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ICES Journal of Marine Science: Journal du Conseil Advance Access originally published online on September 22, 2008
ICES Journal of Marine Science: Journal du Conseil 2008 65(8):1381-1386; doi:10.1093/icesjms/fsn153
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Crown Copyright © 2008. Published by Oxford Journals on behalf of the International Council for the Exploration of the Sea. All rights reserved

This article appears in the following ICES Journal of Marine Science issue: Marine Environmental Indicators: Utility in Meeting Regulatory Needs [View the issue table of contents]

Environmental indicators: utility in meeting regulatory needs. An overview

Hubert L. Rees1, Jeffrey L. Hyland2, Ketil Hylland3, Colleen S. L. Mercer Clarke4, John C. Roff5 and Suzanne Ware6

1 c/o Cefas Lowestoft Laboratory, Pakefield Road, Lowestoft, Suffolk NR33 0HT, UK
2 NOAA Center for Coastal Environmental Health and Biomolecular Research, 219 Fort Johnson Road, Charleston, SC 29412–9110, USA
3 Department of Biology, University of Oslo, PO Box 1066, Blindern, N-0316 Oslo, Norway
4 Interdisciplinary Studies, Dalhousie University, c/o 495 Baringham Place, Waterloo, ON, Canada N2T 2J4
5 Department of Earth and Environmental Science, Acadia University, Wolfville, Nova Scotia, Canada B4P 2R6
6 Cefas Lowestoft Laboratory, Pakefield Road, Lowestoft, Suffolk NR33 0HT, UK

Correspondence to K. Hylland: tel: +47 22857315; fax: +47 22854438; e-mail: k.d.e.hylland{at}bio.uio.no

Rees, H. L., Hyland, J. L., Hylland, K., Mercer Clarke, C. S. L., Roff, J. C., and Ware, S. 2008. Environmental indicators: utility in meeting regulatory needs. An overview. – ICES Journal of Marine Science, 65: 1381–1386.

The utility of environmental indicators in meeting regulatory needs was addressed at an international symposium held in November 2007. This paper summarizes the attributes and range of uses of indicators and highlights key points from theme sessions and a workshop on unifying concepts. The symposium attracted regulators and scientists, who supported the need to promote dialogue during the construction of indicator-based management frameworks and at key stages towards operational use. Scientists expressed willingness to engage with the wider societal context for indicator applications, which is essential to the development of ecosystem-based management. For the latter to be effective, more effort is needed to combine indicators with thresholds to guide management actions and, in the process, to assess the full range of consequences of non-compliance. There are clear benefits to periodic interdisciplinary reviews of progress in this area, and a follow-up event with a regulatory emphasis is suggested.

Keywords: ecosystem management, environmental indicators, marine strategy, overview, regulation


   Introduction
Top
 Introduction
Attributes and uses of...
 Key points from theme...
 Discussion
 References
 
The use of environmental indicators and standards to monitor compliance with regulatory objectives has a long and interesting history (Johnstone and Horan, 1996; Barnett and O'Hagan, 1997; Purcell, 2005; Howarth, 2006). Renewed impetus for indicator development currently arises from global initiatives on sustainable development (UN WSSD, 2002), climate change (IPCC, 2007), and the conservation of biodiversity (UN CBD, 1992), and from regional incentives such as the evolution of an ecosystem approach to marine environmental management (OSPAR, 1992; Murawski, 2007). Recent trends include a shift towards evaluating the ecological consequences of human activities and employing indicators more widely as explicit enforcement tools in the regulatory process. The role of indicators in these contexts was addressed at an ICES symposium on "Environmental Indicators: Utility in Meeting Regulatory Needs", held at the Brunei Gallery, University of London, UK, in November 2007.

The symposium anticipated the translation of several initiatives on indicator development into pilot projects or operational use within regulatory frameworks and was designed to offer an insight into the current status and likely future direction of the activities, for example, under the auspices of the Helsinki (www.helcom.fi) and Oslo/Paris Commissions (www.ospar.org) and of the EU Water Framework and Marine Strategy Directives (EC, 2000, 2008). Although promising new developments were addressed, the emphasis was on practical applications and the encouragement of realistic evaluations of progress. The aim was to examine performance and comparability within and across disciplines and on various time and geographic scales, so as to judge the effectiveness of indicators as tools to underpin environmental management.

We briefly review the attributes and range of uses of environmental indicators. Key points from the theme sessions and a symposium workshop are summarized, followed by a general discussion of the state-of-the-art.


   Attributes and uses of environmental indicators
Top
 Introduction
 Attributes and uses of...
Key points from theme...
 Discussion
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Nature and need
In a regulatory context, an indicator must relay information about the environment in a manner that will determine the necessity for corrective action. A useful generic definition, modified from Fisher (2001), is a measure, index, or model used to estimate the current state and future trends in physical, chemical, biological, or socio-economic conditions of the environment, along with thresholds for management action to achieve desired ecosystem goals. This places a human dimension alongside other variables and identifies the regulatory importance of pairing indicators with thresholds. Deriving these thresholds is commonly more challenging than developing the indicators themselves.

Indicators are thus needed as tools to underpin environmental management, both in the context of specific components and at the ecosystem level. Important applications include depleted fish stocks, habitat loss and degradation, conservation of biodiversity, control and forecasting of water-borne diseases and biotoxins, threats to protected and managed species, invasive species introductions, climate change, sustainable coastal use, and contaminant impacts.

Properties
Favourable characteristics of an environmental indicator have been reviewed widely (Kerr and Dickie, 1984; O'Connor and Dewling, 1986; Suter, 1989; Cairns et al., 1993; Fisher, 2001; ICES, 2001; Hanson, 2003; EEA, 2005; Magni et al., 2005; Rice, 2005; Rees et al., 2006; UNESCO, 2006). In summary, an ideal indicator should be:

  1. capable of conveying information that is responsive and meaningful to decision-making (directly tied to management questions and linked to thresholds for appropriate action relative to designated ecosystem goals);
  2. linked to a conceptual stressor–response framework (with the ability to communicate potential cause–effect relationships);
  3. capable of measuring change or its absence with confidence (robust to influences of confounding environmental factors);
  4. highly sensitive and anticipatory (early warning of potential problems);
  5. applicable over a variety of spatial scales and conditions (to support global as well as local comparisons);
  6. desirable operationally (easy to measure, reproducible with minimum measurement error, cost-effective);
  7. integrative (serves multiple indicator purposes);
  8. non-destructive (measurement does not cause ecosystem damage);
  9. easy to understand and communicate (non-specialists need to act on findings);
  10. scientifically and legally defensible (robust to peer review and wider challenge).

In practice, a sound management strategy is to employ a range of indicators, thereby providing a "weight of evidence" for evaluating condition and reducing the uncertainty that could result from drawing conclusions based on a single one (Mayer and Ellersieck, 1986). In a review of ecosystem health indicators, Cairns et al. (1993) encapsulated the issue of single vs. multiple indicators by noting that " ... everything is an indicator of something but nothing is an indicator of everything". Fulton et al. (2005) and Link (2005) make a similar point in relation to indicators for ecosystem-based fishery management.

Indicator frameworks
Selecting indicators can be challenging, given the variety of ecosystem characteristics they are intended to track (Sherman, 1994). The process can be aided by indicator frameworks or paradigms that identify the right combination for specific environmental management needs. An example is the driving force/pressure/state/impact/response (DPSIR) model, which has found wide regulatory application (EEA, 2001, 2005; Bowen and Riley, 2003; Murawski, 2007; NOAA, 2008). It evolved from the Stress-Response model of Rapport and Friend (1979) and subsequent pressure/state/response model of the OECD (1993), and articulates the need for indicators in support of each of the five elements and for the flow and feedback of information among them.

Such frameworks should be based on clearly defined policy goals and ecosystem quality objectives. Management questions should be tied to an appropriate combination of indicators addressing stressor sources and levels, ecological and socio-economic consequences, and the effectiveness of management actions, with corresponding assessment endpoints and routine and standardized reporting. Frameworks should also be adaptive to incorporate new indicators and strategies as the process evolves. Finally, they should be cost-effective to implement and foster multiple stakeholder support.

Ecosystem-based management
Ecosystem-based management (EBM) carries a commitment to characterize and monitor the state of the whole ecosystem, including humans, through integrated assessments. This requires indicators to summarize the status of resources and their uses relative to targets or thresholds, to identify the drivers and pressures that threaten ecosystem well-being, and to evaluate the need for, and effectiveness of, management actions. Although indicators have a long tradition in single-species fishery management, the characteristics of a typical EBM process (Murawski, 2007) demand a lot more from their application because of the integration of a selection from an almost infinite number of potential indicators of states, pressures, and drivers in a coherent regulatory framework.

The use of indicators in the context of EBM is becoming increasingly accepted globally as an approach to managing the health of marine resources while promoting their sustainable use (OSPAR, 1998; UN CBD, 1992; UN WSSD, 2002; USCOP, 2004; EEA, 2005; EC, 2008). Many indicators have been developed, as evidenced by general reviews (Cairns et al., 1993; Rapport et al., 1998; Jørgensen et al., 2005; UNESCO, 2006), as well as those from European/US perspectives (NRC, 2000; Fisher, 2001; Heinz Center, 2002; Rogers and Greenaway, 2005; MRAG Americas, 2007). UNESCO (2006) identified three classes of ecosystem indicator (slightly modified):

  1. ecological indicators: to characterize and monitor change in the state of various physical, chemical, and biological aspects of the environment relative to defined quality targets with thresholds for management action (see also Fisher, 2001);
  2. socio-economic indicators: to measure whether environmental quality is sufficient to maintain human health, human uses of resources, and favourable public perception (see also Cairns et al., 1993);
  3. governance indicators: to monitor the progress and effectiveness of management and enforcement practices towards meeting environmental policy targets.

Until recently, ecological indicators have received most attention. However, to manage ecosystems effectively, demands for the development and application of indicators in the latter two categories are increasing (Bowen and Riley, 2003; UNESCO, 2006).


   Key points from theme sessions and workshop
Top
 Introduction
 Attributes and uses of...
 Key points from theme...
Discussion
 References
 
The symposium, opened by Joe Horwood (ICES President), consisted of 43 platform and 16 poster presentations, representing 22 countries. In addition, there was an introductory address by D. Johnson (OSPAR Commission), a workshop on unifying concepts led by J. Roff and C. Mercer Clarke, and a closing address by J. Hyland and K. Hylland. Presentations were structured around four themes.

Policy/regulatory frameworks for indicator applications
A representative cross section of relevant marine interests set the scene for a review of practical applications. Presentations covered both national and international policy processes and frameworks.

Satisfying the need: case studies of the operational use of environmental indicators
This theme addressed the practical utility of indicators within regulatory frameworks, including examples of the coupling of indicators with targets for acceptable or desirable change. Other examples demonstrated that some policy interests may be informed by reliable indicators of trends without explicit reference points. The keynote talks provided a broad overview of how indicators and supporting frameworks could be constructed and implemented, and a case study was presented of the use of a range of related indicators along the geographically diverse US east coast. Although the focus was on indicators for benthic processes, presentations also addressed pelagic processes, fisheries, seabirds, and contaminant effects.

Promising new indicator developments
The presentations addressed both novel formulations and the future prospects for successful regulatory applications. The scope was wide and crossed, or in some cases combined, disciplines. There was clearly some overlap with the second theme because new approaches were generally evaluated using existing data and relative to established techniques. Coverage included benthic systems, pelagic processes, fisheries, contaminants, oceanographic processes, marine protected areas, and biodiversity indicators.

Overview and forward look
Contributions included an overview of EEA policies, frameworks, and objectives. Insights were also provided into how environmental contaminants are relevant to ecosystems and human health, with a forward look at indicator development in this field. Finally, the roles and interaction of policy and science in driving ecosystem indicator development were reviewed as an extension of workshop proceedings.

Workshop
A half-day workshop identified issues that need to be pursued to ensure that indicator applications are effective and understood in public and government fora, and hence contribute to improvements in ocean and coastal environmental health. The following are edited highlights of the points raised during the discussion.

What kind of information should indicators provide?

  1. The term "indicator" needs to be specified. For example, in a regulatory context it may be a proxy for something different from what it actually measures. The term should be distinguished from "index" (an aggregation of indicators into a single representation).
  2. The information content of an ideal indicator is summarized under Properties, on the second page of this article.
  3. All parties need to understand what information is provided by an indicator and how it can be used to assist management in understanding existing conditions, relevant changes, and the implications for management response.

How can indicators be used to communicate change, trends, and important issues to managers?

  1. It is vital to establish a framework within which managers, policy-makers, and scientists interact effectively to utilize indicators.
  2. Indicators should simplify complex information to improve communication with policy-makers and the public. A subset of "headline" indicators may be especially effective.
  3. All pressures on the environment are not equally important to managers, and indicators must address changing conditions in the context of significance to management, as well as to the environment.
  4. Indicators may be ranked according to their operational utility, e.g. in terms of the relevance of the information provided and/or the immediate need for management response. In some cases, utility may be enhanced by aggregating indicators.
  5. Indicator utility may also be defined in terms of their cost-effectiveness in compliance monitoring, i.e. when combined with standards to determine the success of policy objectives.
  6. Indicators characterizing current conditions can be used more effectively to determine whether conditions are getting worse or better, and at what rate.
  7. Data from earlier studies and existing knowledge can be used more effectively to define indicator thresholds within a management framework for mandatory or voluntary adoption by industry.
  8. Indicators can assist in forecasting change, providing information on a range of scenarios and management choices, including the environmental and socio-economic costs of inaction.

What are the barriers, challenges, and opportunities associated with the development and use of indicators?

  1. Simplified economic indicators and indices receive wide media coverage, and society responds rapidly to them. One challenge is to develop ecosystem indicators that succeed in achieving a similar effect.
  2. Currently, most indicators address single pressures or are unrelated to cause–effect mechanisms. Challenges for EBM include the uncertainty of reference conditions, natural variability of ecosystems, and defining the spatial and temporal scales within which indicators will function.
  3. EBM is more complex than fishery management and must deal not only with a wider array of indicators, but also with their effective communication to several decision-makers.
  4. A major challenge is to manage social systems and ecosystems simultaneously. Links between coastal ecosystem health and public health should drive policies relating to conservation of resources and biodiversity.
  5. Scientists therefore need to better understand how their information may be linked to societal well-being, as well as to change in natural environments. If ecological and socio-economic indicators are not linked, management responses may be inadequate.
  6. Professional writers can assist scientists in ensuring clarity in documents intended for a wider audience, thereby promoting the timely communication of critical information.
  7. Government funding is needed to enhance indicator-based assessments of human activities and climate change.
  8. Indicators that can bridge interdisciplinary divides are required. This may be facilitated by the removal of such barriers within academia.


   Discussion
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 Introduction
 Attributes and uses of...
 Key points from theme...
 Discussion
References
 
How successful was the symposium in addressing the various themes and in advancing the science and application of environmental indicators in a regulatory context, and what are the key issues that emerged?

The need to employ suites of indicators to address different facets of an environmental problem was identified by several speakers, and this finds wide support elsewhere. For example, a report by GESAMP (1995) identified three phases to a typical environmental assessment, namely problem detection, characterization, and remedial management action, each accompanied by selection from a hierarchical set of indicators addressing changes from the subcellular to ecosystem level. This is comparable with the DPSIR model and, appropriately, the report also highlighted the need for improved dialogue between scientists and managers in the process of indicator selection.

An indicator that detects an environmental impact resulting from human activity needs to be accompanied by an expression of the source of the impact (typically defined as a pressure indicator) in a form that can be acted upon. The latter is commonly activity-specific and may be limited in the scale of its application to the general vicinity of that activity (but not necessarily so, e.g. offshore contamination may be sourced to distant pipeline discharges). In principle, different pressure indicators should be amenable to aggregation for combined ecosystem-level assessments. State–impact indicators may also vary in their scales of application, depending on their nature and specificity, but the scope for—and benefit of—aggregation is frequently more limited (Ott, 1978; O'Connor and Dewling, 1986; Niemeijer, 2002). For example, a good indicator species that is restricted to a specific locality will have no use as an indicator of conditions over larger areas.

Management interests may range from the highly localized to oceanic and may address individual or multiple activities. All found expression at the symposium. A context for interpreting evidence on the intensity and spatial scale of an impact will be important but not always essential for satisfying both the societal and scientific needs. Ideally, indicators are required that interface seamlessly with such needs, while being equally sensitive within and across activities and scales. In reality, this can be achieved only by selection from a larger "toolbox" of subsets of indicators and, where appropriate, using varying compliance criteria to meet different circumstances. Harmonized approaches to the measurement and interpretation of the selected indicators are desirable, especially within tiers (e.g. those measuring changes at the population level), to maximize the scope for integration of findings between studies. This may also be achieved by evolving new indicators with reduced scale and sample-size dependencies and other desirable properties, and the symposium provided encouraging evidence of such activity in ongoing studies across several disciplines. Chemical indicators have a number of advantages, especially in compliance monitoring, where they have a well-established role (Barnett and O'Hagan, 1997), and examples of their use have lessons for other applications.

The regulatory needs are best satisfied by setting thresholds for permissible or desirable change in indicators (Jennings, 2005; Link, 2005). However, long-term trends in indicators may have policy relevance even in the absence of hypotheses (and hence thresholds) relating to the acceptability of directional changes or of the likely causal influences, for instance because of their reassurance value or by revealing unexpected changes. Setting thresholds for biological indicators of the effects of regulated activities can be challenging, especially when multiple stressors across larger spatial scales must be accounted for or where there may be few if any reference points. It is encouraging to note the attempts of several contributors to do this, in studies within and across sectors and up to sea-wide scales. Currently, these are mostly at the "trial and error" stage, and none yet appears to have been tested in legal fora following an event of non-compliance. The communication of uncertainties associated with the setting of compliance criteria is clearly as important to the regulator as the criteria themselves. These uncertainties are inevitable when trying to reconcile the complex nature of ecosystems with the need for a limited number of cost-effective and easily understood indicators to guide management actions. It is also important to include all stakeholders in the communication process, further adding to the challenge.

Underlying most of the talks was the recognition of the importance of being able to discriminate between anthropogenic impacts and natural processes to achieve optimum indicator utility. Power analysis and data simulations have been useful aids in maximizing the signal-to-noise ratio of an existing indicator or to identify the most suitable one among a range of alternatives (Nicholson and Jennings, 2004; Fulton et al., 2005; Jennings and Dulvy, 2005). The selection of suitable reference areas has also been critical to the success of several studies. In comparing indicator values across studies, appreciable differences between areas to be assessed have been the rule rather than the exception (see also Underwood, 2000). A number of talks identified the risk of oversimplifying complex scenarios using insufficient or inappropriate indicators. Nevertheless, regulators may request speedy advice on which indicators to use, even for data-poor environments. Transparency is also an issue in communicating findings. For example, multimetric indices should be amenable to division into their component metrics for diagnostic purposes.

The symposium provided evidence of a willingness among applied scientists to engage constructively with the policy–regulatory context for their work. Although it could be argued that this is increasingly borne of necessity, it is a positive trend that deserves encouragement. As part of this process, several presentations explored indicator performance against established utility criteria, through the input of expert judgement (see also Rice and Rochet, 2005; Rochet and Rice, 2005; Weisberg et al., 2008; Ware et al., in press). Many of these studies represent a practical response to the pressure of meeting demanding regulatory timetables, and the procedures require further refinement to increase confidence in the outcomes. However, such studies are clearly not a substitute for enhancing individual indicator performance and versatility, including new formulations (also evident in the symposium proceedings). This continues to favour a more reflective outcome and longer-term validation through the conventional peer-review process.

For EBM, a combination of ecological, socio-economic, and governance indicators provides the means for a holistic summary of ecosystem status and changes, and of the effectiveness of management actions in achieving desired policy goals. Intrinsic to EBM is the recognition of humans as part of the ecosystem and their role as both a source and receptor of impacts, with indicators employed for each. Impacts on humans should include measures of the effects of environmental degradation both on health and on reasonable uses of the environment (Cairns et al., 1993). Efforts to date have focused largely on the use of ecological condition indicators. Additional effort is needed to develop and apply socio-economic and governance indicators, as noted by UNESCO (2006) and reflected in the symposium proceedings.

Ecosystems do not generally coincide with political boundaries, so problems encountered in one country often extend to others (Magni et al., 2005; MRAG Americas, 2007). International EBM programmes that are operating to meet common goals, and using consistent sets of indicators to address these, therefore deserve strong encouragement. However, flexibility is also needed to accommodate reporting systems at more local scales, for example, in response to variation in ecosystem types (Engle and Summers, 1999). This also recognizes that regulatory decisions are often made at or below national levels (Jennings, 2005; Magni et al., 2005; MRAG Americas, 2007).

The symposium succeeded in delivering a broad multidisciplinary overview of current research and applications in this topical area, with valuable contributions covering both the regulatory and the scientific perspectives. In case studies and workshop activity, there was a readiness to identify the difficulties as well the successes attendant on the regulatory use of indicators, and constructive suggestions for further improvements were made. There is a strong case for the continued support of developments in this area by national and international agencies, including periodic interdisciplinary reviews of progress.


   Acknowledgements
 
In addition to the main sponsor of the symposium (ICES), sponsorship by the following organizations and institutes is gratefully acknowledged: Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (UK), European Environment Agency, EU Euroceans Network, Helsinki Commission, Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission, the Oslo/Paris Commission, Cefas (UK), DHI (Denmark), ILVO (Belgium), and Wageningen IMARES (the Netherlands). We also thank the conveners/steering committee members (E. Jagtman, H. Hillewaert, J. H. Andersen, and S. Kirby), members of the scientific committee (R. Fryer, E. McManus, and G. J. Piet), and the symposium secretariat (J. Field and J. D. Eggleton).


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