INTRODUCTION
THE QUEST FOR A HEALTHIER ENVIRONMENT
Michel BARNIER
French Minister of the Environment, 1993-1995
President du Conseil General de la Savoie
Ministre Detegue aux Affaires Europeennes,
37 quai d'Orsay, 75700 Paris, France
Ladies and Gentlemen,
I am particularly happy to be present at this 14th International Conference on the
use of data of whose importance and renown I am fully aware.
I am especially touched by its being held in Chambery, after Beijing in 1992 and
just before Tsukuba in 1996, and I am honored that the Savoie was chosen to host
this International Conference.
The Committee on Data for Science and Technology, working under the aegis of
ICSU, has indeed an essential role in promoting relations between science and
industry for the use and distribution of interdisciplinary data with particular regard
to the Environment.
I seize this opportunity to mention that, at the start of 1994, I inaugurated the
offices of the French Institute of the Environment whose mission it is to establish a
statistical system on the Environment and to publish a "State of the Environment"
report. On the European level, and particularly for the European Environment
Agency just set up in Copenhagen, it will also supply data essential for following
the evolution of effects of environmental policies of the various countries
comprising the European Union.
C. Bardinet et al. (eds.), Geosciences and Water Resources: Environmental Data Modeling
© Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 1997