Monitoring in support of policy
The premise of the traditional approach to management (anticipatory management) is that it is possible to predict and anticipate the consequences of decisions. Once all the necessary information is gathered to make a scientific forecast, the “right” decision can be made. This approach is not valid when dealing with complex systems, however. Given the limitations imposed by complexity, the focus of management and decision-making strategies must be on maintaining the capacity to adapt to changing environmental conditions. Adaptive management involves a very different agenda than anticipatory management. In adaptive management, differences between how the future actually unfolds and how it was envisioned are seen as opportunities for learning. This is in sharp contrast to anticipatory management which sees such deviations as “errors” to be avoided. Much of the agenda of adaptive management is learning through experimentation rather than focusing on error avoidance. Monitoring plays a crucial role in adaptive management. It provides feedback necessary for adaptive learning, information to generate narratives, and advice to determine if alternative courses of action are required. At the core of an adaptive ecosystem.