The role of information in multilateral governance of environmental health risk: lessons from the Equatorial Asian haze case

Abstract

A multilateral approach to the governance of environmental health risk could be regarded as a possible response to the complexity of current risk problems. Such multilateral governance is deemed advisable in consideration of the need to achieve an adaptive risk management approach and establish a dialogue among the stakeholders involved in or affected by a specific risk. However, whereas the benefits of multilateral risk governance are clear in theory, in practice – and specifically for the environmental health domain – there seems to be a shortage of successful cases where this multilateral approach has been actually applied. In particular, this article targets the necessity to understand ‘multilateral’ in a broad sense, thus also including the international community and civil society actors, both organized in collectives (e.g. NGOs) and wider civil society (e.g. on-the-ground citizens). The case of the Equatorial Asian haze is investigated to respond to a theoretical question, namely whether and how processes of deviating dynamics can trigger an improvement in risk governance, especially stimulating alternative information production and pushing for the release of key information held by the government. Access to information results in being a necessary step to achieve multilateral risk governance.