This paper discusses common and failures of public environmental information services and suggests as an alternative a shift towards supply-rather than demand-driven environmental information. The discussion is put into a framework of the impact-of-information chain which is described in much more detail, with numerous examples and arguments, in UNEP/GRID-Arendal (2001a).

The paper draws n particular from the authors' long-term capacity-building experience in Central and Eastern Europe and the Newly Independent States as well as their work in the context of Baltic environmental cooperation. To better relate the issues to a water basin management context, references are made to transboundary water management of the international water basins of the Baltic, Caspian and Aral Seas.