Arguing for the Rainforest: High-Tech Topoi and the Value(s) of a Database

When the World Bank created its Environment Department, no institutional mechanism existed to create, collect, or disseminate environmental information that had accumulated in the Bank. Considering the ethical and political dimensions of environmental information, designers of an environmental database began to conceive it as a source for arguments rather than as a storehouse of data. Conceived in terms of argument, the database was developed in light of rhetorical principles that recognized that "factual" and "objective" knowledge shifts radically in destabilized contexts and is inseparable from values and beliefs.