Boyle, M., Kay. J., and Pond, B., 2001. Monitoring in Support of Policy: an Adaptive Ecosystem Approach, in Munn, T., (editor in chief), Vol.4 Encylopedia of Global Environmental Change, London, John Wiley and Son. pp.116-137.

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The development of a monitoring programme is usually regarded as synonymous with generating indicators. This simplification reflects the belief that there exists a "correct" set of things to measure. Once these measures are discovered, there remains only the task of collecting the data and making the results available. Such a traditional approach permits monitoring programs to be developed that are disassociated from the context - that is, people and their concerns. Ungrounded initiatives can produce fragmented programmes1 that are not effective and do not use resources efficiently. Or, their abstruse utility may cause them to fizzle out before they are even implemented.

These shortcomings occur despite the best intentions and conscientious work. The difficulty lies in the fact that normal science and available problem-solving tools are insufficient when dealing with complex systems. Issues of sustainability are persistently untidy and demand an examination of the wider ecological-economic system to resolve. Thus, conventional monitoring methods applied to sustainability tend to fail. New approaches and tools that incorporate complexity into monitoring programmes are required.

A reframing of science, propelled by the need to unravel complexity, is emerging under the rubric of "Post-normal science". In this chapter, we present a scheme where the activities of monitoring and assessment are treated as an integral component of an adaptive ecosystem approach to sustainability and health.

In this ecosystem approach, governance, management and monitoring, form a triad of activities that are carried out in the context of an issues framework of human concerns and an explicit conceptual model of the ecological-economic system. Taken together, the issues framework and the conceptual model focus the discussion of sustainability: the sustained health and integrity of the ecological-economic system. Governance, management and monitoring activities then inform decisions to resolve the necessary tradeoffs and continually chart a course to sustainability.

Traditionally, in most western jurisdictions, the issues framework and conceptual model, which animate an ecosystem approach, take the form of policies and/or regulations which are enacted as part of a legislative process. In this traditional mode, monitoring, as described in this chapter, is undertaken in the support of policy. However, there are forms of virtual governance emerging which have no formal legislative powers and whose governance does not take the form of traditional policy. For example, United Nations biosphere reserves are often overseen by an informal and ad hoc assembly of concerned individuals and non-government organizations. Even though these individuals may have no legal power, they do act as stewards of the reserves and in effect, manage them. Monitoring, as discussed herein, is meant to be in the service of such initiatives as well as the more traditional policy-based approaches to environmental and sustainability issues.

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