We manage to achieve certain goals, and assess our progress towards achieving those goals, by monitoring indicators. Then we adjust our management to account for deficiencies (in the language of cognition, we detect ‘difference’; see Capra (1996) and the large body of cybernetics literature which this reflects). For that reason, I have brought the final two steps in the Basic Figure together into one chapter. Another reason for doing this is that, of the various stages in the process, these are the most political, technical and bureaucratic, and the least ‘investigative’. In terms of Kay et al.'s ‘diamond schematic’ (Figure 2.1), we are in the bottom rectangle: ongoing adaptive management. In the first two steps of the Basic Figure, people with research expertise take the lead in facilitating changed understanding. Setting goals and plans is a kind of turning point, in this ongoing process, with the final two steps – organizational and political responses to changed understandings of the world – being led by local stakeholders, political and non-political leaders and civic society. Because of this, they are also the least generalizable and most culture-specific steps of the process.

Ecologists sometimes say that we don't manage the environment, we manage people. There's an element of truth in that, but that's far too simple an answer. I also confess I'm also not sure what managing people means; the term conjures up too much of social control for me to be comfortable with it.