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.