Quicker and better decisions are now needed on a wide range of environment and development matters. At every level of decision making, from the Central Government to the individual citizen, sustainable development requires accurate, reliable and timely information. This is even more important than in any other sphere because of the complexity of the issues, their large potential impact and the long term ramifications they can have.

This means we must now invest in and set up effective and responsive national and global information systems.

Development Alternatives has become one of the premier independent sources of environmental information, operating several major information systems such as DAINET, its technical information service and TARAhaat, its Internet Portal for rural India. The organization is also involved in strengthening other national and international information systems and has taken part in building up ENVIS and SDNP, the two major environmental information initiatives of the Government of India.

Information is not cheap. It requires large inputs of expertise and time and the use of sophisticated machines. All these are expensive. Yet, information systems have shown themselves to be invaluable tools for governments, international agencies, field workers and others dealing with the environment. It is even more expensive not to have good information at the right time.

Industrialised countries have historically made massive investments in good information and in generating knowledge. In some measure, this is the basis for their technical advances. But much of this information is not accessible to outsiders, being either obscure or protected. And, anyway, much of the environmental information needed in a developing country is not generated in the industrialized countries since it would not be of much relevance to their own problems.

While the issues that drove environmental concern in the North – air and water pollution, acid rain, waste management, wildlife conservation – are also of some importance in poor countries, it is the problems of people and natural resources -soil erosion, deforestation, the drying up of local hydrological systems in general – that are the really important environmental issues in the South.

And then, information systems must cover each of these issues in different ways for different audiences and users. The different information-related initiatives of the Development Alternatives Group are best described in its information brochure:

"For policy makers, scientists, civil society, and other agents of change, Development Alternatives has built up ways and means for regular communication and information exchange: the DAINET information system, the Development Alternatives Newsletter and a dozen or so specialized websites. These are widely used and internationally recognized as major sources of information on Third World environmental issues, both in India and overseas.

"For the general public, Developpment Alternatives is a regular contributor to print and electronic media. For several seasons, they broadcast a weekly TV program called the Green Show on the National TV Channel in India. Development Alternatives has also been operating a highly successful environmental activism program, the Community Led Environmental Action Network (CLEAN), which now involves school children in more than thirty cities and towns for monitoring, documenting and publicizing the quality of their environment.

"For the village communities, Development Alternatives focus has been on TARAhaat, which provides both content and local access through the Internet. They have also been conducted, on a limited but quite successful scale, in some experiments with traditional means of communication such as street theatre, story telling, puppets, and songs with local forms and rhythms" q

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