Sustainable Development and Policy
Citizen science has extensive uses in both research productivity and in bridging science and the public, and sustainability transitions involve both of these. Notably, through citizen science, research agendas can be co-produced with communities based on their needs when citizens are fully involved in the research process, and the combined interdisciplinary knowledge of citizen scientists can help to inform sustainability solutions. With a greater awareness of the science around them, citizens can also be better equipped (and may have a greater incentive) to push for changes by interacting with policymakers, bringing about regulations or recommendations and incentives that help preserve local communities.
In the context of sustainability, citizen science is often seen as a data source for monitoring progress toward the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). But citizen science is more than a tool for measuring progress; it’s a tool for knowledge gathering and creation for both researchers and the general public.
Through online interviews, several researchers share their experiences collaborating with communities in their sustainability or sustainability-adjacent research.
Models of Collaboration with Communities
On the island of O‘ahu, Hawaii, Aja Grande grew up understanding resources precious to humans and nonhuman life are a finite resource. As a PhD student at MIT, Grande now researches restoration movements of ‘aina momona (“lands that are rich, plentiful, and abundant”) in Hawaii. “All the territories that we think of that are nations now used to be other nations—so many different tribes and nations in the US, who still carry knowledge of farming and relating to place and yes, you can totally look in archaeological archives, but I guess there’s also people who have a living knowledge of that,” she remarks.
Papahana Kuaola – Waipao, Heʻeia ma ka mokupuni o Oʻahu. Courtesy of Aja Grande.
What drew Grande to graduate research is the opportunity to work with people passing down ancestral knowledge surrounding the preservation of land. “Throughout any research process, you should always ask the community, ‘What else can I do, how else can I be there, how else can I be of help?’” she says of how she collaborates with communities in her research. “While I feel like putting your hands in the ground is a basic part of doing ʻāina momona restoration, I also continue to ask my ʻāina-based organizations what they need help with, from everyday tasks to grant writing, or facilitating discussions around internal and external affairs. I think that researchers should continue to check-in with their communities and be open to input along the entire research process as it evolves, specifically around how they value the product of your work and what it would bring to that community.”
Research in conservation and conservation policy has also been done in collaboration with communities. Having previously studied biology in college and volunteered for the peace education organization CISV, Alejandra Echeverri now works as a postdoctoral scholar at Stanford’s Natural Capital Project, where she works with others to measure and quantify culture and nature together to mainstream biocultural approaches in conservation. In her current work, Echeverri acts as a scientist providing technical advice for policymakers, governments, and local communities internationally, mostly in the Latin America region. “Sometimes countries approach us for technical advice and we act as scientific consultants, helping them answer the questions they need to make decisions based in good science,” Echeverri explains.
On how communities contribute to her research, Echeverri says they contribute a significant amount. “The lowest engagement possible is usually that they share data with us, and then we analyze it and write reports together . In other cases they are our science partners and do all the science with us. They collect data, join field trips, organize meetings, [and] present the research with us. Their level of engagement depends on the community partners and the decision making process we are helping to solve. In most cases, we co-create all projects with them.”
On the engineering side, Stewart Isaacs examines the impact of dust on photovoltaics in West Africa, particularly the impact on decentralized solar technologies, and has previously helped to build a solar-powered chicken egg incubator in Burkina Faso. Reflecting on how he collaborates with communities, Isaacs remarks, “A lot of times, there’s capability in [underserved] communities, but there might not be opportunity to leverage the resources of a place like MIT […] so it made me rethink, ‘Okay, what exactly is the benefit, what am I offering here, what do I bring?’ Is it that I’m more capable? Not necessarily, but it’s because I have this access to resources [and] I care, so let’s think about how we can combine forces to really get the job done.”
In particular, when Isaacs worked on the egg incubator, he notes that one of the most valuable things that he and his team brought was just an “excuse to talk to other people in the community and then bringing them all together to work on this problem,” in addition to modeling the sizing of the solar panels needed. After they left, the communities had the materials they needed and continued discussing how to get the job done from there.
For Isaacs, the key to working with community partners to implement technology was “not only developing the technology to a point at MIT where we can feel confident in the results—that work had gone on long before I got there—but then also really being in constant communication with the partners about not only their needs, but their capabilities on the ground.”
Inoperable solar panel array collecting dust in Koupela, Burkina Faso. Courtesy of Stewart Isaacs.
Important Considerations
Because stakeholder communities have other interests in mind, citizen science doesn’t always look like doing research. Research is often centered around publishing findings, but ordinary citizens often don’t interact very much with the research literature. Rather, they benefit from changes in policy and action within their communities. These communities’ interests aren’t always fully taken into account, though.
When asked how he believes research can be used to support justice, Isaacs remarks, “I think one of the most important things scientific research can do to support justice is to stop supporting injustice. Not only can it not be helpful, but a lot of times, it can be directly harmful where there’s a lot of stuff already documented and literature about researchers coming in asking a bunch of questions, getting data, and then leaving. Then, nothing happens, and so people lose trust, like ‘these people care about writing their papers, they don’t actually care about us,’ and there’s no direct benefit to them from the research that was done.” Ultimately, doing community-based science involves considering the sociopolitical aspects of science that extend beyond the scope of a typical science curriculum.
To serve communities effectively, Grande believes that scientific research should be “more participatory and open to collaboration” with the relevant communities. For Grande, it’s important to “be part of the work that those communities want to be doing, to help out with the work itself. To do something like, for example, farming. To give back in a way, and to make sure that the work that you’re doing is going to serve them somehow and not just yourself as a researcher, as an institution.”
Echeverri similarly believes that it is important to do the science with communities and ensure that they are actively involved in the process. To researchers, it’s important to publish papers, but policy briefs, technical reports, or white papers are often more valuable for the communities (rights holders and stakeholders) they work with. “Choose the questions together, collect data together, write together, interpret results together, because otherwise scientists might be asking questions that are not relevant for the community or that have an angle that the community doesn’t want to hear, so I think it’s very important to co-develop [the whole process] with communities.”
Courtesy of Alejandra Echeverri.
Additionally, it is important to recognize biases innate to modern scientific practice itself. Citing the book Decolonizing Methodologies by Linda Tuhiwai, Grande notes that research methodologies at universities often have European or Anglo-American roots, and “sometimes it is not at the benefit of the communities that [researchers at universities] work with. It can be difficult to even begin to talk about research because some communities don’t want to open that open wound of trauma that comes with bioprospecting, for example.”
As a general method for considering how she can best help communities as a researcher, Grande finds that it is helpful to “[be] really reflective about your own role and where you come from and how you were raised and what motivates you to do the work you’re doing. “All these reflective practices allow you to figure out how you can be a participant as you realize you can bring the table and how your perspective and your positionality in that community will influence the work that you’re doing with the people you’re working with,” Grande says.
Concluding Remarks
In using citizen science to create a more sustainable future, it’s important to keep in mind that tackling sustainability is much more than just doing the science; it involves taking the time to understand where stakeholder communities are coming from, negotiating outcomes and policies, and much more. Echeverri has been surprised by how interdisciplinary her work is: some days in her career, she spends hours understanding equations and working with statisticians and biologists, while other days she thinks about policies with lawyers and economists. There’s much more to sustainability research than just the research. Sustainability-related fields are incredibly interdisciplinary and should be acknowledged as such, especially when one is working with communities.
One core principle of citizen science is that of bridging science with the communities that it impacts: the people affected by research play a part in the research. It’s more complex than this, though. There are uncountably many additional considerations, including that the research needs to benefit the people, that the people need to have trust or gain trust in research as an institution, and that people’s existing knowledge should be respected and valued. For instance, when it comes to preserving land, it’s important to consider that many people live or have lived in societies that manage and relate to land very differently from our own, and a variety of perspectives and kinds of knowledge are useful for considering. No one knows what communities need better than the communities themselves, nor does anyone know their land that they’ve cultivated for years better than the communities themselves. Their perspective isn’t necessarily scientific, but it’s nonetheless valuable for informing citizen science methodology for sustainable applications.
In the context of sustainability, citizen science is a tool for knowledge creation for the benefit of humanity, the environment, and the planet. There’s much to consider: How can we best consider the needs, wants, and knowledge of the peoples of the world? How can we best promote environmental justice? How do we balance research goals with the needs of communities to create research that serves communities? There’s no right answer.
About the Researchers
Alejandra Echeverri is an interdisciplinary conservation scientist currently working as a postdoctoral scholar in the Natural Capital Project based at Stanford University, in Palo Alto, California. She studies how people’s behaviors towards the landscape (such as habitat conversion) impact the species that are able to persist in such landscapes. She also studies the social and psychological perception of animals by looking at the factors involved in peoples’ motivation to protect biodiversity.
Aja Grande finds joy in building reciprocal relationships between people and land. She was born and raised on the island of Oahu in Honolulu, Hawaii. She is a Ph.D. candidate at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in the department of History, Anthropology, Science, Technology & Society (HASTS). Her dissertation research focuses on restoration movements of ‘aina momona (“lands that are rich, plentiful, and abundant”) in Hawaii. She works with multiethnic, Indigenous-led farm and garden communities who practice community stewardship over the lands they drink, eat and live on.
Stewart Isaacs is a PhD candidate in the Aeronautics and Astronautics department at MIT. His research interests are in modeling and analyzing clean energy systems, particularly productive-use and decentralized systems, and understanding how these systems inform energy justice and sustainable development. In his work, Stewart collaborates with community and academic partners in Africa to develop clean energy technologies toward local empowerment.