Remote sensing is used to acquire statistics on crops in developing countries and to locate petroleum and mineral deposits. It has increasing potential for forest monitoring and subsurface water location. Problems related to Third World use of the technology include sensitivity about the dissemination of data with high spatial resolution, exploitation by multinational companies, absorptive capacity of countries for advanced technology, autonomy in acquiring resource information, and competing foreign policy interests of the industrialized world in the global search for raw materials. The attitude of Third World countries toward use of remote sensing tends to depend on the development model they adopt.