Therefore, in order to involve some institutions in the programme, agreements must be made in certain cases between the programme or single institutions, or even parts thereof. Being commonly limited thematically as well as in space and time, regional programmes offer a cost-efficient mechanism for the testing and adjustment of the networking strategy by confronting the networking developments with the real needs. Since regional programmes usually involve a broad range of users with various requirements, procedures and standards, they provide a very demanding environment for examining the efficiency of networking in helping to find answers to practical questions arising, and for matching the procedures adopted within the network with international standards, e.g. in terms of classification, analysis and presentation. As soon as the national network reaches its full capacity, regional programmes are likely to become one of the main consumers of its data. They will also continue to contribute to the development of international links between co-operating national environmental information systems.
Global initiatives are also very suitable for linking to the networking programme.
At a later stage global initiatives, like regional programmes, will inevitably become very important network partners. The strengthening of the Russian environmental information network is probably the central and the most controversial component of the networking programme. On the one hand, care must be taken to avoid inconsistencies with existing national standards, regulations and traditions, e.g. in terms of funding, legislation, national security, and organisational and institutional structures. On the other hand, certain traditions and standards must be broken wherever possible, e.g. sectoral monopolism, inattention to public needs, and plain corruption. The attempts to strengthen the national network can succeed only if a sufficient amount of funding is brought from external sources.