Each scenario includes a brief description of the challenge for citizen science, an example citizen science initiative and the opportunities and risks involved. 

You can use this as a reference to use in your activities, such as:

• holding a roundtable/seminar to explore the opportunities and risks for these alternative futures
• running a backcasting workshop to explore the steps required to reach a particular desired future (see more below about getting involved)
• using them as inspiration for designing new citizen science projects.

Across Europe, there is an ever-increasing gap between institutional discourse on climate adaptation and mitigation needs – meaning that policy and decision-making lack impact and citizens’ priorities are not aligned with policy agendas. 

An environmental organisation in Serbia established a citizen science initiative to track biodiversity loss in cities caused by urban river pollution. Operating for a few years, the initiative has established a network of volunteer professional scientists to cross-check data collection protocols and validate the data generated by citizen scientists. Due to this collaboration, the initiative is gaining greater recognition and value at a national level by civil society, the media and institutions such as the National Statistics Office. 

Geolocated data and multi-year datasets are produced through several long-running, self-funded citizen science initiatives that are improving understanding of urban water pollution. Communities are involved in choosing the locations and focus of the research, therefore the data produced increases participation as it is highly relevant to citizens. 

There is greater recognition for citizen science which becomes a way to connect the dots between grassroots organisations, institutions and decision-makers. There could be opportunities for democratising access to data, including information on pollution levels, and for citizens to be involved in developing solutions to tackle climate adaptation issues, such as urban water pollution.

A lack of institutional backing could mean there is no support for the standardisation of datasets across and within citizen science initiatives. Therefore, citizen science data would be less applicable for national-level monitoring. Bottom-up citizen science is easier to initiate, but to take action based on analysis of the data would still require a degree of institutionalisation, linking access to outcomes. 

• What lessons from the field of social innovation are relevant for citizen science, particularly around data use and data publishing? 
• What legislation and guidance is needed to resolve legal uncertainties and to improve data management and stewardship for citizen science at the intersection of citizen science and open science?

Scenario inspired by:

Citizens for SDG 15.1 

Civic Laboratory for Environmental Action Research (CLEAR)