Information is critical for understanding the conditions of what we care about and cumulative threats to it, so that we can design rules for intervention to protect or restore it. This is about more than just predicting cumulative impacts in the context of project-level environmental impact assessment. It requires gathering and aggregating, in an ongoing way, comprehensive, high-quality and shareable data and analysis, allocating and managing the costs of doing so, and ensuring that information is shared and can be accessed by governments, affected communities, and other stakeholders. Regulatory systems for addressing cumulative environmental problems should be information-makers rather than information-takers. Rules should actively shape the information that is produced, aggregated, analyzed, shared, and understood as legitimate to understand and respond to cumulative environmental problems. More than just a technical issue, information is about power and accountability for cumulative harm and responding to it – a critical influence on environmental democracy, environmental justice, and the rule of law. Real-world examples are provided of regulatory mechanisms that deal with information-related barriers to addressing cumulative environmental problems.