Indonesia is more ecologically diverse, complex and, in some areas, unknown, than perhaps any other nation in the nation in the world. There is thus an urgent need for careful consideration of ecological factors in development activities and policy decisions that affect the use of natural resources. Relevant information is hard for most planners to find, largely because, although it has been gathered from colonial to present times, the ecological information base is to a large extent in languages other than Indonesian, and is scattered among many sources within and outside Indonesia. It is therefore not readily accessible to the decision-makers, planners and scientists who require details of ecological conditions.
