Fishers' information in governance-a matter of trust

Abstract

Informational governance is an analytical concept that addresses the role of recent rapidly increasing information activities in governance processes and institutions. Scientific information no longer has the status as the only source of relevant information in organizational and public decision making. Instead, the Information Age provides new opportunities for the influence of bottom-up information stemming from various stakeholders. In this article, the main aim is to explore the relevant conditions for potential stakeholders to influence environmental governance processes. We do so by focusing on the specific case of fishers' information in fisheries governance. The review, which includes research from across the globe but pays particular attention to recent developments in Europe, shows that fishers' information can contribute to scientific information, and that co-creation of information with scientists can be useful in fisheries governance. Still, integration of scientific and fishers' information remains complicated. We conclude that successful integration of the two types of information fully depends on one context dependent factor, namely trust. The conditions facilitating development of trust in environmental governance are recommended as core themes for future research on informational governance.</p