A powerful tool for sustainable development

“Every good citizen adds to the strength of a nation.” - Gordon B Hinckley

“Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.” - Margaret Mead

Numerous citizen science initiatives have already proven to have the ability to promote sustainable development. Thousands of volunteers participate in the UK’s annual Big Butterfly Count to track butterfly numbers. This information has proven crucial in formulating conservation measures and evaluating the state of the environment. Similar to this, volunteers are recruited by the Coastal Observation and Seabird Survey Team (COASST) in the United States to track marine bird populations and beach litter. Understanding and reducing the effects of marine pollution and climate change on coastal ecosystems has been made possible, thanks in large part to the information collected thus.

Often working in tandem with professional scientists, citizen science involves the general population in scientific research and data collection. As it involves communities in the management and observation of environmental resources, raises awareness and participates in policy formation, it can be extremely important for sustainable development. The goal of Citizen Scientific is to break through the conventional silos of ‘public’ and ‘science’. Therefore, consideration is given to both the ‘public understanding of science’ and the ‘scientific understanding of the public’. 

Technology and science have a significant role in our daily lives. They aid in organizing our interpersonal and professional interactions. They present fresh opportunities as well as fresh risks.

The concept and roots of the term ‘citizen science’ are not the same. In the mid-1990s, Rick Bonney from the United States and Alan Irwin from the United Kingdom independently described it for the first time. “Developing concepts of scientific citizenship which foregrounds the necessity of opening up science and science policy processes to the public” is how British sociologist Alan Irwin describes citizen science. Irwin aimed to recapture two aspects of the citizen-science relationship: 1) Science should be receptive to public wants and concerns, and 2) Citizens themselves should be able to generate credible scientific information. Citizen science has proliferated in the last decade, becoming a critical form of public engagement in science and an increasingly important research tool for the study of large-scale patterns in nature. 

Although citizen science is already interdisciplinary, it has untapped potential to build capacity for transformative research on coupled human and natural systems. They draw a conclusion as new tools have begun to collect paired ecological and social data from the same individual; this allows for detailed examination of feedback at the level of individuals and potentially provides much-needed data for agent-based modeling.

Anne Toomey concludes in an 2011 article titled ‘How citizen science will save the planet’: “If we look deeper into the meanings of science and citizenship, we realize that encouraging non-experts to participate in the building of knowledge about how our world works may have profound implications for the way we, as a global community, will relate to our natural environment”. But this writer has linked citizen science to overall development in this article, and has tried to explore the involvement of citizen science in sustainable development. Perhaps the slogan ‘Save the Planet’ is also a reflection of sustainable development.

Citizen science contributes to sustainable development in several ways, including environmental monitoring, resource management, public awareness and education, disaster response and preparedness, biodiversity conservation, and climate change mitigation and adaptation and policy influence. Data on local environmental conditions, including biodiversity, air and water quality, and the effects of climate change, can be gathered by citizen scientists. This information supports conservation efforts by tracking changes over time. Natural resource management, including the management of forests, waterways and agricultural land, can involve communities. They can guarantee sustainable use and stop overexploitation by keeping an eye on these resources.

Projects involving citizen science increase public knowledge of sustainability and environmental challenges. In order to promote an informed and involved public, participants learn about scientific methodologies and the significance of data in decision-making. By contributing real-time data during natural catastrophes like floods, earthquakes, or wildfires, citizen scientists can support disaster response efforts. Effective response and recovery operations require the knowledge of this information. Monitoring species and habitats is a useful tool for tracking biodiversity and identifying regions that require conservation. Maintaining ecosystems and the services they offer requires doing this. By monitoring changes in local ecosystems, tracking weather trends and taking part in carbon-reduction campaigns, citizen scientists can make significant contributions to the field of climate change research.

The greatest achievement of citizen science is policy influence. This is because local, national and international policy can be influenced by the data gathered by citizen scientists. Governments and organizations may prioritize sustainability projects and give evidence for policy changes with the use of dependable, large-scale data sets. By enabling people to actively participate in scientific research and environmental stewardship, citizen science has the potential to make a significant contribution to sustainable development. In the future, citizen research will need to be included into formal scientific frameworks and policy-making procedures. Institutions and governments need to appreciate citizen-generated data and use it in their decision-making procedures.

‘Citizen science’ refers to a broad range of activities where people produce scientific knowledge outside of traditional scientific institutions. From mapping natural phenomena to analyzing scientific data, sharing health information, and making new technologies, citizen science occurs across all the disciplines of science and involves a number of different methods of inquiry, both orthodox and alternative. So we can make a conclusion that citizen science is the practice of conducting scientific research outside of established academic organizations, charting phenomena, analyzing data, disseminating health information, and developing interdisciplinary technology.

In conclusion, an effective and inclusive strategy for tackling the many problems associated with sustainable development is citizen science. In the days to come, the government of Nepal, the government of all the seven provinces and 753 local governments will have to implement citizen science in many dimensions of development. If this can be done, the country’s long-term development will be possible. We can say this by analyzing the world environment. By combining the global efforts of people, we can collect the information required to make wise judgments, promote environmental responsibility and eventually build a more sustainable future. Adopting citizen science may prove to be one of our most successful tactics as we tackle the world’s environmental problems.

The author is the founder president of Forum of Development Journalists’ (FoDeJ), Nepal