Transparency in conservation – rare species, secret files, and democracy

: rare species, secret files, and democracy

: Markku Oksanen, Anne Kumpula

Publisher: Taylor & Francis

: London

: 2013

: Environmental Politics

: env pol

: 6

: 22

: 6

: 975

: 991

: 17

: 0964-4016

: 1743-8934

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/09644016.2013.775726

: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/fenp20#.Uq7b5nen5ek

In many areas of environmental policy, there are clashing trends and conflicting
views concerning the accessibility of information and its appropriate
use. Some countries restrict access to environmental information if access
compromises the protection of species, but this contrasts with environmentalist
claims for transparency, the right to know, and the creation of the
‘green public sphere’. Can access to (biodiversity) information ever be
justifiably denied? The paradoxical trends in environmental policy can be
explained in terms of the dual role of information: as much as it contributes
to environmental causes, it simultaneously enables people to utilise or
destroy the objects of preservation. While recognising the problematic nature
of restricting transparency, epistemic asymmetries – the kind of case in
which public authorities have access to such information to which the public
is denied access – can sometimes be justified in terms of security.