The objectives of this international symposium were to: • Seek consensus on priority environmental assessment and sustainable development issues and the core data sets needed to respond to these issues; • Defme the minimum characteristics of these data in relation to national and transnational purposes; • Establish collaborative mechanisms to foster the harmonization of core environmental data; and • Examine the barriers to general access and use of these dataTo identify and agree on consistent, core data sets needed to support policy and decision making for economic development, environmental planning, resource management, and ecological and social understanding on national, regional, and global levels.