payment is made. The purpose of this principle is for the users of financial and economic reports to know  the future obligations that are the consequence of past actions. Following this philosophy, it has been proposed that this same principle be applied when evaluating a company’s environmental behaviour, particularly when this is expressed through environmental accounting. This would mean recording the environmental impact of an activity, not when it physically takes place but when the activity causing it is carried out18.
At the moment it is all an essentially academic exercise, but it illustrates future tendencies. Nowadays, the predominant phase is that which corresponds to environmental reports, which proliferated from the second half of the eighties onwards. Despite the step forward this represents, this show of greater environmental commitment has still to have the desired effect. The two main problems observed in the growing number of reports are the data overload and the inconsistencies in the information given, which may lead to more confusion instead of clarifying things19.
The success of an environmental report depends as much on the comprehensibility and credibility of the data given as on the sense of their selection, which is gained when it lives up to the expectations of the stakeholders it is directed at. For this reason, there are several international projects with the aim of improving the efficiency of this consolidated instrument of environmental information.
Environmental information must also work internally within the company. In this respect it must be understood and used by the workers. Such a resolute company policy can be very positive, but would also give the unions an innovative role in the defence of a modern conception of work, the company… Proposals have already been formulated20. However, it would be a mistake to think that better internal information would only benefit the workers. It has been confirmed that management usually have incomplete information on the environmental situation and its consequences, as well as little time and attention for such matters21. Therefore, all the efforts made to improve the quality of environmental information and its internal circulation in the company will contribute both to making basic decisions and to equipping the workforce. In addition, it will serve to perfect the mechanisms of obtaining environmental information for the outside. Actually, internal and external communication based on a good information system is one of the elements intrinsic to the new company and, consequently, is beginning to affect its organisation22.
Finally, it is advisable to verify that, if companies back environmental information, the appearance of independent assessment bodies will become inevitable, as happens with financial information. Likewise, it may be anticipated that standards be set in this respect, probably through public regulations.

The environmental information of public administrations

In the mid-nineties, the US Environment Protection Agency developed a strategic plan for information resources management23. It set forth three main objectives which are listed in figure 3. They were:
• To provide access to well-organised data. Amongst the addressees, were both decision makers and Agency engineers and the general public.
• To make the correct information available. This was a crucial objective.
• To use a system of information management that also served to revise the system’s own operations in a process of continual improvement.
This strategic plan was preceded a year before24 for the definition of its concept of information resource management, based on three ideas:
• The EPA must actively use its information to familiarise both the general public and all the sectors involved in implementing environmental requirements (the authorities, companies, NGOs…) with environmental issues.
• The EPA integrated information infrastructure to support a comprehensive approach to environmental protection, which means developing standards for data, determining data requirements and integration tools.
• The EPA must establish more efficient organisation for information resources management, through assigning a person to be in charge and a management committee and the drawing up of a strategic plan (as mentioned above).
Thus, the world’s main environment agency —held as a reference of quality by almost everyone— has been giving environmental information maximum political consideration for some time. This does not mean that all its initiatives will be immediately successful and exactly as they were designed. Thus, one of the most important achievements in gaining access to environmental information was the creation, in the USA, of the Toxic Chemical Release Inventory or TRI. It has repeatedly been praised and held up as an example. Although it represented a great leap forward in quality in 1986, its difficulties as a medium for disseminating information soon became obvious25:
• Data is mostly numerical, whilst people are more receptive to text, images, maps…
• Data is in its raw state, with no interpretative tools or frameworks of reference;
• The data is of no use, as shown, for giving responses on causes and effects, particularly in areas of personal health.
Although these analyses serve to improve environmental information, they are also indicative of the genuine difficulties involved in offering informative products which are valid for the manifold variety of users who have access to it. For this reason, it is hardly surprising that Community institutions such as the European Environment Agency have commissioned studies on the subject26. In any case, regardless of whether it is easy or difficult, it is the duty of public administration to develop mechanisms of environmental information that guarantee the citizens’ right of access to information  as contemplated by the legislation of many countries27. In Catalonia, this tendency is reflected in the law on the integral intervention of the environmental administration, which gives supreme importance to the availability of valid public information for the processing of projects with effects on the environment.
There are two basic general models for showing environmental information. Model PSR,developed by the OECD, is based on three basic types of information:
Pressure. The impact on the environment caused by human activity such as the emission of pollutants, alteration of the landscape, habitat modification…
State. The quality of the environment, that is, the values of the variables that describe  air, water, soil, land…28
Response. The changes in public policy, in business behaviour or individual or collective attitudes to reduce the pressure on the environment.
The European Environment Agency has promoted a more complete model, the DPSIR, which contemplates five variables: driver, pressure, state, impact and response. Actually, it is a further development of the PSR model due to the difference in two if its components. On the one hand, it distinguishes between the actors that pressure (driver) and the pressing action (pressure). On the other, the effect on the population (impact) is separated from the effect on the environment itself (state). These components relate to each other in a complex fashion, as shown in figure 4.
One could easily get lost in an endless explanation of these models going into criteria, methodologies and underlying principles in great depth. That is not the  aim of this article. However, a superficial description such as I have given is useful to show that environmental information only makes sense if, beyond objective description, it seeks to discover the causes, positive or negative, of the current state and offers guidelines for reaction. Furthermore, information resource managers must be able to work within frameworks of reference of this type if they want to generate useful informative products.
However, this effort has an internal feature, so to speak. When it comes to disseminating environmental information to society, the two main questions to solve are content and access. Let’s take a quick look at them.
Content. I have already pointed out the difficulty in comprehension and the limited attention span of most of the potential recipients of the environmental information. In this respect, indicators must be found, that is, measures that indicate the state of an environmental issue and its evolution. There have been several historical experiences of creating mechanisms for continual, integrated information that is comprehensible for the general population. One of the areas where is has been worked on most is urban air quality. Two examples are the French ATMO and the Catalan Air Quality Index or the ICQA. Currently, projects to define and apply environmental and sustainability indicators abound. Probably too many. Logically, if there are too many, they will fail to serve their purpose. In any case, this is the most interesting and fertile route to finding an informative model that is really comprehensible to the public and which may be integrated in their lifestyles.
Access. Driven by the European Union, the option taken has been to establish regulations that make it obligatory for environmental information in the hands of  the authorities to be given to any members of the public or entities that request it. This regulation has not always been well received by the different public administrations involved. Thus, although there is a formal plan for accessibility, it is limited by subterfuge. We could give examples of this29: certain cases of subjective interpretation are made exempt, exorbitant prices are set for public service, public companies are excused. Some deviations are statutory, but others are the fruit of inertia and administrative bad habits. The latter ought to be easier to rectify through good practices promoted from the upper echelons of public organisms 30. In any case, the balance is positive on the whole and it may be stated without any doubt that political and technical leaders in public administration are becoming increasingly aware of their responsibility to inform society.

Some final considerations

In the same way that, in the past, one had to have a title or be a landowner to take part in local government, there is evidence today of a latent feeling in certain enlightened circles that decision making on issues as complex as the environment should be left to the experts in specialised information31. Throughout history, however, technocracy has shown its limitations, both with regard to the progress of society and to respect for freedoms and rights.
This temptation is possible because of the great lack of symmetry that may exist between the issuers and the recipients of environmental information. The latter have little technical knowledge and are unable to make their own judgement of the quality of the information received … so they easily succumb to spontaneous leadership that frequently smacks of demagoguery.
Environmental democracy’s worst enemies are passiveness and credulity. Society needs to be mobilised —its central body — so that it takes an interest in environmental problems and solutions and sees how it can contribute to sustainability from its own personal sphere of decision. Furthermore, its critical capacity should be stimulated so it can listen to and evaluate arguments before making decisions. Policy that tends to improve environmental information has a role to play: that of making the solid bases of good decision making available to the public and to governors.•

References
1 A. Cornella (1999) Informationally speaking, we are still in the Iron Age, but… Extra!-Net. Revista d’Infonomia, 460.
2 The most widespread scientific development in this area is the theory of information, but anyone who knows anything at all about it will conclude that it is a theory about the amount of information, not  the information itself. Possibly the most interesting and productive theoretical attempt to understand information is the memetic theory conceived by Richard Dawkins. A basic introduction to this theory can be found in: S. Blackmore (1999) Meme, myself, I. New Scientist, 13 March.
3 P. Bronson (1996) George Gilder. Wired, March:122-125.
4 K. Kelly (1994) Out of control. Fourth Estate Ltd., London.
5 T. Sowell (1980) Knowledge and decision. Basic Books, New York.
6 European Commission. La información del sector público: un recurso clave para Europa. Libro verde sobre la información del sector público en la sociedad de la información. COM(1998) 585.
7 B. Nardi & V. O’Day (1999) Information ecologies. The MIT Press, Cambridge.
8 M. Castells (1997) La era de la información. Economía, sociedad y cultura. Vol 1. La sociedad red. Alianza Editorial, Madrid.
9 S.C. Helms & A.L. White (1998) Reinventing environmental reporting. Environmental perspectives, 12.
10 P. Krugman (1996) Pop internationalism. The MIT Press, Cambridge.
11 S. Schaltegger (1997) Information costs, quality of information and stakeholder involvement –the necessity of international standards of ecological accounting. Eco-management and auditing, 4:87-97.
12 T. Maldonado (1997) Critica della ragione informatica. Feltrinelli Editore, Milà.
13 D.A. Norman (1998) Invisible computer. MIT Press, Cambridge.
14 I. Angell (2000) Battle stations. New Scientist, 4 March 2000.
15 National Council on Competition and the Electric Industry (1999) Information disclosure and labeling for electricity sales: summary for State legislatures.
16 S.D. Stanwick & P.A. Stanwick (1998) A descriptive analysis of environmental disclosures: a study of the US chemical industry. Eco-management and auditing, 5:22-37.
17 S. Arora & T. Cason (1995) An experiment in voluntary environmental regulation: participation in EPA’s 33/50 program. Journal of environmental economics and management, 8:271-286.
18 Veure Schaltegger (1997).
19 A.L. White (1998) Avoiding an age of disinformation: a vision of standardized reporting. Communiqué to the Board on Measurement of Industrial Environmental Behaviour of the US National Academy of Engineering.
20 V. Teichert (1996) Internal ecological information systems in Germany and possibilities for employee representatives. Eco-management and auditing, 3:42-48.
21 M. Porter & C. van der Linde (1995) Green and competitive: ending the stalemate. Harvard business review, setembre:127-132.
22 M.A. Gil Estallo (1999) Dirigir y organizar en la sociedad de la información. Ediciones Pirámide, Madrid.
23 Environmental Protection Agency (1995) Providing information to decision makers to protect human health and the environment.
24 Environmental Protection Agency (1994) Using information strategically to protect human health and the environment.
25 B.A. Goldman (1992) Community right to know: environmental information for citizen participation. Environmental impact assessment review, 12:315-325.
26 We refer here to the report A new model of environmental communication for Europe: from consumption to use of information, drawn up by the Environmental Information Study Centre in 1999 at the behest of the European Environment Agency. Although it places special emphasis on the role of the media—an important aspect not touched on in this article—, many of its reflections are equally valid for any type of dissemination of environmental information.
27 It is not the intention of this article to revise regulations on environmental information. For this reason, we will only point out that, in the European Union, Directive 90/313/CEE established the right of access to environmental information and that member states have transposed it, with some modifications, to their own internal law. Likewise, the European Union wished to highlight the importance of environmental information by creating an autonomous body, the European Environment Agency, in charge of making environmental information an operative reality in social knowledge and decision making. Finally, we wish to point out that the Community scheme has been bettered by the Aarhus Convention (1998), which proposes a wider and more accessible environmental information model for the citizens of Europe.
28 In Catalonia, an initial report was published in 1999 called Informe sobre l’estat del medi ambient a Catalunya (Report on the State of the Environment in Catalonia), drawn up by the Department of the Environment of the Government of Catalonia.
29 O. Tickell (1998) Dirty secrets. New Scientist, 29 August.
30 F. Sanchis-Moreno (1999) Good practices in access to environmental information. Terra, environmental policy center, Madrid.
31 S. Jasanoff (1999) Knowledge élites and class war. Nature

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The environment, human rights and taking part
Christian Morrón i Lingl
Lawyer. Legal environmental study

The author proposes a new conception of the right to the environment, which he considers a human right. Nonetheless, for it to be effective, the public must be involved. In this respect, subjective rights would exist alongside others that defend certain ideals, which are sought-after by society, defined through mechanisms and the people’s involvement, and which would guide the policy of different State institutions.

The right to the environment: its individual aspect and its collective entity

It is almost a cliché to refer to generations of rights and go over their  formulation and evolution. The latest of these generations are the solidarity rights, which have arisen in the context of the so-called technological age and some social tendencies such as environmentalism, feminism or nationalism. In any case, one of the most emblematic rights of this latest generation  is the right to the environment.
One could attempt to define the right to the environment. However, it is more pragmatic to make an in-depth study of the legal mechanisms that make it effective. Coming up with a single definition would prove extremely difficult. It is more fitting to accept  that it is a many-faceted concept. Thus, for example, deliberately causing a forest fire affects group interests; the arsonist shows a considerable lack of solidarity with the community. On the other hand, waste dumped by a factory right next to a private house implies a violation of the right to proper quality of life of the family concerned and, consequently, damages the private and family life of  certain individuals. With this I wish to show that the many facets of the right to the environment, although they can be conceived as an autonomous right, mean that it often appears a right connected to others. Likewise, environmental politicies can take an autonomous approach or, on the contrary, appear as connected or general, which  impregnates other policies. The Authorities have always had a policy on this matter, at least as part of its duty to maintain law and order and a correlative demand for public-spirited behaviour on the part of the  citizens. The best public policy is preventive, that is, a policy that promotes awareness and a spontaneous respect for the environment. Only when prevention and the spontaneity of conduct fail, is it necessary for the political arena to transfer to the field of legal measures. Mere political will must then give way to the legal articulation of a right to the environment which ensures effective redress before the courts of justice.

The right to the environment in the body of human rights

The relationships which arise between the right to enjoy a healthy environment and other rights basic for Man can be treated from different perspectives and standpoints. In this way, we find those who see these relationships as a means to enrich human rights, and also those who claim that recognising the right to a suitable environment gives rise to contradictions in the group of so-called basic rights.
This second standpoint starts from the consideration that any new right brings with it not only duties but also restrictions in the immediate areas in which other rights act.  Within the human rights block, at the same time, one may consider that certain rights will be more sensitive than others to the irruption of a new protected interest. So, it would seem that rights of a social, economic or cultural nature may be more “overrun” by the right to an environment than traditional civil and political rights. A list of the rights and freedoms affected in this respect would be as follows:
• Freedom of movement, restricted inasmuch as access to certain protected areas is forbidden or subject to authorisation.
• Freedom of residence, affected by the different regulations that protect certain areas.
• Freedom to hold meetings, limited by regulations on protection against noise.
• The right to equality, given that certain land-use planning measures may introduce inequalities between areas or discrimination between individuals.
• The right to a family, which could be affected by demographic policy measures with a view to protecting the environment.
• The right to development, which is affected by the limitations imposed on economic growth by certain environmental demands.
• The right to work, threatened by environmental policing measures or court decisions that bring about the closure or transfer of certain industrial premises.
• The right to property, frequently affected in its right of use and availability by environmentalist regulations.
Nevertheless, the opposite viewpoint is also possible, and probably nearer the mark. It is obvious that in combining the different rights of the individual and the rights of different people, areas of friction arise that, far from limiting the scope of recognised rights, help to modulate them and orientate them in the way most beneficial  for the group as a whole. The fact that there is an increasing number of rights recognised as human does not mean that Man’s freedom is being gradually limited, but rather that values and objectives common  to all mankind are being found all the time. They must adapt to the old rights and are included in the law through these new protected interests, such is the case of the right to the environment. Remember that at this point the right to have a suitable environment has been defined as an ideological right, thus highlighting its function, which is to guide.
In this line, it is enlightening to consider the evolution undergone  by the right to property since its classic, liberal conception to the present day, including its undeniable social function. To understand this evolution as a cutting back of owners’ freedom would be a mistake, as the freedoms that rights afford Man must be studied from the point of view of the whole, and attending now to the benefits that have been channelled, through new rights, thanks to the recognition of the social function of the right to property.
For this reason, it is consistent to claim that the advent of a right to a healthy environment has meant that the habitual conception of other individual rights is richer. In this respect, we can make a list of rights in which the positive effects of environmental protection are most obvious. The list could include the following rights:
• The right to equality, greatly reinforced by the establishment of an ecological ethic that promotes a general treatment of the environmental problem. This right enables global solutions to the problems to be found and equals the environmental conditions of all beings on the planet.
• Freedom of movement, which can be favoured by a policy of deprivatisation in certain areas of natural interest, therefore open to all.
• The right to work, favoured by the creation of new jobs in the field of environmentalism, along with an improvement in environmental working conditions.
• The right to property, which benefits from environmental regulations that tend to prevent nasty, unhealthy or unsightly immissions.
• The right to health, undoubtedly more effective thanks to the recognition of  the right to enjoy a healthy environment.
• Freedom of association, extended to groups with aims regarding environmental issues.
• The right to take part in public matters, which is more closely related to the right to an environment, to make this a more effective right and ensure it is fulfilled.
• The right to information, endowed in the environment with a suitable field in which to expand and co-ordinate with the right to take part.
• The right to education, of vital importance for mankind’s own subsistence.
Society’s recognition of the existence of a basic right to enjoy a healthy and suitable environment is, consequently, very positive and is an advance towards making more concrete the values that mankind imposes on itself as a guide for its future. The next necessary step is for this right to be received, on the same level as other human rights, starting with the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the European Convention on Human Rights, and for the necessary legal mechanisms to be established to ensure its effectiveness depending on the specific economic and social context   in which it is applied.

The right to public participation

The effectiveness of the right to the environment, which every person must have, largely depends on the recognition and putting into practice of that right by the public.
The right to public participation is usually linked to the advertising of environmental data. But it is of a different nature. The pillars of public participation in decisive procedures on subjects with environmental repercussions are:
• Democratic demand.
• A call for an imaginative contribution from the interested groups.
• A way to prevent social conflict.
Principle 10 of the Rio Convention, on the environment and development, says:
«The best way to deal with environmental questions is with the participation of all interested citizens, at a suitable level. At national level, every individual should have access to all the information the authorities have available, including information on materials and activities which constitute a danger in their communities, such as the  opportunity to take part in the decision-making process. States should facilitate and encourage awareness and the participation of the public by making the information available to everyone. Effective access should be given to legal and administrative proceedings, amongst which are compensation for damages and pertinent resources.»
In both European and Spanish regulations, so-called public participation in administrative procedures with environmental repercussions is a constant, although its practice is still lacking in certain areas.
What are the basic requirements for a right to effective participation? The most relevant factor will be the unmistakable will of the powers that be to convert protection of the environment into a matter involving the general public. Furthermore, there must be other elements:
A suitable informative practice should be established regarding environmental matters directed at society in general. Reliable, complete, punctual information is the best basis for smooth, efficient participation. Problems frequently arise, not only due to a lack of information, but also due to the lack of a suitable methodology for transmitting this information to the public, or through its handling, either by public bodies or the private sector.
There must be legislation that clearly contemplates participation and, if possible, adapts it to environmental issues. If this is not the case, opening debate without the procedure in mind, can cause effects that do more harm than its own existence.
It is essential that sufficient legitimation be recognised in both administrative and legal quarters for the discussion of environmental problems. In this respect, it is a question of recognising that collective environmental interests can be confronted by individuals and its tutelage is not to be monopolised by the powers that be.
Nor should one forget that participation also has its drawbacks, which may be caused by failure to specify or the appearance of  certain social inadequacies. If the model of representative democracy is in crisis, it is also true that the days of participative euphoria are long gone. This has been questioned recently because of the widening gap between government and public, and new centralising tendencies that also affect environmental issues. An example of this parti-cipative c