Is citizen science ready for the SDGs challenge?

EU-Citizen.Science
Nov. 1, 2020, 1:29 p.m.

Rosy Mondardini, managing director of the ETH/UZH Citizen Science Center, explains the connections that can be done between SDGs and Citizen science.

Rosy, could you briefly present the role and the actions of your organisation, the Citizen Science Centre Zurich?

The Citizen Science Centre Zurich is a collaboration between ETH Zurich and the University of Zurich. These two well-known institutions joined forces with the goal to enable researchers and citizens to co-create citizen science projects. It is an inspiring example of research-performing and research-funding founding institutions that have made an institutional commitment to support citizen science.

With the aim of helping researchers and citizens to achieve quality citizen science, we provide support on four different aspects of CS:

• Tools: Citizen science projects often need specific devices, such as web interfaces for data analysis or apps for data collection.
• Methodologies: We can advise researchers and citizens about different aspects of processes, data, ethical or legal requirements.
• Community management: We help practitioners understand that they need a community and to manage contributors, whose importance is often underestimated.
• Networking: As members of different networks such as ECSA (European Citizen Science Association or CSA (Citizen Science Association), we can be a vector of collaborations between experts in different fields.

We have integrated the SDGs in our work from the very beginning: special attention is given to projects which can contribute to sustainable development.

In your opinion, are the sustainable development goals an important step towards a global sustainable world?

I personally do believe in the power of setting goals. In our job, we are usually evaluated based on a certain number of goals and deliverables. Why wouldn’t it be the same for our governments? Especially with broad topics, such as sustainable development, how can they be held accountable?

Just trying to reach the goals [brings] amazing improvements in the world

To illustrate my point, let’s look at the past and the Millennium Development Goals. These eight goals (for example eradicating extreme poverty and hunger, combating diseases and reducing child mortality) were set up in 2000 by the global community and were supposed to be achieved by 2015. The success of this initiative is debatable. However, it is undeniable that just trying to reach the goals brought amazing improvements in the world: more than 1 billion people were lifted out of extreme poverty, more than 50 million children had access to education. Overall, it is estimated that more than 20 million lives were saved thanks to an acceleration of progress.

This is why I do believe in the SDGs as a concerted effort and as a clear – although ambitious – framework for action

In which way can the field of citizen science be a part of the achievement of SDGs?

The SDGs are a hot topic at the moment in the citizen science field. We could appreciate it during the two big citizen science events that just took place: the ECSA Conference and Citizen Science SDG Conference Knowledge for Change: A decade of Citizen Science. It was amazing to feel the engagement and see all the different projects contributing to reaching a more sustainable world in many different ways. A big part of the citizen science community is certainly aware of the goals and their importance.

We heard that there are two approaches in which citizen science can support the SDGs.

Citizen science is often already implementing sustainable changes

First, our community can support their achievement. We should realise that citizen science is often already implementing sustainable changes. Local projects are, in a specific place, for a specific issue, for a certain number of people, really changing the quality of life. For example, we can look no further than projects that monitor air quality or noise levels, or that advance knowledge for treating certain diseases.  Beyond the research and educational tasks that they accomplish, such projects make the world a better place.

The second approach is contributing to the monitoring of the indicators by providing data to governments and the United Nations. The biggest issue that SDGs are facing at the moment is the lack of data for many of the indicators, as collecting data with the traditional methods is often expensive and time consuming. Citizen science has huge potential in monitoring activities; a recent article1 has shown that citizen science is already contributing to several indicators and shows potential for a much bigger impact.

How could we go further?

In terms of contributions to the SDGs, I think the citizen science community is faced with a choice.

We can choose to go ahead with implementing citizen science projects that, small or big, wherever they are, are actually making sustainable changes. This “business-as-usual” solution doesn’t have to have a negative connotation: let’s keep doing what we do best. Even if impacts are very local, they are undeniable.

Or we can choose to join monitoring efforts. This implies aligning with the requirements of the UN and associated bodies in terms of standards and formats. Going in this direction would require a huge effort of coordination from the community. For instance, we should make sure that projects fulfill the requirements from National Statistical Offices in terms of quality of data and processes, and that different projects – at least at the national level - produce consistent and compatible data sets. But our impact would be more significant - and global.

We can keep doing what we do best [...], or join the monitoring effort

Global events like the two conferences that took place recently are very useful in putting everybody on the same page and facilitating coordinated actions.  The Citizen science and SDGs conference ended with the publication of the declaration “Our world – our goals: citizen science for the Sustainable Development Goals”. where the community calls on EU institutions and research organizations to “make citizen science a key factor across all policies and activities relevant to the SDGs”. We need to ask ourselves: when this happens, will we be ready to take up the challenge?

1 Fritz, S. et al. Citizen science and the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. Nature Sustainability 2, 922–930 (2019).