Traditional data sources are not sufficient for measuring the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. New and non-traditional sources of data are required. Citizen science is an emerging example of a non-traditional data source that is already making a contribution. In this Perspective, we present a roadmap that outlines how citizen science can be integrated into the formal Sustainable Development Goals reporting mechanisms. Success will require leadership from the United Nations, innovation from National Statistical Offices and focus from the citizen-science community to identify the indicators for which citizen science can make a real contribution.

The UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) are a vision for achieving a sustainable future. Reliable, timely, comprehensive, and consistent data are critical for measuring progress towards, and ultimately achieving, the SDGs. Data from citizen science represent one new source of data that could be used for SDG reporting and monitoring. However, information is still lacking regarding the current and potential contributions of citizen science to the SDG indicator framework. Through a systematic review of the metadata and work plans of the 244 SDG indicators, as well as the identification of past and ongoing citizen science initiatives that could directly or indirectly provide data for these indicators, this paper presents an overview of where citizen science is already contributing and could contribute data to the SDG indicator framework. The results demonstrate that citizen science is “already contributing” to the monitoring of 5 SDG indicators, and that citizen science “could contribute” to 76 indicators, which, together, equates to around 33%. Our analysis also shows that the greatest inputs from citizen science to the SDG framework relate to SDG 15 Life on Land, SDG 11 Sustainable Cities and Communities, SDG 3 Good Health and Wellbeing, and SDG 6 Clean Water and Sanitation. Realizing the full potential of citizen science requires demonstrating its value in the global data ecosystem, building partnerships around citizen science data to accelerate SDG progress, and leveraging investments to enhance its use and impact.

The implementation of the European Flood Directive 2007/60/EC requires the establishment of public participation mechanisms to ensure citizens’ involvement in the flood management cycle. This raises questions on how to achieve this goal and successfully translate the directive into meaningful and effective participation. Innovative means, such as citizen observatories enabled by information and communication technologies, have the potential to provide citizens with a substantially new role in decision-making. In this paper, we present a framework developed for analysing the potential for participation via ICT-enabled citizen observatories and undertake a comparative analysis of the UK, the Netherlands and Italy. Expository and qualitative research was undertaken in the three case study areas, with the aim of identifying and comparing the transposition of the EU Flood directive and the mechanisms in place for citizens’ participation during different phases of the disaster cycle (prevention, preparedness, response, and recovery). Our analysis of the transposition of legal obligations for citizen participation shows that implementation is limited when examining both the respective roles and types of interactions between citizen and authorities and the impact of citizen participation on decision-making. Different authorities have differing perceptions of citizen participation in flood risk management in terms of their roles and influence. Our results also indicate that these perceptions are related to the importance that the authorities place on the different stages of the disaster cycle. This understanding is crucial for identifying the potential of citizen observatories to foster greater citizen engagement and participation

Over the past decade, citizen science has experienced growth and popularity as a scientific practice and as a new form of stakeholder engagement and public participation in science or in the generation of new knowledge. One of the key requirements for realising the potential of citizen science is evidence and demonstration of its impact and value. Yet the actual changes resulting from citizen science interventions are often assumed, ignored or speculated about. Based on a systematic review of 77 publications, combined with empirical insights from 10 past and ongoing projects in the field of citizen science, this paper presents guidelines for a consolidated Citizen Science Impact Assessment framework to help overcome the dispersion of approaches in assessing citizen science impacts; this comprehensive framework enhances the ease and consistency with which impacts can be captured, as well as the comparability of evolving results across projects. Our review is framed according to five distinct, yet interlinked, impact domains (society, economy, environment, science and technology, and governance). Existing citizen science impact assessment approaches provide assessment guidelines unevenly across the five impact domains, and with only a small number providing concrete indicator-level conceptualisations. The analysis of the results generates a number of salient insights which we combine in a set of guiding principles for a consolidated impact assessment framework for citizen science initiatives. These guiding principles pertain to the purpose of citizen science impact assessments, the conceptualisation of data collection methods and information sources, the distinction between relative versus absolute impact, the comparison of impact assessment results across citizen science projects, and the incremental refinement of the organising framework over time.

The OECD Principles on Water Governance set out various requirements for stakeholder engagement. Coupled with conceptualizations of social learning, this article asks how we define and enact stakeholder engagement and explores the actual practice of engagement of stakeholders in three fields of water governance. The results suggest that a key consideration is the purpose of the stakeholder engagement, requiring consideration of its ethics, process, roles and expected outcomes. While facilitators cannot be held accountable if stakeholder engagement ‘fails’ in terms of social learning, they are responsible for ensuring that the enabling conditions for social learning are met.

SummaryThis study reviews the evaluation of capacity development, identifying capacity development (CD) modalities and the schools of evaluation currently in place. The research joins the results agenda debate, arguing that in dealing with CD interventions, pre-defined indicators fail to represent the process and the key elements that take CD recipients toward patterns of change. The study highlights the fact that CD deals with projects that, by their nature (consisting of change processes designed to initiate change in people, organizations, and/or their enabling environment), rely more on non-planned changes than on the pre-defined indicators and results to contribute to livelihood improvements and social transformation. The study recognizes the difficulty of evaluating CD under straightforward mechanisms. It concludes that the existing approaches are not adequate to truly capture or measure impact, as CD projects, restricted by previously agreed budgets, resources, and time frames, are usually not designed to evaluate the sustainability of change and its impact over the medium or long term. As resources are scarce, donor agencies and policy-makers need to know the value of CD in order to best prioritize their investments. However, due to the nature of these projects, measuring the return rate between the project cost and its impact remains a difficult task. There is a need for new, multi-path approaches to capturing changes in capacity in order to serve as a basis for decision-making regarding CD investments