Citizen Science in Germany as Research and Sustainability Education: Analysis of the Main Forms and Foci and Its Relation to the Sustainable Development Goals

Katharina Schleicher,Constanze Schmidt

doi:10.3390/su12156044

Abstract

Many citizen science projects are in the thematic area of species observation and natural environment monitoring but, in recent years, projects in other areas and disciplines have increasingly been using citizen science approaches. It is assumed that citizen science could potentially contribute to an increase in environmental awareness and to advancing knowledge about environmental change and sustainability issues. In this article, we present a review of 127 citizen science projects listed on the German platform, “Bürger schaffen Wissen”, with the aim of analysing whether the main focus of most projects is on the scientific results or on educational aspects and how citizen science projects are connected to the SDGs. The results show that many citizen science projects overlap with SDG 4 Quality Education. Of these projects, a larger proportion entail higher levels of involvement than those projects with a stronger focus on the scientific results, in which the participation of the citizen scientists is mainly standardised and at low levels. An even greater number of projects in the sample are linked to SDG 15 Life on Land and, thereby, are in line with the traditional focus of citizen science. Additionally, the analysis reveals that forms of education used in citizen science projects are much more diverse than those included in SDG 4.

Highlights

Many citizen science projects operate within the area of the natural sciences, especially biology, and deal with topics such as the occurrence of species [1]
We present a review of 127 citizen science projects listed on the German platform, “Bürger schaffen Wissen”, with the aim of analysing whether the main focus of most projects is on the scientific results or on educational aspects and how citizen science projects are connected to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)
To establish how most citizen science projects are connected to the SDGs, which goals they impact the most and if the focus of most citizen science projects is on the scientific results or on the educational aspects, we reviewed the 127 citizen science projects listed on the German citizen science platform, “Bürger schaffen Wissen”

Summary

Introduction

Many citizen science projects operate within the area of the natural sciences, especially biology, and deal with topics such as the occurrence of species (e.g., the British Trust for Ornithology’s projects) [1]. The results from projects such as the study on the extinction of insects by the entomological association Krefeld, Germany [2], have contributed both to scientific knowledge and to the public discussion on anthropocentric environmental degradation. Many citizen science projects focus on environmental education, scientific communication and other areas (e.g., [3,4]). Studies in the fields of social sciences and humanities are increasingly adopting the citizen science approach (e.g., [5,6]). The practical outcomes of citizen science could possibly contribute to sustainable development by protecting animals (e.g., project “Striped AmBASSador”) [8], removing plastic waste from rivers (e.g., project “Plastikpiraten”) [9] or generating new knowledge about a species and its protection (e.g., projects “TurtleSAT”,“MantaMatcher”) [10,11]

Methods

Results

Conclusion