Environmental issues in Asia and the Pacific-a perspective towards the information in decision making

A discussion is given on the environment and sustainable development in the Asia-Pacific region. A conceptual framework, which is significant for the modelling of environmental information, seems to have the following interrelated components: emerging environmental issues; conditions of biophysical and socioeconomic environment; human activities related to biophysical and socioeconomic environment; responses to the environmental problems in the form of policies and programs. The author concludes that in order to achieve such a model, the challenge in the coming few years as all countries formulate sustainable development would thus be two fold: the scientific community make the expert systems more cost effective, more user friendly, disseminating it to a wider user group; and for governments and other data collectors and holders to have a more open access