The Role of Citizen Science in Landscape and Seascape Approaches to Integrating Conservation and Development

Jeffrey Sayer, Chris Margules, Iris Bohnet, Agni Boedhihartono, Ray Pierce, Allan Dale and Kate Andrews
Additional contact information
Jeffrey Sayer: Centre for Tropical Environmental and Sustainability Science, College of Marine and Environmental Sciences, James Cook University, P.O. Box 6811, Cairns, QLD 4870, Australia
Chris Margules: Centre for Tropical Environmental and Sustainability Science, College of Marine and Environmental Sciences, James Cook University, P.O. Box 6811, Cairns, QLD 4870, Australia
Iris Bohnet: Centre for Tropical Environmental and Sustainability Science, College of Marine and Environmental Sciences, James Cook University, P.O. Box 6811, Cairns, QLD 4870, Australia
Agni Boedhihartono: Centre for Tropical Environmental and Sustainability Science, College of Marine and Environmental Sciences, James Cook University, P.O. Box 6811, Cairns, QLD 4870, Australia
Ray Pierce: Kuranda Envirocare, Kuranda, QLD 4881, Australia
Allan Dale: The Cairns Institute, James Cook University, P.O. Box 6811, Cairns, QLD 4870, Australia
Kate Andrews: The Fenner School of Environment and Society, Australian National University, Linnaeus Way, Canberra, ACT 2601, Australia

Land, 2015, vol. 4, issue 4, 1-13

Abstract: Initiatives to manage landscapes for both biodiversity protection and sustainable development commonly employ participatory methods to exploit the knowledge of citizens. We review five examples of citizen groups engaging with landscape scale conservation initiatives to contribute their knowledge, collect data for monitoring programs, study systems to detect patterns, and test hypotheses on aspects of landscape dynamics. Three are from landscape interventions that deliberately target biodiversity conservation and aim to have sustainable development as a collateral outcome. The other two are driven primarily by concerns for agricultural sustainability with biodiversity conservation as a collateral outcome. All five include programs in which, management agencies support data collection by citizen groups to monitor landscape changes. Situations where citizen groups self-organise to collect data and interpret data to aid in landscape scale decision making are less common and are restricted to landscapes where the inhabitants have a high level of scientific literacy. Given the complexity of landscape processes and the multiple decision makers who influence landscape outcomes we argue that citizen science broadly defined should be an essential element of landscape scale initiatives. Conservation managers should create space for citizen engagement in science and should empower citizen groups to experiment, learn, and adapt their decision-making to improve landscape scale outcomes.

Keywords: landscape approaches; conservation and development trade-offs; integrated landscape management; social learning; biodiversity surveys and monitoring (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Q15 Q2 Q24 Q28 Q5 R14 R52 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2015
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2073-445X/4/4/1200/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2073-445X/4/4/1200/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jlands:v:4:y:2015:i:4:p:1200-1212:d:60274

Access Statistics for this article

Land is currently edited by Ms. Carol Ma

More articles in Land from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().