Environmental Information Systems
as Appropriate Technology
Kim Fortun
Environmental information systems—involving databases, computer
modeling, remote sensing, GIS applications, and a host of other tech-
nologies—are now being developed around the world to address
a range of issues, from climate change to loss of biodiversity, à
economic underdevelopment.1 The implications for the natural envi-
ronment, human welfare, and democratic governance are significant.
Environmental information systems structure what people see in the
environment, and how they collaborate to deal with environmental
problems. They shape scientific inquiry, legal argument, and how
citizens participate in governance. They are technologies designed to
produce new truths, new social relationships, new forms of political
decision-making and, finalement, a renewed environment.
I will discuss one particular environmental information sys-
tem, an interactive Website supported by a relational database that
contains profiles of more than 6,800 chemicals. Maintained by the
Environmental Defense Fund, and called “Scorecard,” the Website
integrates local pollution information for the United States with
information on health risks, and with information on relevant envi-
ronmental regulations. It allows users to produce customized reports,
and encourages communication with the U.S. Environnemental
Protection Agency, or with a polluting company. A Canadian version
of Scorecard went online in April 2001, and a Japanese version is in
the planning stage.2 Scorecard could become a technology that is
transferred to countries around the world.
My main argument is that Scorecard is an example of an
appropriate environmental information system—designed in a way
attuned to the material, politique, and technological realities with
which it works, and to the social actors who will be its users. Le
argument builds on the concept of appropriate (or “intermedi-
ate”) technology popularized in the 1970s, with roots in Gandhian
critiques of mass production articulated during the Indian indepen-
dence movement.3 Advocates argued that, in order to be “appro-
priate,” technology should be designed to fit into its local setting,
synchronized with available material resources, expertise, and labor
temps. I observed many such technologies in India while conducting
field research in the early 1990s, and learned to appreciate how they
could combine function with social, technique, and environmental
sustainability. I also learned that “local settings” were inevitably
punctured by flows of ideas, people, and goods from elsewhere; avec
1
2
3
For examples of work on these topics
in STS, see G. C. Bowker, “Biodiversity
Datadiversity,” Social Studies of Science
30:5 (2000): 643–684; P.. Edwards, “Global
Climate Science, Uncertainty and Politics:
Data-laden Models, Model-Filtered
Données,” Science as Culture 8:4 (1999):
437-472; R.. E. Sieber, Computers in the
Grassroots: Environmentalists, GIS and
Public Policy (Ph.D. Dissertation, Rutgers
University, Department of Geography,
1997); D. Sarewitz, R.. Pielke, Jr., et
R.. Byerly, Jr., éd., Prediction: Science,
Decision-Making and the Future of
Nature (Washington, CC: Island Press,
2000).
The Canadian version of Scorecard, once
at www.scorecard.org/pollutionwatch,
has been taken off the Web. I do not
yet know the reasons. Bill Pease, le
designer of Scorecard, mentioned the
Japanese version in an interview with
Erich Schienke in October 2001.
See E. F. Schumacher, Small Is Beautiful:
Economics as if People Mattered (Nouveau
York: Harper & Row, 1973). For a recent
analysis that highlights the need for
technology to match both users and
needs in both complexity and scale, voir
B. Hazeltine and C. Bull, Appropriate
Technologie: Tools, Choices and
Implications (New York: Academic Press,
1999).
54
© 2004 Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Problèmes de conception: Volume 20, Nombre 3 Été 2004
Problèmes de conception: Volume 20, Nombre 3 Été 2004
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both good and bad effects. I thus became interested in a concept of
appropriate technology that would fit with the realities of global-
ization, and remain open to the wide array of technologies that
could become local resources. Instead of assuming that appropriate
technology had to be small-scale and completely controlled by the
local community, I wanted to explore what “appropriate” technol-
ogy meant in the high-tech, globally interconnected world of the
twenty-first century.4 My argument here extends this exploration,
drawing out how information technology can attune to the realities
of pollution at the local level.
My analysis draws on my own earlier work on how environ-
mentalism has been practiced on the ground, in different settings,
in the aftermath of the 1984 Bhopal disaster. In this work, I drew out
the gaping information deficits that people must contend with when
dealing with environmental problems, particularly as they impact
human health, and the difficulties that arise when it is not possible to
establish simple causal relationships between exposure and disease.
I also examined how grassroots environmental groups function, et
the political challenge of trying to influence corporate conduct.5
My analysis also draws on earlier research on the social
implications of information technology. This research warns of the
ill effects likely to emerge from widespread use and commercializa-
tion of information technology. It warns that information technol-
ogy is likely to intensify and complicate the separation between
haves and have-nots, and that the types of access people have to
information will be a primary determinant of their social position,
and of the opportunities available to them to change both their own
positions and society more broadly.6 It also warns of the emergence
of a new “enclosure movement” that aims to make information
technologie, as well as information itself, increasingly proprietary.7
Research on the social implications of information technology also
has drawn out positive examples and indicators, often highlighting
how information technology can enhance democracy. Examples of
the way information technology can be appropriated for unexpected
uses are important,8 as are examples of the way information design
can encourage creativity, and make it possible to visualize complex
phenomena.9
I begin the essay with a description of what I think of as the
“informating” of environmentalism—a trend that involves increasing
use of information technologies to address environmental problems.
In the next sections, I describe the Scorecard site in detail, and then
explain why I think that Scorecard is an example of appropriate
technology design. In the final section, I briefly comment on how
appropriate technology design enables design to serve what Richard
Buchanan calls “first principles.”
Problèmes de conception: Volume 20, Nombre 3 Été 2004
55
4
5
6
7
8
9
The U.S. Office of Technology
Assessment, Par exemple, defined
“appropriate technology” as “small scale,
energy efficient, environmentally sound,
labor-intensive, and controlled by the
community” (cited in Hazeltine and Bull
1999, 3).
See Kim Fortun, Advocacy After Bhopal:
Environmentalism, Disaster, New Global
Orders (Chicago: University of Chicago
Presse, 2001).
See M. CastellsThe Rise of the Network
Society (Malden, MA: Puits noir,
2000); et R. Kolko, L. Nakamur, and G.
Rodman, éd., Race in Cyberspace (Nouveau
York: Routledge, 2000).
See J. Boyle,Shamans, Logiciel, et
Spleens: Law and the Construction of
the Information Society (Cambridge,
MA: Presse universitaire de Harvard, 1997)
and “A Politics of Intellectual Property:
Environmentalism for the Net?»
www.law.duke.edu/boylesite/intprop.htm
(1999, accessed July 2000).
See S. Lansing, Priests and Programmers:
Technologies of Power in the Engineered
Landscape of Bali (Princeton: Princeton
Presse universitaire, 1991); P.. Manuel,
Cassette Culture: Music and Technology
in North India (Chicago: University
of Chicago Press, 1993); UN. Melucci,
Challenging Codes: Collective Action
in the Information Age (New York:
Cambridge, 1996); et R. Eglash, J..
Croissant, G. Di Chiro, et R. Fouche,
Appropriating Technology: Vernacular
Science and Social Power (Minneapolis:
University of Minnesota Press, 2004).
See R. Jacobson, Information Design
(Cambridge, MA: AVEC Presse, 1999) and E.
Tufte, Envisioning Information (Cheshire,
CT: Graphics Press, 1990).
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Informating Environmentalism
“Informational strategies” for dealing with environmental risk
became law in the United States in 1986 through passage of the
“Community Right-to-Know Act,” Title III of the Superfund Amend-
ments and Reauthorization Act (SARA). Widely regarded as the pri-
mary U.S. legislative response to the 1984 Bhopal disaster, the act
mandated a range of initiatives to support emergency planning
and public access to information.10 A key component was the Toxic
Release Inventory (TRI), the first federal database Congress required
released to the public in a computer-readable format.11 The goal was
to allow the EPA as well as citizens to track and evaluate routine
emissions from industrial facilities.
Some researchers argue that the TRI can be correlated with
improved company performance on pollution.12 Other researchers
question the “market efficiency model” in general, as well as the
substance of the reported emissions—arguing that the TRI is based
on “engineering estimates” that are easily manipulated to create
“phantom reductions.” Many at the EPA nonetheless consider the
TRI one of its most successful programs. And it is clear that the TRI
has been a driving force in the emergence of corporate environmen-
talism, and in the emergence of new, information-oriented programs
within environmental organizations of all sizes.13
Initiatives similar to those mobilized in the United States
by right-to-know legislation now are being developed around the
monde, as recommended in Agenda 21, the guidelines for sustainable
development agreed to at the Earth Summit held in Johannesburg in
Août 2002. Informational strategies have become a major focus at
the World Bank and within UN programs, leading to environmen-
tal information initiatives in many developing countries, y compris
Mexico and Indonesia.14 In Europe, the right to know is the focus of
the Aarhus Convention—a UN/European Economic Commission
Convention on Access to Information, Public Participation in
Decision-Making, and Access to Justice in Environmental Matters.
Originally signed in Aarhus, Denmark in the summer of 1998, le
convention establishes legally binding instruments guiding the
creation of national Pollutant Release and Transfer Registers (PRTRs)
in the UN/EEC region, as recommended by Chapter 19 of Agenda
21. PRTRs are databases containing information about pollution from
industrial facilities, similar to the TRI in the U.S.15 Environmental
organizations such as the WorldWatch Institute considered PRTRs
to be a key goal of the Earth Summit held in Johannesburg in August
2002. WorldWatch reports that there has been serious opposition to
PRTRs by manufacturers since the Earth Summit 1992, et ça
only twenty countries have set up PRTRs as a result. WorldWatch
considers PRTRs a priority because they “pinpoint the most affected
communautés, and the most polluting industries, thereby identifying
targets for action.” 16
10 S. Hadden, “Citizen Participation in
Environmental Policy Making” in S.
Jasanoff, éd., Learning from Disaster:
Risk Management After Bhopal
(Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania
Presse, 1994).
11 J.. Jeune, “Using Computers for the
Environment” in L. Brun, éd., State of
the World 1994 (New York: W.W. Norton
& Company, 1994).
12 J.. T. Hamilton, “Pollution as News:
Media and Stock Market Reactions to
the Toxics Release Inventory Data,»
Journal of Environmental Economics and
Management 28 (1995): 98–113.
13 See J. Fillo and C. Keyworth, “Sara
Title III—A New Era of Corporate
Responsibility and Accountability,»
Journal of Hazardous Materials. 31:3
(1992): 219–231; and D. Grant, “Allowing
Citizen Participation in Environmental
Regulation: An Empirical Analysis of
the Effects of Right-to-Sue and Right-
to-Know on Industry’s Toxic Emissions,»
Social Science Quarterly 78:4 (1997):
859–873.
14 S. Afsah, B. Laplante, and D. Wheeler
“Controlling Industrial Pollution: UN
New Paradigm” (World Bank, Policy
Research Department, Working Paper
167, May 1996); and T. Tietenberg and D.
Wheeler, “Empowering the Community:
Information Strategies for Pollution
Contrôle,” paper presented at the Frontiers
for Environmental Economics Conference
(Airlie House, Virginia: October 23–25,
1998).
15 E. Petkova with P. Veit, “Environmental
Accountability Beyond the Nation-
State: The Implications of the Aarhus
Convention” in Environmental
Governance Notes (Washington, CC:
World Resources Institute, Avril 2000).
16 UN. P.. McGinn, “From Rio to Johannesburg:
Reducing the Use of Toxic Chemicals
Advances Health and Sustainable
Development” in World Summit Policy
Briefs (WorldWatch Institute: Juin 25,
2002, e-mail edition), 3.
56
Problèmes de conception: Volume 20, Nombre 3 Été 2004
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Right-to-know initiatives are raising difficult questions: What
information must be provided to fulfill the right to know about the
environment? How must information be provided? Must informa-
tion be accessible through the Internet? Has access been realized if
information is not organized for efficient use, and not correlated with
other information that reveals its significance? Is the right to know,
in effect, the right-to-computer models and to interactive, Web-based
maps using Geographical Information System (GIS) software?
What is information provision supposed to accomplish? Is
data delivery the goal, or something more complex? Should the
primary goal be access to information, or should priority be given
to facilitating production of dynamic, multi-authored datasets? Comment
can information be leveraged into effective action? Should environ-
mental information systems be envisioned as key components of
efforts to build deliberative democratic processes attuned to a high-
tech, globalizing world?
These questions raise difficult practical, conceptual, et
ethical issues. They are, nonetheless, regularly discussed and
debated—at conferences sponsored by government agencies, à
community meetings, and on e-mail “listservs” that interconnect
diverse stakeholders. They also are addressed through creative
information technology designs.
The Scorecard Website
The Scorecard Website is one response to the recognition that
people have a right to know about environmental problems. Quand
the site was launched in April 1998, Chemical Week described it as
the “Internet Bomb,” because of the potential impact on the reputa-
tions of chemical companies.17 Oracle Magazine featured Scorecard
as an example of a well-executed and sophisticated Web applica-
tion using a simple “script-based” approach.18 Greenpeace refers
to Scorecard as the “gold standard” of environmental information
systèmes, and decided to follow EDF’s lead in using the open-
source arsDigital Community Systems (ACS) software for the new
“Greenpeace Planet” Website, launched in June 2002. Greenpeace
applauds Scorecard because it “bridges the gap between setting up
passive information and creating a collaborative environment for
action.” 19.
The goal of Scorecard is to provide the information base for
sustained effort to reduce pollution risks. Putting pressure on pollut-
ing facilities through disclosure of their emissions is a key strategy.
EDF also wants it to be commonplace for people to use local envi-
ronmental information when making decisions about what city or
neighborhood to live in, or about what products to buy. A critical
side effect will be greater recognition of the uneven distribution of
pollution risk among social groups. Fred Krupps, president of EDF,
Problèmes de conception: Volume 20, Nombre 3 Été 2004
57
17 P.. R.. Fairley and A. Foster, “Scorecard
Hits Home: Web Site Confirms Internet’s
Reach,” Chemical Week (Juin 3, 1998).
18 K. Wiseth, “Next Generation Web:
The Evolution of Thin,” Oracle
Magazine (Novembre 1998).
www.oracle.com/oramag/oracle/98-Nov/
index.html?68cov.html (accessed June
25, 2002).
19 See “The Story Behind Greenpeace
Planet” (Juin 24, 2002).
www.greenpeace.org/features/details?
features%5fid=14977 (accessed July 1,
2002).
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wrote in an introductory letter posted on the Website that EDF’s
goal was “to make the local environment as easy to check on as the
local weather.” 20
EDF, one of the “big ten” environmental organizations, avec
an annual budget of approximately $40 million and more than
300,000 members, is best known for its science-based lobbying to
protect the environment.21 It was launched in 1967, and played a
lead role in winning a U.S. ban on the pesticide DDT. This was not a
grassroots effort. In EDF’s own account, it was an example of “how
a handful of individuals can use science and law to bring about
national reform.” Today, EDF prides itself for having “more Ph.D.
scientists and economists on staff than at any other such [environ-
mental] organization,” and for building teams of specialists that can
investigate and devise solutions for environmental problems.22
Scorecard both extends this approach, and has taken EDF in
new directions. Like other EDF projects, Scorecard is presented as
20 F. Krupp, “A Letter from EDF’s Executive
Director” (Avril 1999).
www.scorecard.org/about/about-why.tcl
(accessed July 5, 2002).
21 See Michael Stein’s interview
with Bill Pease, Avril 11, 2001
entitled “Environmental Defense:
From Brochureware to Actionware”
on the Benton Foundation Website.
www.benton.org (accessed July 1, 2001).
22 See the EDF Website, www.environment
aldefense.org/aboutus.cfm?subnav=abou
tus (accessed January 13, 2003).
58
Problèmes de conception: Volume 20, Nombre 3 Été 2004
authoritatively scientific. Unlike previous EDF projects, Scorecard has
a local-level focus, though it also works on other scales. Scorecard is
also EDF’s first venture into cutting edge Web-based servers.
Scorecard runs on a Sun server running Solaris, Sun’s proprie-
tary version of UNIX, and is built on an Oracle 8i relational database
manager and AOLserver. Original code was developed by arsDigita,
and is now maintained by Get Active Software, a company run by
Bill Pease and others on the original design team for Scorecard at
EDF. The ACS codebase supports user administration and tracking,
discussion forums, and other core functions. While the OpenACS
component and AOLserver are open source, the Oracle and Solaris
components are proprietary. Oracle (the second largest software
company in the world after Microsoft) donated their relational
database manager (an industry standard) to EDF. 23
Scorecard’s combination of (donated) proprietary and open-
source software is important, as is the relationship between the
nonprofit EDF and Get Active Software, a commercial firm with
customers mostly in the nonprofit sector. It is because of such
arrangements that Scorecard is technically, socially, and information-
ally sustainable. The database application created for Scorecard, pour
example, is able to generate Web pages dynamically, and this is
critical given the complexity of the system. More than a billion pages
potentially can be produced in Scorecard. If these were static files,
the task of compiling them would be overwhelming, and the infor-
mation on each page would quickly become stale. To deliver an
up-to-date, customized page to a user, Scorecard accesses in excess
of seven gigabytes of data, distilled down from more than 100 giga-
bytes of contributing databases.
The distillation of data by Scorecard is one of its most impor-
tant functions. Scorecard pulls from more than 400 government and
scientific databases containing information on chemical toxicity
and toxic emissions. Information from these databases is in differ-
ent units of analysis, and structured for a variety of uses. This data
must be extensively massaged to be compatible with Scorecard’s
data model.
Scorecard also provides interpretations of environmental
information. In addition to providing extraordinary integration of
datasets, the site also provides rankings of health risks from pollu-
tion. The ranking system was developed by EDF and peer reviewed
by Environmental Science and Technology. Viewers are not simply
told how many pounds of toxics were released in a given year by a
given facility. They also are told about probable risk—body system
by body system—based on a hazard ranking system that relates all
chemicals to the risk of benzene, a known carcinogen—to indicate
“cancer potential”—or to toluene, a developmental toxin—to indicate
“non-cancer risk.” This ranking system provides users with relatively
stable reference points for thinking about an otherwise confusing
array of health risks. It is a purposeful simplification.
Problèmes de conception: Volume 20, Nombre 3 Été 2004
59
23 Stein, “Environmental Defense: Depuis
Brochureware to Actionware.”
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Pollution maps, the centerpieces of the Scorecard site, aussi
provide users with familiar reference points.24 Based on U.S. Postal
Service Zip codes, these maps display the manufacturing facilities in
a particular area that report their emissions to the EPA as part of the
Toxic Release Inventory. The surfaces of the maps are interactive. UN
user selects the scale and type of information he or she wants with
a click of the mouse. Pop-up charts display data associated with
specific geospatial areas. The maps also allow users to compare and
rank pollution situations across the United States.
Scorecard carefully notes that the maps do not cover all pollu-
tion sources, and—even for those it does cover—only accounts for
the approximately 650 chemicals that are reported under the TRI.
The information that is provided, cependant, is sufficient to provide
a glimpse into pollution and health hazard realities—while also
reminding users that important information gaps and uncertainties
remain.
Scorecard allows users to zoom in to the local, and out to the
national, clicking through graphs that provide snapshots of pollu-
tion dispersion, and through to chemical profiles that characterize
pollution hazards. The experience of Scorecard can be dizzying. Mais
Scorecard takes on some of the most recalcitrant problems within
environmental politics—the need to deal with too little, as well as too
much, information; the need to deal with contested scientific findings
and intractable uncertainty about long-term effects; the need to think
locally, as well as comparatively and globally.
24 Maps showing pollution distributions
are made with ArcView (another industry
standard, for Geographic Information
Systems), which was donated by
Environmental Systems Research
Institute through their Conservation
Support Program. The maps pre-produced
for Scorecard with ArcView are displayed
on the Website through a java-based
Practical Map Server developed by EDF
GIS consultant Karl Goldstein.
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Problèmes de conception: Volume 20, Nombre 3 Été 2004
Appropriate Design for Contemporary Environmentalism
The design of the Scorecard site has not gone uncriticized. Some
people have pointed out that Scorecard does not provide users with
raw data, or with the software with which they can make their own
maps—leaving them dependent on EDF’s “cartographic gaze.” Nor
does Scorecard allow users to add their own data. Data collected
through house-to-house health surveys, or through local air moni-
toring, cannot be integrated. The questionable quality of TRI also
has been pointed out. Because TRI data is self-reported by polluting
companies, and never audited, errors as well as misrepresentations
are not unlikely.
The most basic criticism of Scorecard is that it is far from
straightforward to use. One has to drill down through many layers
to get what one wants. This takes a lot of navigational skill and
patience. According to this criticism, the site provides too much
information, and thus threatens to overwhelm and paralyze the user.
The path to fax a polluting company or the EPA is a meandering
un. Users of the Scorecard site are encouraged to wander through
different kinds of information, visualizing comparisons, and noting
connections between things. Users are not told final truths. Plutôt,
users are interconnected—with different types of information, avec
the regulatory process, with people in both similar and different
locales, with ways of visualizing and spatializing phenomena that
usually are represented in abstract, impersonal terms.
The high level of information literacy required by Scorecard
can be cause for criticism. It also can be argued that the way
Scorecard requires and supports high levels of information literacy
makes it an appropriate technology for contemporary environ-
mentalism. Though Scorecard can be difficult to use, it nonetheless
accomplishes many things. It consolidates and cross-links an extraor-
dinary amount of environmental data. It leverages different kinds
of expertise. It is adaptable to many different uses. It puts pressure
on corporations to decrease legal as well as illegal toxic emissions.
It makes creative, civic use of advanced technological capabilities.
It cultivates advanced scientific literacy, and tolerance for both
complexity and uncertainty. All of these things are important in the
environmental field today.
Before Scorecard, the task of gathering data on pollution in a
particular area, or related to a particular health risk was overwhelm-
ing. Bill Pease, the designer of Scorecard, learned about this in his
first few months at EDF in 1995. As EDF’s senior environmental
health scientist, he was swamped with requests from grassroots
groups needing help obtaining and interpreting information about
toxics in their community. Pease needed a way to save people the
time required to go from government office to government office, à
the public library, and to the polluting facility in search of informa-
tion that often wasn’t easily available without argument or delay. Il
also needed to provide grassroots groups with tools for interpreting
Problèmes de conception: Volume 20, Nombre 3 Été 2004
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the data they collected. His solution was to build an internal data-
base, and to hire a team of environmental scientists and database
consultants. Their plan, until they consulted with MIT computer
scientist Phillip Greenspun, was to build a standalone program
that could be downloaded, or distributed on CD-ROM. Greenspun
convinced him to go the way of the Web.
In the mid-1990s, Phillip Greenspun was concerned about
the collapse of noncommercial activity on the Internet, in particular
because supporting software and systems didn’t scale well. Un
of his antidotes was to spend some of his time working with EDF
developing collaboration software for their specific needs, and then
offering it for free to other potential users. His goal was to “make
sure that Web publishers [pourrait] adopt the modern collaboration
religion without selling their souls to the banner ad devils.”25 He
also believed that information could be power, if it could be inter-
preted and manipulated to be relevant at the local level. Greenspun
came to this belief in part through his experience with the passage
of Proposition 65 in California in 1986. Unlike the federal TRI, lequel
simply required industry to report what they emitted, Proposition
65 required industry to report both what they emitted and whether
the substances emitted were carcinogens or reproductive toxicants.
The result was that California cut emission of chemicals covered
by Proposition 65 to one-quarter of previous usage, while the TRI
only led industry to cut emissions by half. What Greenspun learned
from this is that “disclosure plus interpretation is more powerful
that disclosure alone.” 26
Providing grassroots groups with the means to both aggre-
gate and interpret pollution data was a significant social and techni-
cal challenge. While masses of data on pollution existed, alongside
masses of data on the hazards of particular chemicals, the work of
correlating these data was (and still is) at a preliminary stage, even at
the EPA and at public health organizations like the Center for Disease
Contrôle. Pease, Greenspun, and their design team wanted something
better. Using the Internet, they could pull together 750 megabytes of
data on toxic releases and on the health effects of various chemicals,
in customized formats. The result provided unprecedented consoli-
dation and cross-linkage of environmental data. This could not have
been accomplished without leveraging many kinds of expertise.
Scorecard also has the potential to be a resource for people
with different kinds and levels of expertise. Scorecard itself is a very
complex information resource, but it was designed to be linked
to a wide range of interfaces. Bill Pease talks of the possibility of
building a simplified rating system that would show users a green
or red light, without any words or numbers at all, using distribu-
tive plotting. He also speaks of linking Scorecard to investors and
consumers. Investors would have easy access to corporate envi-
ronmental records while they made daily investment decisions.
Consumers could consult a PDA while they shopped to access the
25 P.. Greenspun, “Better Living Through
Chemistry” in Phillip and Alex’s Guide
to Web Publishing (Morgan Kaufman
Publishers, 1999), 3 (online version).
Ibid., 4.
26
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environmental records of Tupperware, and other consumer plastics
manufacturers.27
Scorecard works through disclosure. The intent is to regu-
late conduct that affects the environment through the circulation of
information rather than expressly through law. Instead of dictating
what polluting industries do, it publicizes what they do. The effect
is impressive, even if “command” environmental regulations remain
important. Bill Pease, Par exemple, refers to the quiet changes that
corporations make to get off of “top ten” pollution lists. 28 Phillip
Greenspun points to Dupont’s “The Goal Is Zero” advertising
campaign as an index of Scorecard’s success. Such campaigns are
important because they address what now are legal emissions. All
emissions reported through the TRI, and through many other report-
ing structures, are legal emissions. Scorecard thus provides a way to
work with corporations beyond the reach of the law, encouraging
corporate greening and “voluntary compliance.”
The disclosure strategy built into Scorecard can help drive
changes in industrial production processes that result in less pollu-
tion. Disclosure also breeds more disclosure. Consider, Par exemple,
EDF’s successful campaign to get the Chemical Manufacturers’
Association (CMA) to test high-production chemicals for toxicity. Dans
an interview, Bill Pease explained how industry had been resisting
this kind of testing for decades, and how the EPA was unable to get
an agreement to do the testing on a reasonable timeline. Completion
of the testing was expected to take until 2110! Using Scorecard, EDF
“launched a campaign to get industry to commit to faster testing—
threatening companies with public disclosure that they were using
chemicals that they could not prove were safe. Industry caved in,
and an extensive, expedited testing program (all toxicity data within
three years) was designed and agreed to by EPA, CMA, and EDF”
dans 1999. 29 By circulating information about environmental problems,
Scorecard drives awareness of the importance of such information.
It helps change a culture in which corporate pollution information
is considered proprietary.
Scorecard is also helping to undermine the tendency of infor-
mation technology itself to be proprietary. Because it is designed with
a combination of open-source and donated, proprietary software,
Scorecard is economically sustainable within the nonprofit sector.
The result is a high-end, non-commercial space on the Internet. Tel
spaces are crucial for dealing with environmental issues today. Ils
support broad participation in deliberations about environmental
issues, and help to expand the expertise that can be called upon
to make environmental decisions. Public space on the Internet also
enables comparative perspective and collective action. Scorecard, pour
example, tells users whether pollution in their community is worse
than pollution in other communities. Such information can be used
to enroll elected officials, or to argue against the siting of a new
industrial facility that would be a new source of pollution. Public
Problèmes de conception: Volume 20, Nombre 3 Été 2004
63
27 Schienke 2001, 11.
28 Stein, “Environmental Defense: Depuis
Brochureware to Actionware,» 4.
Ibid..
29
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space on the Internet also facilitates collaboration among people
who are geographically dispersed. This is particularly important
in the environmental field because of transnational environmental
issues and the need for international environmental campaigns, et
also because of the way power often operates at the local level. UN
community working to reduce pollution at an Exxon plant in their
community has little leverage when working alone, especially when
jobs are at stake. Joining a network of groups working to clean up
Exxon makes a big difference. Expertise can be shared. What has
worked in one community can be pursued in another. Mainstream
media coverage becomes more likely. Exxon soon encounters a big
enough public relations problem that local environmental groups
begin to be heard.
The comparative perspective enabled by Scorecard is politi-
cally significant. It can help shift power among citizens, corpora-
tion, and governments. The comparative perspective enabled by
Scorecard is also culturally significant. Too often, decision-making
is held up by a lack of definitive proof that something is wrong. Le
complexity of environmental issues shuts down action. Scorecard is
designed to help users skirt this problem. Comparative perspective
on pollution in different communities, Par exemple, provides a basis
for remedial action even when it is difficult to demonstrate a direct
correlation between pollution and adverse health effects. There is a
reason to take initiative even in the absence of definitive proof. Ce
significantly challenges conventional ways of doing and thinking
about things. The scientistic culture that has made it so difficult to
deal with environmental problems is undermined, and a culture
that deals well with complexity begins to take shape. Scorecard
supports this cultural shift through its facilitation of a particular
kind of scientific literacy. Users are provided with many kinds of
scientific information, with information about missing information,
and with tools for drawing different kinds of information together
to make judgments and decisions. The complexity of environmental
problems is acknowledged by design.
Appropriate Design as Design for Society
I have argued that Scorecard is an example of appropriate technol-
ogy design for contemporary environmentalism because the design
of Scorecard is attuned to the particular needs that arise from the
tangle of issues, organizations, scientific challenges, and political
forces that constitute the environmental field today. The design of
Scorecard also takes advantage of new technologies in a way that
responds both to environmental concerns and to broader concerns
about the ways technological change is shaping society and politics.
This synchronization is impressive on many fronts. It shows what
can happen through design when social and technical expertise is
effectively integrated. And it shows how design can become a means
to address complex social problems.
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The potential role of design in solving social problems has
been elaborated on by design scholar Richard Buchanan. Reporting
on the way design has been conceived in relation to the new
constitution of South Africa, he stresses how design is “an essen-
tial instrument for implementing and embodying the principles
of the Constitution in the everyday lives of all men, femmes, et
enfants. Design is not merely an adornment of cultural life, mais
one of the practical disciplines of responsible action for bringing the
high values of a country or a culture into concrete reality, allowing
us to transform abstract ideas into specific, manageable form.”30
Buchanan emphasizes how design should aim to accomplish first
principles—regarding human rights and dignity, for example—as
well as practical ends. He does not discount the need for technical
problem solving and cost-reasonableness. He does insist that the
purpose of design is more complex.
Scorecard is built around a conception of the user as a citi-
zen, and around a conception of democracy that requires ongoing
participation by citizens, even in matters that are extremely complex,
both scientifically and politically. Scorecard is effective because it is
designed to respond to particular challenges faced by citizens and
democracies in a historical period marked by massive pollution,
scientific uncertainty about the health effects of pollution, and domi-
nation of political decision making by corporations. These character-
istics of the contemporary period cannot be disentangled. It is their
combination, or what toxicologists call “cumulative effect," c'est
so powerful. Scorecard addresses this cumulative effect by design.
Scorecard is appropriate for the context in which it works, and thus is
able to serve high ideals in concrete, practical ways.31
30 See R. Buchanan, “Human Dignity and
Human Rights: Thoughts on the Principles
of Human-Centered Design,” Design
Problèmes 17:3 (Été 2001): 35–39.
31 Thanks to Erich Schienke, Alex Sokoloff,
Ned Woodhouse, Jason Patton, and Dean
Nieusma for help with both conceptual
and technical aspects of this paper.
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