The experts considered that it was important to properly define monitoring and to outline the role of monitoring in relation to other environmental data collection and analysis procedures. Monitoring was defined as a procedure that involves the systematic measurement of selected variables and processes that may be affected by a given practice. Reasons for monitoring include the need to meet environmental protection goals, concerns about deviations in ecological integrity from a predetermined standard or verification of risk assessment findings.
Monitoring does not substitute for rigorous risk assessment in protecting against adverse environmental impacts, although unlike risk assessment, it may also be used to quantify the potential benefits of GM crops.
Successful monitoring procedures build upon existing ecological data sources that establish the status of the system under investigation. Monitoring should not be confused with general environmental surveillance or ecological inventory: monitoring is goal-oriented, and designed to detect change in comparison to reference sites, and/or pre-treatment condition. When effective, monitoring addresses the priorities of people with a stake in its outcome, and feeds back to inform management and policy development.
Deployment of GM crops must encompass the whole process of technology development from pre-release risk assessment to post-release monitoring. Monitoring programmes should recognize and take into account important sources of variation between farming systems and GM crop types in order to properly address potential interactions between the GM crop and the environment. The positive and negative effects of GM crops will vary with location and context, and monitoring will require a new model of working in order to inform actions at the farming system level.
The capacity to undertake monitoring varies globally and reflects the level of ecological knowledge associated with particular systems, the local capacity to plan, implement and analyze the data, and the integrity of the pathway that leads from the data to decision making, and back to effective management.
