E N V I R O N M E N T A L I N F O R M A T I O N - A S T E P TO K N O W L E D G E A N D UNDERSTANDING
Opening Comments E. E. ROOTS Department of Environment, Canada
(Received July 1990)
Abstract. At a time when information and knowledge about the environment and the economy are increasing, problems of both environment and economy are growing more serious. It is the role and opportunity of a university institute concerned with research on environment and economy to convert information about the environment into knowledge, and to explore applications of that knowledge in areas of economic management and policy. The main barriers to production and dissemination of information that can contribute to effective environmental knowledge are those that affect the reliability, adequacy, accessibility, and understandability of environmental information. Such barriers may be systematic, biasing the gathering of information and selecting in advance who may benefit from it; they may be barriers of translation, with distortion of content or significance; barriers of sophistication, that determine both content and context; or, most difficult in the environmental field, barriers imposed by problems of scale and relationships of different scales. To be useful, information cannot be purely objective, but must have subjective value added. There is a staircase of'knowing', progressing from Observation and Measurement, to Data, to Information, to Knowledge, to Understanding, and finally to Wisdom, presenting increasing barriers of subjective value, interpretation, and integration at each step.
Introduction
As Dean Haight has just mentioned, the Institute for Research on Environment and Economy (IREE) was created to focus research and teaching in a coherent way upon issues that link environment and economy in the modern world. It is often pointed out that economy (management of the household) and ecology (knowledge or study of the household) are but different sides of the same coin. And environment (all that which surrounds) cannot, in the larger sense, be anything other than a term for our household, the physical, chemical, biological, institutional and conceptional surroundings within which we live and of which we are a part. These various attributes of our household are linked together by our knowledge, perceptions and ideas. Each of us occupies a different household, and as groups - families, professions, societies or nations -, we recognize and value different combinations of our surroundings and our households. These recognitions and values are transferred from one to another through information. It is through information, and its ability to transport or store, or make useful to others, our knowledge, perceptions and ideas, that we can communicate and achieve Organized by: The Institute for Research on Environment and Economy, University of Ottawa and The Institute for Research on Public Policy, University of Ottawa, Ottawa, Canada 4 December, 1989. joint action or influence one another. It is information that connects the knowledge of our
Environmental Monitoring and Assessment 20: 87-94, 1992. 9 1992KluwerAcademicPublishers. Printedin theNetherlands.
88
E.F. ROOTS
household (ecology) to its management (economy), within the awareness of our surroundings (the environment). Thus any institute concerned with research on environment and economy must be concerned, first of all, with environmental information, what it is, how it is obtained, what it represents, and how it is moved, stored, received or used. It is fitting, therefore, that the first public activity of the new IREE should be concerned with environmental information.
Information,and the role of Universities and Research Institutes What is the role of a university with respect to environmental information? IREE, by its name and its expressed intention, will be studying both sides of the ecology/economy coin. It will be concerned with what we know about the environment, and what we do with what we know. Maybe it will be concerned also with what we don't know, and what we do because we don't know. I hope so. For the economy, the management of our household, is the expression not only of what we can do and know how to do, but of what we would like to do, and with what happens when we do things without really knowing what we are doing. The state of our economy often shows this only too well. After all, a university is first and always concerned with knowledge - with discovering new knowledge, through research, or with imparting knowledge to others, through teaching, communication, experimentation and example. The 'knowledge business' of a university often starts with observations and data, which lead to information. The university role is largely one of turning information into knowledge, and (and here comes the skill that distinguishes a great university from those not so great) turning that knowledge into understanding and wisdom among those it can reach. For it is not information, or even knowledge alone, that is needed in the world today, (although we cannot do without them), - but wisdom that we must have to manage our environment wisely - to make decisions, develop wise and sensible policies, and follow those policies for individual and common good now and in the future. It is therefore also very appropriate that IREE should collaborate with the Institute for Research on Public Policy in this endeavour. The evidence is all about us, that we are not managing wisely either our environment or our economy today. I need not catalogue such evidence to this audience. Present trends make it hard to escape a forboding that in the near future, problems both of the environment and of the economy will grow more severe, unless some very wise changes are made, at all levels of society. We have not only to manage our household better; we have to know it better, and put that knowledge to use, for the good of the environment if we want it to be of benefit to ourselves also. These problems are growing more serious, at a time when our knowledge, while still far less than it could be, of the characteristics and the processes that govern both the economy and the environment is greater than it has ever been; and when our policies, regardless of whether individually we agree with them, are, in comparison with most periods in human history, well-intentioned, open, and sincerely applied. It is this paradox, this predicament, that, I hope, IREE will be addressing in the years to come. Clearly, to improve our chances of dealing with our present predicament, vigorous and
ENVIRONMENTAL
INFORMATION
89
dedicated application of the research and teaching function of the university, and also the special investigative, reflective, and commentary approach of an institute for research on public policy, are required. The Necessary Attributes of Information
Knowledge, and research, depend upon information. But information is only useful if it is reliable; - covers adequately the subject area for which information is needed; - is accessible to those who need it; and - is understandable to those who wish to use it. There are very many other attributes of information, of course; but unless the four main qualities of reliability, adequacy, accessibility and understandability are present, information, no matter how sophisticated or comprehensive, cannot contribute to knowledge or to the transfer of knowledge. This workshop, therefore, addresses a vital step in the improvement of knowledge about the environment and the economy, and its role in developing wise policies and the ability society to benefit from them. We will be looking at the 'Barriers' to the production and dissemination of environmental information. What are the factors that hinder or prevent the generation or collection of the kind of information we need about the environment, and what hinders or prevents such information from reaching, and from being useful to, those who need it or should have it? In some cases, the reason for hindrance or prevention will be obvious and easily identified. In most instances, however, the real barriers may not be the ones first evident, or may be very subtle but no less effective. To identify them, understand how they arise or operate, and how they may be overcome may involve research much more complex and fundamental, as well as practical, than first imagined. And this is where a strong university activity can prove its worth. -
Characteristics of 'Barriers'
A 'barrier, according to the dictionary is 'any kind of obstacle, boundary, or agency that keeps apart'. It has two characteristics: (1) There are two entities, activities or ideas that, in the absence of a barrier, would merge, mix, or flow from one to the other; and (2) A barrier is an identifiable thing or problem - physical, scientific, technological, institutional, or economic and cultural - that can be built up, broken down, changed in position or otherwise altered to change the relationships or flows between the two entities that are kept apart by the barrier. A barrier is not necessarily an undesired thing. Barriers may act as channels, provide discipline, allow for concentration or filtering that can increase the value of what is held on either side or allowed to pass through.
90
E.F. ROOTS
Common sense and past experience lead most of us to believe that information about the natural world, about the environment and what humans are doing to it, is most useful to everybody if it is freely available. It is therefore easy, and popular, to say that any kinds of barriers to the generation and dissemination of information are undesirable, and that removal of any or all barriers to information will always be to public or policy benefit. But the issues are not quite as easy as that. There are many kinds of information, and many reasons for disseminating it, or even for witholding it. Environmental misinformation is often hard to identify when it gets away from its source. And incomplete information, we all know, can sometimes lead to increase, not lessening, of problems. Selected information can be, and probably always will be, used to influence action differently than would be the case if everyone had all available information. And an uncontrolled flood of unsorted or unverified information can be confusing or even stop rational action. You will recall that Alexander Pope in the seventeenth century, said: 'A little knowledge is a dangerous thing', to which Thomas Huxley, two hundred years later, replied: 'Ifa little knowledge is dangerous, where is the man that has so much as to be out of danger?' It is in this spirit that we must address the problem of barriers to information. What may seem barriers to some can become useful conduits or valuable filters if handled with care, knowledge, and good intentions. Other barriers can be overcome or removed; but all too often, removal of one barrier may create others, sometimes in unexpected locations. There are many aspects of the 'barrier' question that we will want to consider. Some of these will be common to each of our discussion sessions in the next two days. (a) we should watch for systematic barriers that bias the gathering of information and select in advance the portion of society that can benefit from it. Our economic and technical system is already empowering the information-rich and relegating the information-poor to a position of lower status in society. It is not clear that those rich in modern technical information have better judgement and better values than those without such information or access to it. The reverse may in some cases be the case, on major social and political issues; for those who have internalized their own information and distilled their experiences and observations into personally-integrated knowledge often have a better opportunity to reflect on its values, and to act on the basis of values, than those whose information is stored externally on computer disks. A society whose decisions come to be information-driven rather than judgement-driven runs grave risks of making enormous mistakes. Perhaps we have made some grave mistakes. In any case, an information-dependent system easily becomes addicted to needing more and more information of the same kind, and may neglect, ignore, or refuse other, equally valuable information that does not fit its system. In an established information system the information flow tends to reinforce the structures and institutions already in use, and to resist the introduction of totally new
ENVIRONMENTAL
INFORMATION
91
structures or institutions. A trival example, for many of us right at home, of such a systematic barrier is the problem of cross-linkage between IBM and Apple computers programmes. (b) we should be aware of the problems as well as the needs of translating information into forms others can use. All translation involves interpretation, with loss or distortion of cultural content or significance. A thermometer reading or a satellite image of microwave reflectivity may, to the person who obtains it, be as objective as humanly possible; but to the user of that information, when the readings are translated into indication of potential climate change or die-back of forests, they will have significant subjective content. (c) we should be aware that increasing sophistication of environmental information almost always has two results: (i) it increases the bias toward some selected objective, because improved sensitivity and more rigorous filtering and validation of measurement necessarily means exclusion of any information or evidence considered extraneous or unreliable; and (ii) it restricts the community of users who can make use of the information, because sophisticated information requires sophisticated users or sophisticated technologies. In part, this is a problem of increasing volume and rate of information acquisition and transmission, requiring increasingly sophisticated means of dealing with it. The presently developing International Geosphere-Biosphere (Global Change) Programme, for example, will generate about 5 megabytes of environmental information per day from Canada alone. This cannot be handled by pen and notebook. It will, in many ways, be the most complete environmental information ever gathered about Canada. And most of it will not mean anything to anyone except the few who work with mathematical simulation models of environmental processes. (d) the problem of change of scale, and relationships between different scales in both space and time, is perhaps the most difficult, technically and conceptually, in the whole field of environmental information. The Earth is a dynamic body, whose inorganic and organic processes and characteristics interact with one another continuously at all scales from a single molecule to the Solar System, and from the speed of light to the slow evolution of geological time. What goes on in the cell of a birch leaf helps determine what happens to the forest; but an observation of a single leaf does not give a very good picture of the forest. And study of the changes in forested lands of North America is not easily interpreted in terms of the different response of a birch tree compared to that of a dandelion. The problem of 'scaling-up' or 'scaling down' of environmental information between micro (site), meso (regional) and macro (continental or global) scales, or from seconds to centuries, is not only one of technique and of understanding of process. Different questions, with different assemblages of information to answer those questions, are significant at different scales. The same is true of human perturbations of the environment. Releases of toxic substances that could be very dangerous on a local scale may be insignificant in the regional picture; whereas NOx from a car exhaust may be trivial locally but in the aggregate pose a real threat to the macro-environment and to life. The Global Change Program is wrestling with these scale issues on a national and world-wide basis. It will be investigating indicators and indices such as cancers in fish, changes in elevations of icecaps, and tree growth rings - and assessing their ability to
92
E.F. ROOTS
represent the conditions or changes in the environment. The information from such indicators must pass through barriers of scale to be truly useful in either a global or a local context.
Limitations and Special Problems In the next two days, these questions of the flow, channelling and obstruction of environmental information will be examined in four main areas: (1) the scientific limitations- the problems that arise because communicable knowledge and understanding is, for one reason or another, simply insufficient to enable satisfactory information about the environment, in all its complexity, both natural and human, to be obtained or passed along to others. We should not be ashamed to admit that some simple and important environmental questions are, at least at present, scientificallyunanswerable. (2) the technologicalproblems- the questions of method, scale, quantity and complexity, to say nothing of problems of expense, organization, and communicability that stand between observation and measurement of environmental characteristics or processes at the one end oftheinformation transfer process and the possession of environmental knowledge by the public or policy-makers at the other. (3) the institutional and political problems - the difficult issues surrounding the institutional systems that are necessary if systematic information is to be obtained, and the fact that all such systems necessarily involve constraints, biases, conflicts of purpose, and selectivity concerning the information obtained and its interpretation or dissemination. (4) The special problems of the generation, dissemination, usefulness and the use of environmental information in Third Worldcountries. This of course, is a subject that amply justifies a symposium on its own (as does each of the other three); but it has particular relevance to Canada today, in the light of our current rethinking of our foreign aid policies, the leadership that Canada is taking in Global Change studies, and the forthcoming 1992 Conference on the Human Environment.
Information in Context It is important to remember that environmental information, no matter how quantitative, objective, or reliable, is in most cases only a proxy for some environmental value or consequence that is deemed, by humans, to be important. One can easily fall into the trap of thinking that if one can only obtain enough information or data of the right kind, one should know enough to answer the questions that are important. That is rather like insisting that you can tell the quality of a wine by its chemical analysis. Would that it were as simple as that! One can measure the radioactive fallout over a town at several points, or take year-byyear statistics of the population of a herd of caribou. But will such information tell the effect of radioactivity on the inhabitants of the town, or the health and future prospects of the caribou herd? Simplistic expectations of the usefulness of information of this kind have led us into many mistakes and problems of environmental interpretation and judgement. They have even led to inappropriate environmental policies and institutions, in government and
ENVIRONMENTAL
INFORMATION
93
universities. Might not a more representative answer about the effect of radioactive fall-out be not a measure of ambient radioactivity at all, but, for the sake of argument, a combination of data on hospital admissions, and of decline of housing values as people left the area? Might not a better forewarning of a coming crash in caribou population be obtained not by counting caribou but, perhaps through a survey of the age and reproduction of wolves in the area, or of the proportion of forage plants left uneaten during the winter to provide food for the following year? These examples are mentioned to show that equally or more important than the quantitative information gathered is knowledge of the questions to be asked for which environmental information is needed. I suspect that, as we examine the problems of barriers to environmental information, we will find that in nearly every case the best way to 'break the barriers' will be to ask the right questions.
The Staircase of Knowing In our concentration on environmental information, it is important to remember that information does not exist by itself, and possession of information byitselfis not equivalent to knowing what is going on. We should remind ourselves of the philosopher's staircase of 'knowing' (Fig. 1). Between each step there is subjective intervention of or enrichment with human values. At the bottom - there is Observation or measurements. These can lead to data. Data, properly organized and related to issues, can produce information. Information, organized, and interpreted or applied to areas of interest of concern, can lead to knowledge. Knowledge, if assimilated and subjected to mental assessment and enrichment, so that it is comprehended and integrated to apply to some purpose, leads to understanding. And understanding, put into perspective with judgement, can become Wisdom. In this meeting, we are concerned mainly with information, which will be based on data which comes from observation and measurement. But we must bear in mind that the usefulness of such information depends largely on the degree to which it can contribute to knowledge about the environment (and thence, perhaps, to understanding). We want to examine how to ensure that the four essential criteria mentioned earlier: - reliability - adequacy - accessibility - understandability can be met. For it is the overcoming of the barriers to meeting these essential criteria that determine whether, and how, environmental information is to become environmental knowledge. This is the challenge and the task that the new Institute for Research on the Environment and the Economy, together with the Institute for Research on Public Policy, has taken on. A first exploration of this challenge is the task of this symposium. I call on Dr. Keddy to introduce the first session.
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Opening Comments E. E. ROOTS Department of Environment, Canada
(Received July 1990)
Abstract. At a time when information and knowledge about the environment and the economy are increasing, problems of both environment and economy are growing more serious. It is the role and opportunity of a university institute concerned with research on environment and economy to convert information about the environment into knowledge, and to explore applications of that knowledge in areas of economic management and policy. The main barriers to production and dissemination of information that can contribute to effective environmental knowledge are those that affect the reliability, adequacy, accessibility, and understandability of environmental information. Such barriers may be systematic, biasing the gathering of information and selecting in advance who may benefit from it; they may be barriers of translation, with distortion of content or significance; barriers of sophistication, that determine both content and context; or, most difficult in the environmental field, barriers imposed by problems of scale and relationships of different scales. To be useful, information cannot be purely objective, but must have subjective value added. There is a staircase of'knowing', progressing from Observation and Measurement, to Data, to Information, to Knowledge, to Understanding, and finally to Wisdom, presenting increasing barriers of subjective value, interpretation, and integration at each step.
Introduction
As Dean Haight has just mentioned, the Institute for Research on Environment and Economy (IREE) was created to focus research and teaching in a coherent way upon issues that link environment and economy in the modern world. It is often pointed out that economy (management of the household) and ecology (knowledge or study of the household) are but different sides of the same coin. And environment (all that which surrounds) cannot, in the larger sense, be anything other than a term for our household, the physical, chemical, biological, institutional and conceptional surroundings within which we live and of which we are a part. These various attributes of our household are linked together by our knowledge, perceptions and ideas. Each of us occupies a different household, and as groups - families, professions, societies or nations -, we recognize and value different combinations of our surroundings and our households. These recognitions and values are transferred from one to another through information. It is through information, and its ability to transport or store, or make useful to others, our knowledge, perceptions and ideas, that we can communicate and achieve Organized by: The Institute for Research on Environment and Economy, University of Ottawa and The Institute for Research on Public Policy, University of Ottawa, Ottawa, Canada 4 December, 1989. joint action or influence one another. It is information that connects the knowledge of our
Environmental Monitoring and Assessment 20: 87-94, 1992. 9 1992KluwerAcademicPublishers. Printedin theNetherlands.
88
E.F. ROOTS
household (ecology) to its management (economy), within the awareness of our surroundings (the environment). Thus any institute concerned with research on environment and economy must be concerned, first of all, with environmental information, what it is, how it is obtained, what it represents, and how it is moved, stored, received or used. It is fitting, therefore, that the first public activity of the new IREE should be concerned with environmental information.
Information,and the role of Universities and Research Institutes What is the role of a university with respect to environmental information? IREE, by its name and its expressed intention, will be studying both sides of the ecology/economy coin. It will be concerned with what we know about the environment, and what we do with what we know. Maybe it will be concerned also with what we don't know, and what we do because we don't know. I hope so. For the economy, the management of our household, is the expression not only of what we can do and know how to do, but of what we would like to do, and with what happens when we do things without really knowing what we are doing. The state of our economy often shows this only too well. After all, a university is first and always concerned with knowledge - with discovering new knowledge, through research, or with imparting knowledge to others, through teaching, communication, experimentation and example. The 'knowledge business' of a university often starts with observations and data, which lead to information. The university role is largely one of turning information into knowledge, and (and here comes the skill that distinguishes a great university from those not so great) turning that knowledge into understanding and wisdom among those it can reach. For it is not information, or even knowledge alone, that is needed in the world today, (although we cannot do without them), - but wisdom that we must have to manage our environment wisely - to make decisions, develop wise and sensible policies, and follow those policies for individual and common good now and in the future. It is therefore also very appropriate that IREE should collaborate with the Institute for Research on Public Policy in this endeavour. The evidence is all about us, that we are not managing wisely either our environment or our economy today. I need not catalogue such evidence to this audience. Present trends make it hard to escape a forboding that in the near future, problems both of the environment and of the economy will grow more severe, unless some very wise changes are made, at all levels of society. We have not only to manage our household better; we have to know it better, and put that knowledge to use, for the good of the environment if we want it to be of benefit to ourselves also. These problems are growing more serious, at a time when our knowledge, while still far less than it could be, of the characteristics and the processes that govern both the economy and the environment is greater than it has ever been; and when our policies, regardless of whether individually we agree with them, are, in comparison with most periods in human history, well-intentioned, open, and sincerely applied. It is this paradox, this predicament, that, I hope, IREE will be addressing in the years to come. Clearly, to improve our chances of dealing with our present predicament, vigorous and
ENVIRONMENTAL
INFORMATION
89
dedicated application of the research and teaching function of the university, and also the special investigative, reflective, and commentary approach of an institute for research on public policy, are required. The Necessary Attributes of Information
Knowledge, and research, depend upon information. But information is only useful if it is reliable; - covers adequately the subject area for which information is needed; - is accessible to those who need it; and - is understandable to those who wish to use it. There are very many other attributes of information, of course; but unless the four main qualities of reliability, adequacy, accessibility and understandability are present, information, no matter how sophisticated or comprehensive, cannot contribute to knowledge or to the transfer of knowledge. This workshop, therefore, addresses a vital step in the improvement of knowledge about the environment and the economy, and its role in developing wise policies and the ability society to benefit from them. We will be looking at the 'Barriers' to the production and dissemination of environmental information. What are the factors that hinder or prevent the generation or collection of the kind of information we need about the environment, and what hinders or prevents such information from reaching, and from being useful to, those who need it or should have it? In some cases, the reason for hindrance or prevention will be obvious and easily identified. In most instances, however, the real barriers may not be the ones first evident, or may be very subtle but no less effective. To identify them, understand how they arise or operate, and how they may be overcome may involve research much more complex and fundamental, as well as practical, than first imagined. And this is where a strong university activity can prove its worth. -
Characteristics of 'Barriers'
A 'barrier, according to the dictionary is 'any kind of obstacle, boundary, or agency that keeps apart'. It has two characteristics: (1) There are two entities, activities or ideas that, in the absence of a barrier, would merge, mix, or flow from one to the other; and (2) A barrier is an identifiable thing or problem - physical, scientific, technological, institutional, or economic and cultural - that can be built up, broken down, changed in position or otherwise altered to change the relationships or flows between the two entities that are kept apart by the barrier. A barrier is not necessarily an undesired thing. Barriers may act as channels, provide discipline, allow for concentration or filtering that can increase the value of what is held on either side or allowed to pass through.
90
E.F. ROOTS
Common sense and past experience lead most of us to believe that information about the natural world, about the environment and what humans are doing to it, is most useful to everybody if it is freely available. It is therefore easy, and popular, to say that any kinds of barriers to the generation and dissemination of information are undesirable, and that removal of any or all barriers to information will always be to public or policy benefit. But the issues are not quite as easy as that. There are many kinds of information, and many reasons for disseminating it, or even for witholding it. Environmental misinformation is often hard to identify when it gets away from its source. And incomplete information, we all know, can sometimes lead to increase, not lessening, of problems. Selected information can be, and probably always will be, used to influence action differently than would be the case if everyone had all available information. And an uncontrolled flood of unsorted or unverified information can be confusing or even stop rational action. You will recall that Alexander Pope in the seventeenth century, said: 'A little knowledge is a dangerous thing', to which Thomas Huxley, two hundred years later, replied: 'Ifa little knowledge is dangerous, where is the man that has so much as to be out of danger?' It is in this spirit that we must address the problem of barriers to information. What may seem barriers to some can become useful conduits or valuable filters if handled with care, knowledge, and good intentions. Other barriers can be overcome or removed; but all too often, removal of one barrier may create others, sometimes in unexpected locations. There are many aspects of the 'barrier' question that we will want to consider. Some of these will be common to each of our discussion sessions in the next two days. (a) we should watch for systematic barriers that bias the gathering of information and select in advance the portion of society that can benefit from it. Our economic and technical system is already empowering the information-rich and relegating the information-poor to a position of lower status in society. It is not clear that those rich in modern technical information have better judgement and better values than those without such information or access to it. The reverse may in some cases be the case, on major social and political issues; for those who have internalized their own information and distilled their experiences and observations into personally-integrated knowledge often have a better opportunity to reflect on its values, and to act on the basis of values, than those whose information is stored externally on computer disks. A society whose decisions come to be information-driven rather than judgement-driven runs grave risks of making enormous mistakes. Perhaps we have made some grave mistakes. In any case, an information-dependent system easily becomes addicted to needing more and more information of the same kind, and may neglect, ignore, or refuse other, equally valuable information that does not fit its system. In an established information system the information flow tends to reinforce the structures and institutions already in use, and to resist the introduction of totally new
ENVIRONMENTAL
INFORMATION
91
structures or institutions. A trival example, for many of us right at home, of such a systematic barrier is the problem of cross-linkage between IBM and Apple computers programmes. (b) we should be aware of the problems as well as the needs of translating information into forms others can use. All translation involves interpretation, with loss or distortion of cultural content or significance. A thermometer reading or a satellite image of microwave reflectivity may, to the person who obtains it, be as objective as humanly possible; but to the user of that information, when the readings are translated into indication of potential climate change or die-back of forests, they will have significant subjective content. (c) we should be aware that increasing sophistication of environmental information almost always has two results: (i) it increases the bias toward some selected objective, because improved sensitivity and more rigorous filtering and validation of measurement necessarily means exclusion of any information or evidence considered extraneous or unreliable; and (ii) it restricts the community of users who can make use of the information, because sophisticated information requires sophisticated users or sophisticated technologies. In part, this is a problem of increasing volume and rate of information acquisition and transmission, requiring increasingly sophisticated means of dealing with it. The presently developing International Geosphere-Biosphere (Global Change) Programme, for example, will generate about 5 megabytes of environmental information per day from Canada alone. This cannot be handled by pen and notebook. It will, in many ways, be the most complete environmental information ever gathered about Canada. And most of it will not mean anything to anyone except the few who work with mathematical simulation models of environmental processes. (d) the problem of change of scale, and relationships between different scales in both space and time, is perhaps the most difficult, technically and conceptually, in the whole field of environmental information. The Earth is a dynamic body, whose inorganic and organic processes and characteristics interact with one another continuously at all scales from a single molecule to the Solar System, and from the speed of light to the slow evolution of geological time. What goes on in the cell of a birch leaf helps determine what happens to the forest; but an observation of a single leaf does not give a very good picture of the forest. And study of the changes in forested lands of North America is not easily interpreted in terms of the different response of a birch tree compared to that of a dandelion. The problem of 'scaling-up' or 'scaling down' of environmental information between micro (site), meso (regional) and macro (continental or global) scales, or from seconds to centuries, is not only one of technique and of understanding of process. Different questions, with different assemblages of information to answer those questions, are significant at different scales. The same is true of human perturbations of the environment. Releases of toxic substances that could be very dangerous on a local scale may be insignificant in the regional picture; whereas NOx from a car exhaust may be trivial locally but in the aggregate pose a real threat to the macro-environment and to life. The Global Change Program is wrestling with these scale issues on a national and world-wide basis. It will be investigating indicators and indices such as cancers in fish, changes in elevations of icecaps, and tree growth rings - and assessing their ability to
92
E.F. ROOTS
represent the conditions or changes in the environment. The information from such indicators must pass through barriers of scale to be truly useful in either a global or a local context.
Limitations and Special Problems In the next two days, these questions of the flow, channelling and obstruction of environmental information will be examined in four main areas: (1) the scientific limitations- the problems that arise because communicable knowledge and understanding is, for one reason or another, simply insufficient to enable satisfactory information about the environment, in all its complexity, both natural and human, to be obtained or passed along to others. We should not be ashamed to admit that some simple and important environmental questions are, at least at present, scientificallyunanswerable. (2) the technologicalproblems- the questions of method, scale, quantity and complexity, to say nothing of problems of expense, organization, and communicability that stand between observation and measurement of environmental characteristics or processes at the one end oftheinformation transfer process and the possession of environmental knowledge by the public or policy-makers at the other. (3) the institutional and political problems - the difficult issues surrounding the institutional systems that are necessary if systematic information is to be obtained, and the fact that all such systems necessarily involve constraints, biases, conflicts of purpose, and selectivity concerning the information obtained and its interpretation or dissemination. (4) The special problems of the generation, dissemination, usefulness and the use of environmental information in Third Worldcountries. This of course, is a subject that amply justifies a symposium on its own (as does each of the other three); but it has particular relevance to Canada today, in the light of our current rethinking of our foreign aid policies, the leadership that Canada is taking in Global Change studies, and the forthcoming 1992 Conference on the Human Environment.
Information in Context It is important to remember that environmental information, no matter how quantitative, objective, or reliable, is in most cases only a proxy for some environmental value or consequence that is deemed, by humans, to be important. One can easily fall into the trap of thinking that if one can only obtain enough information or data of the right kind, one should know enough to answer the questions that are important. That is rather like insisting that you can tell the quality of a wine by its chemical analysis. Would that it were as simple as that! One can measure the radioactive fallout over a town at several points, or take year-byyear statistics of the population of a herd of caribou. But will such information tell the effect of radioactivity on the inhabitants of the town, or the health and future prospects of the caribou herd? Simplistic expectations of the usefulness of information of this kind have led us into many mistakes and problems of environmental interpretation and judgement. They have even led to inappropriate environmental policies and institutions, in government and
ENVIRONMENTAL
INFORMATION
93
universities. Might not a more representative answer about the effect of radioactive fall-out be not a measure of ambient radioactivity at all, but, for the sake of argument, a combination of data on hospital admissions, and of decline of housing values as people left the area? Might not a better forewarning of a coming crash in caribou population be obtained not by counting caribou but, perhaps through a survey of the age and reproduction of wolves in the area, or of the proportion of forage plants left uneaten during the winter to provide food for the following year? These examples are mentioned to show that equally or more important than the quantitative information gathered is knowledge of the questions to be asked for which environmental information is needed. I suspect that, as we examine the problems of barriers to environmental information, we will find that in nearly every case the best way to 'break the barriers' will be to ask the right questions.
The Staircase of Knowing In our concentration on environmental information, it is important to remember that information does not exist by itself, and possession of information byitselfis not equivalent to knowing what is going on. We should remind ourselves of the philosopher's staircase of 'knowing' (Fig. 1). Between each step there is subjective intervention of or enrichment with human values. At the bottom - there is Observation or measurements. These can lead to data. Data, properly organized and related to issues, can produce information. Information, organized, and interpreted or applied to areas of interest of concern, can lead to knowledge. Knowledge, if assimilated and subjected to mental assessment and enrichment, so that it is comprehended and integrated to apply to some purpose, leads to understanding. And understanding, put into perspective with judgement, can become Wisdom. In this meeting, we are concerned mainly with information, which will be based on data which comes from observation and measurement. But we must bear in mind that the usefulness of such information depends largely on the degree to which it can contribute to knowledge about the environment (and thence, perhaps, to understanding). We want to examine how to ensure that the four essential criteria mentioned earlier: - reliability - adequacy - accessibility - understandability can be met. For it is the overcoming of the barriers to meeting these essential criteria that determine whether, and how, environmental information is to become environmental knowledge. This is the challenge and the task that the new Institute for Research on the Environment and the Economy, together with the Institute for Research on Public Policy, has taken on. A first exploration of this challenge is the task of this symposium. I call on Dr. Keddy to introduce the first session.
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