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

Abstract

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.

Keywords:

• access to information
• biodiversity
• right to know
• transparency
• conservation
• green public sphere

Acknowledgements

Earlier versions were presented to: the Nordic Environmental Social Sciences Conference, University College London; workshops in political theory, Manchester Metropolitan University; Research Institute of Law, Politics and Justice, Keele University; Colloquium on Environmental Social Sciences, University of Tampere. For comments, we thank Marko Ahteensuu, Juha Hiedanpää, Ari Jokinen, Tapani Veistola, Maria Åkerman, and three anonymous referees. For linguistic help, we thank Susanne Uusitalo and Terhi Ylirisku. This research was supported by the Academy of Finland grant 218139.

Notes

1. Cf. directive 2003/4/EC of the European Parliament and Council on public access to environmental information according to which Member States may request that environmental information be refused if disclosure of information would adversely affect protection of the environment to which such information relates, such as the location of rare species (Article 4(2)).

2. We use the notion of environmental information quite broadly to include information about the natural world the possession of which has social implications. We do not attempt to provide a universal definition of socially relevant information. Is information concerning sunspots or concerning wind conditions in Antarctica socially relevant? Such information can be socially relevant even if it is not so now.

3. The most notable individual critic is the journalist Martti Backman in ‘Natura – sinetöity valtiosalaisuus’ (Natura – sealed state secret), broadcast 24 November 2004 at YLE1 (Script available at: http://www.yle.fi/mot/mb041129/kasikirjoitus.htm [Accessed 15 August 2012]).

4. Cf. the duality of human-rights approaches to conservation according to Anderson (1996, pp. 21–22).

5. There are, of course, competing views of democracy and democratic decision making among green political theorists (Doherty and de Geus 1996, Lafferty and Meadowcraft 1996).

6. This statement, in particular, is based on our experience of various meetings in which the participants have represented various interest and stakeholder groups (see n.3). The implementation of Natura 2000 in Finland was highly contentious (Hiedanpää 2002).

7. According to Backman (n.3), one Finnish MP and an MEP (both from the agrarian Centre Party) were denied access to databases on the basis of which Natura 2000 decisions were made.

8. In Finland, anyone – public authorities, NGOs, ordinary citizens, non-nationals – can conduct species surveys on private land in virtue of the customary law known as ‘public right of access’ (or ‘everyman's rights’). In practice, there is no injunction for trespassing. More generally, the possibility of public agencies to collect data from privately owned lands depends on national legislation.

9. Pursuant to Article 5 of the Aarhus Convention, Member States are obliged to collect and disseminate general environmental information.

10. The European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms (1950) generally establishes the right to information. Pursuant to article 10 of the Convention, everyone has the right to freedom of expression. This right shall include freedom to hold opinions and to receive and impart information and ideas without interference by public authority and regardless of frontiers. It is noteworthy, however, that the Convention does not explicitly include the right of universal access to public documents. Nor does the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights include this right of access principle.

11. Restricting access to databases is only one way of increasing ignorance among the general public. Others include systematic undermining of the reliability of scientific statements and theories by requiring excessively strong justification. Proctor (2008) coined a new term ‘agnotology’ to refer to the study of cultural production of ignorance. For example, it has been beneficial for the tobacco industry to claim that despite the potential harm of smoking and general awareness of it, no one can prove the true costs of smoking.

12. According to the WWF, the monetary value of illegal wildlife trade is between US$7 and US$10 billion, and is the fourth largest global illegal trade after drugs, counterfeiting, and humans (http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201213/cmselect/cmenvaud/writev/140/wild20.htm [Accessed 7 August 2012]).

13. Compare Waldron's (1987) analysis of the meaning of transparency in a liberal society: ‘Society should be a transparent order, in the sense that its workings and principles should be well-known and available for public apprehension and scrutiny. People should know and understand the reasons for the basic distribution of wealth, power, authority and freedom. Society should not be shrouded in mystery, and its workings should not have to depend on mythology, mystification, or a “noble lie”’ (p. 146).

14. It is commonly said that biodiversity is a public good, which means that biodiversity is a nonexclusive and indivisible good. There is a lot of discussion of the meaning of this concept, especially in economic and political literature (Devlin and Grafton 1998; Wood 2000, pp. 80–82). Thus, it might plausibly be asserted that biodiversity information should also be a public good and that access to it should not be limited. Moreover, a great deal of the debate has focussed on building so-called biodiversity information clearinghouse mechanisms (Laihonen et al. 2004) or has aimed to provide answers to the problems of ‘data overkill’ and ‘data scarcity’ (Bertzky and Stoll-Kleemann 2009). We argue that claims as to what kind of good biodiversity is and claims concerning the accessibility of very specific biodiversity information are separate.