The role of geographic information (GI) in solving problems of sustainable development is growing. After the Earth Summit in Rio, many global spatial data projects have started, such as Global Mapping, Global Spatial Data Infrastructure and Digital Earth. Later on, these were followed by other projects, such as GI for Sustainable Development, Geographic Database of the UN Food and Agriculture Organization and activity leading to creation of Global Network for Land Cover. The Europe-based, but globally unique, preparation of INSPIRE project is also important. All the mentioned projects are based on the use of GIS, remote sensing, digital mapping, and GPS. Data collection and processing, their quality, topicality, veracity, as well as the existence of standards and metadata, are still very important preconditions. It is necessary to find adequate data policy and models of funding the data usage.