New EU-financed project more4nature to strengthen conservation efforts through citizen science
A new project, more4nature, which aims to empower citizens in collaborative environmental assurance via monitoring, reporting and action, will be kicked off with a three-day meeting with 21 partners at IHE Delft on 31 January 2024. The project, led by Uta Wehn, IHE Delft Associate Professor of Water Innovation Studies, is financed by a €7.6 million European Union grant.
The project aims to trigger transformative change in conservation efforts regarding zero pollution, biodiversity protection and deforestation prevention. Specifically, it will strive to institutionalise the role of Citizen Science Initiatives (CSIs) to provide relevant and valid data for use in collaborative environmental compliance assurance (ECA). Strengthened compliance assurance is key to reversing the trend in environmental degradation.
Citizen Science Initiatives present innovative ways of joint data and knowledge production and of empowering citizens in sustainable natural resource management. However, barriers to the uptake of Citizen Generated Data (CGD) and citizen actions in ECA have not been effectively tackled. More4nature will use a socio-technical approach to address these challenges and deepen the role of citizens and communities in ECA by actions including:
- strengthening the capacity of existing CSIs to provide relevant and valid data and understanding the importance of ECA;
- fostering and supporting collaboration and partnerships among citizen science initiatives and authorities to cover data gaps and shape policy monitoring frameworks;
- developing and testing tools to validate data obtained from CSIs, thus contributing to the integration of such data sources in environmental governance and in European Open Science Cloud;
- making CGD available as a node in the Green Deal Data Space, and
- involving Fab Labs - community-oriented research, education and innovation workspaces equipped with digital and analogue fabrication tools - and Living Labs in order to co-create concrete and immediate pro-environmental actions with citizens and communities. These collaborative spaces support sustainability transitions and green and digital transformations.
To ensure impact beyond the project duration, more4nature will engage 162 existing CSIs and 98 authorities and national agencies in 40 cases in Europe, Latin America, Asia and Africa, as well as selected Living Labs and Fab Labs in Europe.
Uta Wehn
Associate Professor of Water Innovation Studies
