The objectives of this international symposium were to: • Seek consensus on priority environmental assessment and sustainable development issues and the core data sets needed to respond to these issues; • Defme the minimum characteristics of these data in relation to national and transnational purposes; • Establish collaborative mechanisms to foster the harmonization of core environmental data; and • Examine the barriers to general access and use of these dataTo identify and agree on consistent, core data sets needed to support policy and decision making for economic development, environmental planning, resource management, and ecological and social understanding on national, regional, and global levels.

The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) organized this international symposium to:
• Seek consensus on priority environmental assessment and sustainable development issues and the core data sets needed to respond to these issues;
• Define the minimum characteristics of these data in relation to national and transnational purposes;
• Establish collaborative mechanisms to foster the harmonization of core environmental data; and
• Examine the bathers to general access and use of these data.

This paper presents the role of RWCS in 21st century water management with viewpoints from the public and private sectors reflecting social, economic, environmental, and institutional concerns. In addition, this paper proposes the integration of RWCS with other renewable resource collection systems in designing new sustainable structures for the 21st century.

This volume of the Regional Coordinating Unit for the East Asian Seas Action Plan (EAS/RCU) Technical Reports Series contains the proceedings of the Singapore Workshop on Soft-bottom Benthic Communities as Indicators of Pollutant-induced Changes in the Marine Environment.