The Importance of Regional Citizen Science Organizations
The 2019 Citizen Science Conference was held from March 13 to 17 in Raleigh, North Carolina. According to the Citizen Science Association, there were 818 registered delegates from 28 countries presenting more than 350 talks, workshops, symposia, and posters across many different topics and fields.
I attended the conference as one of the Environmental Justice scholarship recipients and a representative from CitizenScience.Asia. During the conference, I met Citizen Scientists from Malaysia, Japan, Taiwan, Singapore, Korea, and the Philippines. They are involved in diverse #CitizenScience projects.
Zeeda F. Mohamad from Malaysia works on watershed conservation at the Water Warriors Living Lab, University of Malaya. Her team works closely with the Sustainable Places Research Institute, Cardiff University, UK. Their earlier works were influenced by the community science movement in Lake Biwa, Japan. So, they are all for international learning. They also co-organised the Klang Valley City Nature Challenge last year and will organize it again this year.
Joy Wong from Singapore works at the National Parks Board. Her team coordinates citizen science programs to monitor multiple fixed sites all around the country with a standardized survey protocol. The program collects valuable information about birds, herons, egrets, bitterns, butterfly, and dragonfly from many survey points across Singapore.
Dau-Jye Lu from Taiwan helped indigenous communities to use an app to promote the efficiency of their patrolling on anti-illegal logging, which will strengthen the links between local communities and the forestry agencies. In his research, citizen science is used to empower local communities to get involved in protected area management or governance.
According to Lu, there are several very active citizen science initiatives in Taiwan. For example, Taiwan Roadkill Observation Network and the frog conservation and monitoring scheme. The Endemic Species Research Institute plays an important role in promoting citizen science in Taiwan. Forestry Bureau, Taiwan Forestry Research Institute and national parks are very good sponsors. There are also more lectures in the universities about relevant activities, mainly from departments of life science (biology), environmental education, geography, forestry, etc.
Elena Sparrow who is originally from the Philippines started the Global Learning and Observations to Benefit the Environment (GLOBE) program in Alaska, 1996. The program has ongoing investigations in the fields of Atmosphere, Hydrosphere, Pedosphere (Soils), and Biosphere (Land Cover, Phenology) that include activities for students to learn the science concepts in the measurement protocols. In Philippine, She conducted the GLOBE Training for Trainers, also trained teachers directly at schools.
Besides Philippine, there are GLOBE Partnerships in Japan, Republic of Korea, Taiwan, Thailand, Sri Lanka, Vietnam, and other countries in the Asia and Pacific region. When it was started in 1994, the program focused more on the American primary and secondary students, now it has grown to 124 countries and is also being used by undergraduate students and citizen scientists.
During the conference, I also made connections with Citizen Scientists from Europe, Australia, South Africa, and Iberoamerican or Spanish and Portuguese speaking countries.
At “Towards an Iberoamerican Citizen Science Association” symposium, there were many interesting topics raised in regards to communication, engagement, capacity building, resources, funding, and infrastructure. For example, how the word “citizen” can be problematic for people in certain regions because it implies one must subscribe to a certain group, or be a member of a certain group in order to participate in the scientific process. How in some places, people have been doing citizen science activities for a long time, yet they are not called as such.
Martin Perez from citizen science organization in Chile mentioned an important reason in creating a new infrastructure to help recognize citizen science activities in non-English speaking countries. He says, “We cannot expect, in my opinion, that the citizen science association based in the US can solve or even attempt to recognize the diversity of citizen science projects around the world.”
Although the citizen science community is highly progressive and inclusive, the linguistic difference is still a barrier in validating citizen science projects in other regions in the world as not only educational experience but also scientific experience. Therefore, he sees the need for regional organizations to make a larger impact on citizen science projects in the region. “I think that something that motivates me to participate in my organization in Chile,” Perez says.
In terms of funding, there was an interesting discussion about the mechanism raised by members of ECSA (European Citizen Science Association). Last November, Alexandra Albert and Muki Haklay were looking for the right term to identify types of business models of citizen science projects.
The question they had was, what is the best way to describe the combination of organization structure or scale of funding? For example, there were long-term projects that were running by NGOs through membership fees or an ongoing project that rely mostly on volunteering effort by committed individuals with very little funding. This is an area that needs more innovation as public-private partnerships are now looking to citizen science as a way to achieve monitoring or research & development needs.
It is no doubt that there are very diverse citizen science projects in different countries including in Asia. This is why regional Citizen Science Association could play an important role in representing this diversity.
Mendel Wong, founder of CitizenScience.Asia once wrote that Asia is a region of contrast with a high diversity of cultures, languages, and resources. With a goal of engaging this diverse population in citizen science, CitizenScience.Asia was formed to build a regional community and seeks to provide a representative voice for Asia to represent its unique challenges, views, and capabilities.
