Under the Aarhus Convention all government bodies not only have a duty to make environmental information available when you ask for it – but a duty to go further, to publish and promote the environmental information they have.
Thanks to the Environmental Information Regulations (EIR) and our Information Commissioners if you ask for some information you’re pretty sure to get it. Thanks to the internet more and more information is now published online – finding it may take a bit of time and persistence, but it probably is there, somewhere.
Promotion
Which leads us on to the promotion of information. The spirit of promotion is that you make information relevant to peoples, and this lets them make informed decisions about it. The falkirk taxi driver is one example – why not show air quality data at site? Why not show traffic numbers on roads and paths? Water quality where you bathe in it? Ecological status on the reserve? Sure not all data is appropriate for this kind of promotion, but i think it’s worth trying to find innovative ways to promote information, so people feel empowered to take decisions about it.
I like these examples:
Simple counters on a bike path (i’m pretty sure our bike paths have traffic monitoring)
Not a new idea, Blue Flags – a simple way of letting you know the water is safe to bathe in
We’ve already got these message boards on our roads – and we collect data on air and count traffic. Why not combine the two to let people see the information where it’s relevant?
There’s more example in this flickr gallery
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