Environmental Information in Retrospect Add Prospect

Research and Development Plogrammes have been launched on a large scale all over the world with great amount of money and manpower which is being spent in quest of preserving our environment and to maintain better quality of life. Success of these programmes depends on the availability and accessibility of information, its proper retrieval and utilisation by all the countries. The paper emphasises need for joint cooperative efforts in this field. Efforts made in the region and India in particular in collecting information on problems of environment and areas for implementation of research results for better management and improvement of quality of life are reviewed. It brings out the fact that efforts in isolation by a nation or an organisation will not have desired effect and therefore need for coordinated cooperative efforts and mechanism for establishing a network of information systems and services alongwith suggestions for establishing new ones are discussed. The possibility of establishing an information system suitable to the local situation in India and also its links with the national and international systems in vogue by establishing a network and methodology to achieve this arc described. Efforts being made by National Environmental Engineering Research Institute and its contribution in this area have been described in length.