Environmental Protection in the Information Age

Abstract

Information gaps and uncertainties lie at the heart of many persistent pollution and natural resource management problems. This article develops a taxonomy of these information gaps and argues that the emerging technologies of the Information Age will transform the potential to fill these gaps and thus expand the range of policy tools and strategic options available for addressing environmental challenges. Remote sensing technologies, modern telecommunications systems, the Internet, and computers all promise to make it much easier to identify harms, track pollution flows and resource consumption, and measure the resulting impacts. These developments will make possible a new structure of institutional responses to environmental problems including a more robust market in environmental property rights, expanded use of economic incentives and market-based regulatory strategies, improved command and control regulation, and redefined social norms of environmental stewardship. Likewise, the degree to which policies are designed to promote information generation will determine whether and how quickly new institutional approaches emerge. While there exist some serious potential downsides to Information Age environmental protection, the promise of a more refined, individually tailored, and precise approach to pollution control and natural resource management looks to be significant.

Keywords: environmental regulation, Information Age environmentalism, regulatory reform, Next Generation environmental policy, market-based regulation