Environmental information plays a vital role not only in formulating environmental management policies but also in the decision making process aiming at environmental protection and improvement of environment for sustaining good quality of life for the living beings. Hence, management of environment is key component and thus plays an important role in effecting a balance between the demands and resources available for keeping the environmental quality at a satisfactory level. Realizing such need Ministry set up an Environmental Information System (ENVIS) in 1983 as a plan programme as a comprehensive network in environmental information collection, collation, storage, retrieval and dissemination to varying users, which include decision-makers, researchers, academicians, policy planners and research scientists, etc.

ENVIS was conceived as a distributed information network with the subject-specific centers to carry out the mandates and to provide the relevant and timely information to all concerned. Further, association of the various State Governments/UTs was also felt necessary in promoting the ENVIS network to cover a wide range of subjects. The subject area for States/UTs ENVIS Centers was the status of environment and related issues. Thus, the network was expanded gradually with the involvement of thematic subject-areas and State Government/UT departments to make it a more comprehensive environmental information network. ENVIS network at present consists of a chain of 67 network partners out of which 39 are on subject-specific and 28 on State/UT related issues. These network partners are called ENVIS Centers and are located in the notable organizations/institutions/State/UT Government Departments/Universities throughout the country.

The focal point of ENVIS is located in the Ministry and assists the Environment Information (EI) Division in coordinating the activities of all the ENVIS network partners by making ENVIS a web-enabled comprehensive information system.

There are total 76 Envis Centres all over India, which are assigned with different subjects and topics.

The Indian State Level Basic Environment Information Database (ISBEID) is a web enabled software developed by the Ministry of Environment and Forests, Government of India under the Environmental Information System (ENVIS) Project. The software is to enable the State ENVIS Centre’s on Status of Environment and Related Issues to feed data directly into the database server using the web-interface in the ENVIS Portal.

: An ecosystem is all the life in a given area, plus all the nonliving, physical constituents (air, water, soil, and so forth) that interact with the life. Put another way, an ecosystem is an ecological unit made up of life and the stuff that surrounds it. A coral reef, for example, is an ecosystem. So is a tropical forest, a vast swath of tundra, a desert, and the deep sea