5.5 – Monitoring
Figure 8 - Average score of the policies selected for the Monitoring axis.
The Monitoring axis includes the design of mechanisms for the establishment of a system for the provision of key management information to improve decision making while delivering socio-economic and environmental benefits to Brazilian society. Each of the seven analyzed policies have in place and operational their own monitoring systems, although both PNMA and PNRH did not revealed the highest scores (Figure 8).
The policies with highest scores revealed monitoring systems with participatory and decentralized approaches, empowering and engaging society on collaborative preventive action. For instance, several of these policies have established policy observatories involving a coalition of non governmental institutions representing the civil society with interest and influence on policy decisions.
The Forest Code Observatory, is a network formed by 30 institutions, which monitors the implementation of the new Forest Law in order to generating data and critical mass to collaboratively support the enhancement of positive results and mitigation of negative aspects, avoiding further policy setbacks (http://observatorioflorestal.org.br/). In a different kind of coalition, the Observatory of the ABC Plan implementation, encloses an initiative among research institutions, farmers and agribusiness sector´s associations aimed at engaging society in the debate about low-carbon agriculture issues through monitoring impacts and outcomes of both ABC Plan and ABC Program (Brasil, 2012). This network built a platform to exchange data and information in order to develop technical studies to support and facilitate dialogue with stakeholders and civil society, thus stimulating transparency and awareness raising (http://observatorioabc.com.br/).
The PNAPO policy also embraces a huge coalition of diverse social, research, NGO and governmental stakeholders reporting policy results and impacts and advertising policymakers about policy areas of overlapping and gaps (IPEA, 2017). Undoubtedly, the lessons learnt upon the analyzed policies suggest that the future plan of soil and water conservation shall hold a robust and collaborative monitoring and information system to provide strategic data analyses in a transparent and interactive basis. It also shall facilitate dialogue and integration with other relevant public monitoring systems. To this end the PNMSA monitoring system shall introduce greenhouse gases estimations and alert tools in vulnerable areas (IPEA, 2017).