Falling through the cracks: limits to an instrumental rational role for environmental information in planning

This paper explores the potential for environmental information to play an instrumental rational role in planning through an empirical investigation of regional planning processes in the German federal state of Brandenburg. The findings show that environmental information is used in only a limited number of policy issues and processes and that where it plays a role in choice making, its function is procedural rather than instrumental. The author concludes that the influence of the regulatory framework on the decisionmaking jurisdiction of regional planning and the disappearance of environmental information in decisions of great economic importance are key constraints on a rational instrumental role for environmental information.