Is the vision of the Earth Observation Summit realizable?

At the Earth Observation Summit in 2003 at the US Department of State, environmental ministers from more than 30 countries joined three US cabinet secretaries to plan the creation of a system for international sharing of data about the atmosphere, the oceans and the land. The meeting grew in part out of commitments by leaders at a G-8 summit meeting in France to build an integrated global earth environmental monitoring system. Opportunities and problems both figure prominently in implementation of the Summit's vision. The challenges include who pays for infrastructure, training, and administration; whether to control data access; how to include the private sector; and whether problems of collective action will plague the effort.