Today we are living in a globalized world with rapidly evolving processes including climate and land cover change, population growth that are impacting the environment. In parallel, means of communication have expanded to take on a remarkable place in our society, allowing us to access an enormous and continuous flow of information. The underlying hypothesis of this thesis is that making data interoperable and providing access to computing resources can potentially allow data users to spend more time in data analysis than in data discovery, and enabling more people to benefit from using geospatial data on the environment. Our research has shown that SDIs and related concepts, methods and technologies are suitable and can bring major benefits to support and facilitate environmental data discovery, accessibility, visualization, dissemination and analysis. Moreover, facilitating access, integration and use of geospatial data can answer the requirements of a specific community as well as making these data available to the widest possible audience. The challenges that humankind is facing require acting now and we need to provide decision makers with tools that allow them accessing rapidly and efficiently good and reliable environmental information. SDIs have clearly the potential to be a part of the answer to bridge the gap between science and policy making.