1.2 Citizen science and the climate emergency
Citizen science partnerships offer significant potential to address the climate emergency in communities across multiple scales and settings. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) working group two report (2022) emphasises the value of citizen science, stating that it ‘can help deepen climate knowledge and sharing’. Haklay et al. comment that:
Although increased citizen engagement with climate research is not a full alternative to top-down political agreements or technological change, it can certainly catalyze the speed and ambition of the technological, social, political and economic changes required to meet collective climate commitments regarding mitigation and adaptation.
Kythreotis et al. confirm that:
By acting as volunteers, citizens are important for data collection to inform climate research (Bonney et al., 2014; Lahoz and Schneider, 2014) as a means to understand trends, causes, impacts, and responses to, climate change.
Citizen science projects provide opportunities for people to learn about climate change and the scientific process, and to get involved more actively by contributing to the development of critical datasets that can inform local or large-scale decision-making. Such projects can involve citizens across different geographical regions, of different ages and with different degrees of decision-making power, collaborating around important climate change issues.
The collaboration of diverse audiences can increase the capacity of a community to respond to climate change issues and prepare for an uncertain future. Involving diverse audiences in exploring the climate emergency can also be beneficial in widening understanding of the impact of environmental collapse, as climate issues are not universal and what might be good for one sector or region may not be as good for another. For example, growing organic cotton can reduce harmful fabric, but it requires large quantities of water.
The development of technologies, and especially handheld devices, constantly increases the potential for citizen science collaborations across borders and empowers citizens to participate virtually in projects addressing both local and global issues. Online citizen science projects can offer endless possibilities, such as engaging people in one or more research phases, from data collection to data analysis and discussion of study findings.