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A monitoring system may be developed for a number of objectives, such as: Module
? assess the quality of the environmental situation, and enhance public awareness;

? determine compliance with national or international standards; 4
? assess population exposure to pollution, and the impact on human health;

? identify threats to natural ecosystems, and develop early warning systems;
? identify sources of pollution and estimate pollutant loads;
? evaluate the effectiveness of pollution control measures;

? provide inputs for environmental management, traffic management and land-use planning; Abu Dhabi, UAE
? support the development of policies, determination of environmental priorities, and other
managerial decisions; and

? support the development and validation of managerial tools (e.g., database models, expert systems
and geographic information systems).

Source: ADB 2002

Monitoring and observation takes place at various levels, including community, regional, sub-regional,
national, global and outer space. It is usually not feasible to set up a dedicated monitoring system
specifically for an IEA. Establishing and maintaining monitoring systems is costly and requires long-term
planning. It is important that monitoring systems have a stable institutional base and carry out their

activities according to proper technical and scientific standards. Monitoring systems, however, need to
also evolve over time to address new environmental issues and make use of new technical capabilities.
IEAs as an important “customer” for monitoring systems can play an important role by pointing out
problems with data sets from the user point of view that may need to be addressed over time. This
may mean that rather than ignoring issues where data is problematic IEA could rather point these out
and bring it to the attention of the public and decision-makers, which may be the first step towards

addressing them.

At the national level, data are usually collected by the central bureau of statistics or equivalent office, and/
or by certain ministries (e.g., environment, land, water, agriculture) who run networks of measurement
stations and undertake statistical surveys. Public organizations at state/provincial levels are typically also

involved in data collection, as are municipal governments. The advantage of using data from government
sources is that monitoring is likely to be more systematic and ongoing. Another important source
includes data from scientific projects by academic and research organizations. However, project-based
data are often limited to the lifespan of a project. There may be similar constraints when dealing with
data produced by non-government organizations with uncertain funding. At the same time, increasing
interest in community-based monitoring indicates that grass-roots civil society initiatives may be a new
source of data to count on in the longer future, particularly if technology becomes more affordable.

IEA Training Manual Workshop for the National Reporting Toolkit (NRT) 33