Presentation short abstract

Through two accounts of how communities use citizen science and technologies such as smart phones or sensors to monitor and adapt to ecological degradation, this paper reflects on citizen (techno)science and collaborative methods as resisting extractive research logics and environmental governance.

Presentation long abstract

This paper examines how communities engage in citizen science using phones, GIS, sensors and participatory mapping to monitor environmental degradation and redefine conservation and knowledge production. Drawing on research in Mexico and Costa Rica, it shows how communities go beyond expert-centric knowledge and amplify place-based perspectives to reshape environmental governance, scientific practice and social relations.

In Baja California, artisanal fishers and local NGOs deploy low-cost sensors, mobile applications and biodiversity monitoring tools to document oceanographic conditions and ecological change. This initiative does not position citizens as mere data collectors; rather, participants are trained to interpret data and mobilize this in cooperative assemblies and reporting to fishing authorities. Sensor data has detected hypoxia ahead of state agencies and contributed to decisions on catch limits, seasonal closures, and the establishment of no-take zones.

In northwest Costa Rica, women communal water-board members and firefighters experiment with open-source sensors and GIS mapping to track forest fires and water points. These women tinker with and repurpose the technologies to fit local conditions and water circuits. In gatherings, they decide collectively on what to monitor, sensor placement, interpretation and application of the data. This provides clues (and invites further discussion on) how citizen science can function as a way of reworking relations among citizens, scientists, technocrats and policy makers.

In these practices we discern citizen science emerges as a fragile yet generative space for centering local problem definitions, sustaining plural, place-based knowledges, shifting conservation practices, and building more inclusive, adaptive and community-led forms of environmental governance.

Presentation short abstract

The study examines how digital citizen science initiatives structure composition, control, access, and use of data in Tanzania’s forested landscapes. It reveals underlying power dynamics in digital monitoring and identifies opportunities for just and inclusive data practices for forest monitoring.

Presentation long abstract

Digital citizen-science initiatives are hyped to decolonise forest monitoring, as they facilitate local people’s participation in tool designing, data interpretation and decision-making. However, these processes often embed predefined assumptions about what data is worth collecting, how it should be collected, and which indicators are prioritised, raising concerns about the neutrality and inclusiveness. There remains a limited understanding regarding how power and politics shape data acquisition, storage and management. Informed by Pritchard et al. (2022)'s data justice framework and grounded in selected digital citizen science initiatives in Tanzania, this study examines how these initiatives shape the composition, control, access, processing, and use of digitally monitored forest data. I reviewed the initiatives’ documents, conducted interviews and focus group discussions, and acted as participant observer to explore these data justice elements. Firstly, data composition: unpacking what is visible or hidden in terms of forest management, landscapes’ species and whose ways of knowing are considered. Secondly, data control: examining who sets rules by highlighting the roles of implementing NGOs and local communities, who design data protocols and decide on data sharing procedures. Thirdly, data access: assessing channels through which data flows, accessibility to the public, and who can retrieve data and benefit. And fourthly, data processing and use: interrogating epistemic assumptions that guide how raw data are aggregated, filtered, and visualised. Generally, the study envisions pathways for just and plural processes in the designing, governance, and interpretation of digitally monitored forest data, to enable the embedding of decolonial possibilities into digital citizen science initiatives.

Presentation short abstract

Drawing from ethnographic data collected in the project ERICA in Konin, Corleto Perticara and Tarragona, we argue that the principles of citizen science help to contextualize participatory environmental monitoring into the legacies, politics and cultural and social specificities of local sites.

Presentation long abstract

The project “ERICA: Environmental Monitoring through Civic Engagement” develops a new framework aimed at enhancing citizens’ environmental awareness and their capacity to conduct independent environmental monitoring. The project uses co-production as a research practice to uncover local power relations, environmental conflicts and forms of civic engagement.

In our paper we would like to examine how ERICA developed in partners’ project sites, all of which are sites of fossil fuel extraction. However, as different kinds of fossil fuels are extracted in each site, different legacies of citizen science and conflicts with the company mark the local history of each place, we adapted the framework for environmental monitoring to each context. This has been achieved through co-creation as a research method. Based on this experience, we propose to discuss: 1) how different social, political, and cultural dynamics influenced the co-creation process to result in a particular design and implementation of ERICA’s framework for participatory environmental monitoring; 2) how the politics and legacies of local conflicts with the company influenced the quality of engagement in citizen science; and 3) how (in)visibility of environmental harms shape actions focused on civic environmental monitoring.

Drawing from ethnographic data collected through focus group interviews in Konin, Corleto Perticara and Tarragona, we argue that the principles of citizen science help to contextualize participatory environmental monitoring into the histories, legacies, politics and cultural and social specificities of the local site.

Presentation short abstract

Through a Transdisciplinary Editorial Lab, we present avenues for riverine epistemic justice and equitable knowledge exchanges among scholars and riverine leaders. It bridges scientific findings and grassroots needs, revealing tensions but also enabling horizontal dialogue and joint narrative

Presentation long abstract

Riverine communities in Colombia's Magdalena-Cauca Basin have experienced significant epistemic injustices. Their knowledge of river dynamics and seasonal patterns is routinely marginalized in infrastructure projects, such as dams, that affect their territories and everyday lives. Academic researchers investigating riverine transformations tend to privilege outputs such as peer-reviewed publications, leaving less space for dialogue with the communities most interested in their findings.

Leveraging transdisciplinary research to overcome these challenges, we document potential avenues for more equitable knowledge exchange among scholars, riverine leaders, and communication experts, based on initial findings from our ongoing Transdisciplinary Editorial Lab (TELab). This is an experimental project to co-create a digital campaign for mobile networks such as WhatsApp. It aims to catalyze a basin-wide dialogue grounded in scientific findings on impacts of dammed rivers and in riverine grassroots’ organizing needs.

The TELab interactions have made evident significant socio-technical tensions, including debates over what constitutes legitimate knowledge, conflicts between scientific temporalities and communities' urgencies, and the tension between disciplinary evidence and grassroots holistic perspectives. However, the project has enabled crucial moments for pluralizing knowledge, such as horizontal dialogue spaces that value diverse epistemologies, the recognition of leaders as "new ancestors" responsible for transmitting technical knowledge, and the active co-construction of key communication narratives.

Our findings demonstrate how transdisciplinary science communication can challenge technocratic tendencies in interdisciplinary water studies by framing scientific findings in light of the riverine leaders’ political and social agenda, and by creating analogue and digital exchange spaces to strengthen leadership networks across the basin.

Presentation short abstract

A citizen science project in Barcelona’s community gardens documents urban fauna, co-develops biodiversity actions, and empowers gardeners to influence planning. It shows how citizen science democratises ecological knowledge and supports multispecies justice in urban governance.

Presentation long abstract

This presentation reports on findings from BiodivHorts, a citizen science initiative that examines how Barcelona community gardeners contribute to urban biodiversity conservation and restoration, and how these practices intersect with broader socio-ecological politics. Community gardens—a type of food-sharing initiative proliferating across cities—often occupy precarious and contested spaces in neoliberal cities yet provide crucial green refuges that generate social and ecological benefits.

The project mobilises participatory citizen science to: (1) document the fauna inhabiting or passing through Barcelona’s community gardens; (2) co-develop biodiversity enhancement strategies with gardeners; and (3) pilot selected interventions. Citizen science here is not only a method for data collection but a tool that democratises environmental knowledge production, broadens who counts as an environmental expert, and enables gardeners to articulate alternative socio-ecological imaginaries for the city.

Through this collaborative process, the project also examines the creation of a posthumanist community of practice and its transformative potential, especially in light of the deployment of EU's Nature Restoration Law in the coming years. Moving beyond conventional understandings of communities of practice as just learning systems, we explore how citizen science can also become a space of political engagement—empowering gardeners to contest dominant urban development logics, intervene in planning debates, and reconfigure everyday socio-material practices toward multispecies justice. In doing so, the project demonstrates how citizen science can empower community gardeners to actively shape more inclusive forms of urban environmental governance.

Presentation short abstract

HOMESCAPES studies homes in San Andrés, Semarang and Maputo. In low-income areas that house 60–70% of each city´s residents, senior researchers partner with trained, paid Community Research Assistants and grassroot organizations to trace everyday routines, power-relations and water quality changes.

Presentation long abstract

In unequal/rapidly changing contexts, Global South cities manage water through uneven socio-technical arrangements that vary by social position. In low-income neighborhoods—60–70% of urban housing—households often lack reliable piped water relying on small-scale providers, artisanal-wells, and rain-harvesting. Yet we know little about what happens once water is brought into the home. This matters because these households sustain much of urban life, and the urban South is home to most of the world’s residents.

Accounting for what happens inside homes, within everyday routines, demands innovative methodological designs. The HOMESCAPES project takes water as its starting point to investigate homes in San Andrés (Colombia), Semarang (Indonesia), and Maputo (Mozambique). In each city, senior investigators collaborate with grassroots organizations and twelve Community Research Assistants (CRAs) who are trained in qualitative and water-quality research methods. CRAs collect the project’s data, which are later processed by senior-researchers and graduate-students.

This design differs from conventional citizen science. Guided by the motto “everyone trains, everyone gains,” CRAs are hired for 11-months, with clear tasks and agreed monthly compensation. This is important because many face barriers to formal employment due to insecure residency status, living in marginalized neighborhoods, or belonging to migrant communities without full citizenship.

Research questions were developed by three senior-researchers from the Global South. They wanted to do things differently from research models they had previously experienced: a key motivation was to redirect resources North to South through transparent collaborations that recognize all contributions while avoiding intrusion into the intimate lives of women and their households.

Presentation short abstract

Community-based participatory research can require the bringing together of different worldviews and ways of knowing. As a cross-cultural research team, we share reflections on how we have tackled this challenge and its benefits for making research more inclusive of diverse knowledge holders.

Presentation long abstract

There has been a growing awareness of the importance of community-based participatory research as an inclusive and thus effective approach to addressing today’s social-ecological problems. This requires the difficult task of weaving different ways of knowing and corresponding research methods from different worldviews from diverse team members to create new knowledge based on this coming together. Without this, it is limited in how the project can go gone beyond more passive forms of inclusion of community knowledge holders in the research process. Such weaving requires unique research tools, relationship-building, and deep critical self and collective reflection. As a team of non-indigenous university researchers and Indigenous community researchers, we came together to explore how we could weave our different ways of knowing to create new knowledge that would help guide the development of an Indigenous-led protected area. While each collaboration must develop their own approach to such weaving, we share some reflections and tools that may help others think about their journeys. We reflect on how we have worked as a research team and also how we have found ways to meaningfully engage the broader community. We also share how participating in this process has been empowering for the community researchers and how it has allowed us to address some of the exclusionary critiques of mainstream western science. We hope this will contribute to raising awareness of the importance of community-based participatory research while supporting other teams in similar journeys and inspiring the creation of other such collaborations in the future.

Presentation short abstract

A critical look at citizen science in Positive Energy Districts, examining how engagement metrics shape participation, power, and the democratic potential of co-produced data in the heat transition.

Presentation long abstract

Positive Energy Districts (PEDs) have become flagship sites in Europe’s heat transition, promoted as arenas where citizens co-produce data, shape local energy strategies, and participate in low-carbon urban governance. Yet PEDs also concentrate technocratic expertise, digital infrastructures, and investment logics that risk reproducing the power asymmetries driving current socio-ecological crises. Political ecology helps clarify how governance arrangements embed or challenge such inequalities, particularly in relation to knowledge power.

Citizen science (CS) is widely presented as a pathway to democratizing knowledge production. However, its political dimensions (who participates, on what terms, and with what consequences) are often overlooked in favour of outcome-oriented research designs. For CS to function as a democratic space, questions of inclusion, purpose, and power must be treated as central rather than peripheral.

This paper examines how CS and co-production unfold within PEDs and asks: to what extent does citizen science empower participants, and what kinds of engagement metrics capture this? Drawing on the NWO-funded EmPowerEd project, we combine a scoping review of engagement metrics, comparative analysis of PED initiatives, and auto-ethnographic insights from participation in co-creation processes. We show how indicators and data practices can either illuminate exclusions or act as extractive devices that discipline participation and depoliticize conflict.

Empirical findings reveal a fundamental tension: some PEDs use citizen-generated data to challenge planning decisions, while others mobilize CS to legitimize pre-set technological pathways. We argue that participatory metrics can democratize environmental governance only when embedded in reflexive, power-aware, and plural co-production practices.