The document explains that despite this growing recognition that resource and environmental issues are fundamental to sustainable development, the national and international agricultural research establishments have only begun to take actions that will generate the new knowledge needed to understand these phenomena and incorporate them into mainstream agricultural productions systems. There appear to be several reasons for this inaction. At the national level, developing countries have been slow to address resource and environmental problems. In this paper it is explored some of the reasons why this is true, including the low priority attached to environmental protection in developing countries and a limited institutional capacity to develop and implement environmental policies. When the environmental problems have a transboundary or global dimension, they become even more difficult to solve. The difficulties encountered at the national level are compounded by the need to achieve international cooperation in research and policy formation. Also, this paper discussed some of the factors motivating and yet limiting international cooperation in environmental and natural resources research. The first section briefly discusses why many environmental problems are increasingly taking on global dimensions. The second section examines factors affecting demand and supply of environmental quality in low and high income countries as a framework for research priorities setting and resource allocation in this field. The third sections reviews the types of information needed both for decision making as well as technological development in this field, and the institutional situation, capabilities and limitations of research institutions in the LA countries. The fifth and final section offers some concluding remarks.