A Practical Approach to Assessing the Impact of Citizen Science towards the Sustainable Development Goals

Stephen Parkinson, Sasha Marie Woods, James Sprinks and Luigi Ceccaroni
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Stephen Parkinson: Earthwatch, Oxford OX2 7DE, UK
Sasha Marie Woods: Earthwatch, Oxford OX2 7DE, UK
James Sprinks: Earthwatch, Oxford OX2 7DE, UK
Luigi Ceccaroni: Earthwatch, Oxford OX2 7DE, UK

Sustainability, 2022, vol. 14, issue 8, 1-26

Abstract: The United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) are an important global framework which provides a shared vision for a more sustainable future for all people and the planet. In the last five years, citizen science as a discipline has paid increasing attention to the SDGs and the contributions that citizen science could make towards their achievement. This paper presents a collection of 51 questions and a corresponding set of answers which can be used by citizen science projects to self-assess their impact towards the SDGs. The questions and answers were originally derived from the official UN description of the SDG targets and indicators and were refined through a workshop and series of nine interviews with citizen science project coordinators. The outcomes of the workshop and interviews reveal the challenges of assessing impacts towards the SDGs in a way which is relevant to the majority of citizen science projects. In many cases, the wording of the SDGs had to be altered to make sense in the context of citizen science. The final set of questions and answers are structured to reflect two pathways of impact: citizen science contributing to the (official) monitoring of the SDGs, and citizen science contributing to the direct achievement of the SDGs.

Keywords: citizen science; impact assessment; Sustainable Development Goals (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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