ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the implications of transparency policies for five core problems of earth system governance. The five core problems are: architecture, agents, adaptiveness, accountability, and access and allocation. In the context of environmental governance, consensus is that level of agreement among all parties to the decision process that allows them to "hang together" as they move from one stage of that process to the next. Consensus in governance cannot, and never could, be usefully thought of as simple unanimity. The character of each distinct analytical problem of governance places its own demands and limitations on the transparency consensus. For instance, a prior informed consent approach can provide satisfactory architectural solutions for governance-by-disclosure while failing to resolve problems of access and allocation. The transparency policies can provide an institutional and procedural context for environmental agency that is widely supported in spite of the fact that it does little to advance environmental governance outcomes.
