‘Citizen Science’ in ecology in India

Abstract

The emergence of Citizen Science can be understood as the coming together of three broad contemporary trends at the intersection of scientific research and environmental regulation: the growing awareness among the public on matters of the environment, the growing availability of (big) data that has been facilitated by the rapid evolution of technologies of data gathering, transmission and analysis, all of which would broadly constitute the frame of ‘big data.’ The third of these trends is the increased interest and participation of the citizenry in scientific research and environmental monitoring on the one hand and regulation on the other. This paper is based on a detailed study of 17 different self-identified Citizen Science projects currently underway in India and seeks to provide trends, analysis and insight on this rapidly growing way of ‘doing science.’ Analysis and key findings are based on quantitative and qualitative assessments. The quantitative dimensions discuss the number of citizens participating, the volume of data contributed and collected and the time frames which the different projects operate within. The qualitative aspects of discussion are related to matters such as the concept of 'voluntarity,' the citizen science nomenclature, the possibility of challenging existing power structures within scientific research that citizen science offers, issues of data ownership and regulation and also on the promises and limitations of the technological interfaces that make Citizen Science possible.