Sustainability Indicators in Practice

2 Understanding Indicators And Monitoring For Sustainability In The Context Of Complex Social-Ecological Systems

L. Jamila Haider, Alvaro Iribarrem, Toby Gardner, Agnieszka E Latawiec, Helena Alves-Pinto, Bernardo Strassburg

2.1 Introduction

It is widely accepted that ecosystems across the world are increasingly affected by humans. Many earth system scientists contend that we have entered a new geological epoch, the Anthropocene, in which humans exert a dominating influence on many key earth system processes (Crutzen, 2002; Steffan et al., 2007; Rockström et al., 2009). Research on the characteristics of this new era emphasizes that a) the world is interconnected and thinking of a given study system as being made up of both social and ecological ...