Having taken possession, maybe at great cost, people often then destroy the very resources they depend upon. Throughout the world, degradation of soil, water, forests and farmlands continues apace. One reason for this paradox is ignorance.
Information counters ignorance and uncertainty.
But information is not simply data. We have to interpret the data to answer the question in hand, so information cannot be divorced from either the question in hand or the person grappling with the question. Relevant data exist but the people making the decisions don't know about them or don't have access to them. In poor and emerging countries, data gathered in the past by heroic survey effort are often no longer available in-country, and they are being lost completely through closure or reorganisation of institutions in developed countries that still hold them. Data exist, are accessible, but are not comprehensible to the people who make policy and land use decisions.