Citizen scientists will be needed to meet global water quality goals

Sustainable development goals for water quality will not be met without the involvement of citizen scientists, argues an international team led by a UCL researcher, in a new policy brief.

The policy brief and attached technical brief are published by Earthwatch Europe on behalf of the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP)-coordinated World Water Quality Alliance that has supported citizen science projects in Kenya, Tanzania and Sierra Leone. The reports detail how policymakers can learn from examples where citizen scientists (non-professionals engaged in the scientific process, such as by collecting data) are already making valuable contributions.

The report authors focus on how to meet one of the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals around improving water quality, which the UN states is necessary for the health and prosperity of people and the planet.

Lead author Dr. Izzy Bishop (UCL Centre for Biodiversity & Environment Research, UCL Biosciences) said, “Progress towards meeting water quality targets remains dangerously off track. In order to meet global goals on water quality, we need more data to understand the problem and how we can tackle it.

“Locals who know the water and use the water are both a motivated and knowledgeable resource, so citizen science networks can enable them to provide large amounts of data and act as stewards of their local water bodies and sources. Citizen science has the potential to revolutionize the way we manage water resources to improve water quality.”

Earlier this year, the United Nations Environment Assembly resolved that there was a need for better collection of water quality data in order to strengthen water policies and improve the provision of clean water.

The report authors argue that improving water quality data will require governments and organizations to work collaboratively with locals who collect their own data, particularly where government monitoring is scarce, but also where there is government support for citizen science schemes. Water quality improvement has a particularly high potential for citizen scientists to make an impact, as professionally collected data is often limited by a shortage of funding and infrastructure, while there are effective citizen science monitoring methods that can provide reliable data.

The authors write that the value of citizen science goes beyond the data collected, as there are other benefits pertaining to education of volunteers, increased community involvement, and greater potential for rapid response to water quality issues.

In presenting their report at a launch webinar this month, the team said that policymakers can learn from case studies where citizen science is already effectively contributing to water quality monitoring, and scale up the methods to be used more widely.

One positive example is in the Mara River basin in Tanzania and Kenya, where the World Water Quality Alliance has supported the governments of both countries to work with local water user associations, made up of local citizens who rely on the river for drinking, cooking, washing, and fishing. People in the communities have been collecting data that has yielded useful insights into the river system, including how pollution from agriculture is impacting the water quality.

Another case study described in the technical report is from Sierra Leone, where the country has reported on progress towards the SDG goal on water quality using a combination of government agency data and citizen science data that fills in the gaps, particularly for remote river tributaries that can be difficult to reach. In the Rokel River basin, citizen scientists have more than doubled the amount of data available, and locals are actively involved in developing the river’s management plan.

The report also describes successful case studies from countries with greater government resources, such as a Canadian open-access data platform that enables Indigenous and non-Indigenous community groups to supply data and access training, with data covering 50,000 sites in rivers, lakes, streams and wetlands across the vast country. In the UK, the Catchment Systems Thinking Cooperative brings together stakeholders who are co-designing a consistent approach and standardizing data collection methods, with links to government bodies, to establish guidelines on the use of data.

Dr. Steven Loiselle of Earthwatch Europe commented, “It is alarming how little information is available about the state of our rivers, lakes and groundwater, but fortunately, citizen scientists are well-placed to provide extensive data in a low-cost and responsive manner.”

Stuart Warner, of the UN Environment Program Global Environment Monitoring System for freshwater (GEMS/Water), said, “We are calling on policymakers across the globe to work with local communities to improve data collection that will help them to improve water quality using a readily available approach—citizen science.”