Citizen science, which is public participation in the production of knowledge, offers endless opportunities for researchers as well as for citizens and policymakers, from real-time and rapid data collection at scale to empowering individuals and communities, even the most marginalized ones.
Recently, there has been an increasing interest and uptake of citizen science approaches by National Statistical Offices. This is because, halfway through the SDGs, large data gaps still persist, and citizen science along with other new sources of data, such as Earth Observation, can support SDG monitoring, including some of the 92 environmental SDG indicators, almost half of which are still lacking data. A systematic review showed that citizen science data can contribute to the monitoring of 33% of the SDG indicators, covering a variety of topics.
One issue citizen science can help tackle is marine plastic pollution – with an estimated 11 million metric tons of plastics reaching our oceans annually, it poses a significant development problem.
The good news is that there are many citizen science initiatives working on beach litter, and a large and active volunteer community on this exists globally. And marine plastic pollution is formally monitored through SDG indicator 14.1.1b regarding plastic debris density.
Ghana is one of the countries that is most severely affected by the issue of marine litter. It is also one of the countries dedicated to finding a solution to this problem. But one of the main issues is the lack of official data for monitoring 14.1.1b, which has also been a barrier to any further evidence-based policy and action.
To address this, the Ghana Statistical Service (GSS), partnered with the key stakeholders at a national and global level , including the local citizen science groups operating in Ghana, and UNEP as the custodian agency for 14.1.1b, to assess the feasibility of leveraging existing citizen science data for SDG monitoring and reporting, and for addressing the policy needs in the country.
Working collaboratively with a broad stakeholder group, including the Ghana Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the GSS has led a process of three interconnected phases for citizen science data validation. Understanding the global methodology for indicator 14.1.1b on plastic debris density was the first of these phases. The second phase involved locating, gathering, and integrating the data using the Global Earth Challenge Marine Litter Data Integration Platform and Ocean Conservancy’s Trash Information and Data for Education and Solutions (TIDES) Database. The final phase was validating these data and integrating them into Ghana’s official statistics in order to inform SDG processes and policy decisions.
Figure 1: Three interconnected phases of integrating citizen science data on marine litter for SDG indicator 14.1.1b reporting in Ghana.
Source: Fraisl, D., See, L., Bowers, R., Seidu, O., Boakye Fredua, K., Bowser, A., Meloche, M., Weller, S., Amaglo-Kobla, T., Ghafari, D., Laso Bayas, J.C., Campbell, J., Cameron, G., Fritz, S., McCallum, I. (2023). The contributions of citizen science to SDG monitoring and reporting on marine plastics. Sustainability Science. DOI: 10.1007/s11625-023-01402-4
As part of the collaborative approach with local stakeholders, the GSS held a number of workshops to better understand the methodology and data used in this particular citizen science data collection effort for Ghana’s marine litter issue and to talk about how they might be incorporated into the official statistics. The focus of this and subsequent workshops was on in-depth discussions of the methodology developed by Ocean Conservancy’s International Coastal Cleanup, one of the partners in this effort, and how it has been applied in Ghana by citizen science groups such as the Smart Nature Freak Youth Volunteers Foundation.
The aim in these collaborative processes was to ensure broader stakeholder engagement in addressing data gaps on marine litter in Ghana, determining whether the citizen science data currently available were of sufficient quality to be included in official SDG monitoring and reporting, and for marine litter-related policy decisions in the country. They also aimed to identify the areas of improvement for future data collection efforts of citizen science groups in Ghana and how to support the ICC to better align their methodology with that of the global 14.1.1b indicator.
Table 1: Project partners, actors directly and indirectly involved in the project and platforms used.
Source: Fraisl, D., See, L., Bowers, R., Seidu, O., Boakye Fredua, K., Bowser, A., Meloche, M., Weller, S., Amaglo-Kobla, T., Ghafari, D., Laso Bayas, J.C., Campbell, J., Cameron, G., Fritz, S., McCallum, I. (2023). The contributions of citizen science to SDG monitoring and reporting on marine plastics. Sustainability Science. DOI: 10.1007/s11625-023-01402-4
At the end of the project, the GSS and EPA agreed to integrate citizen science beach litter data into the country’s official statistics. As a result of this work, Ghana has become the first country to officially report on SDG indicator 14.1.1b using citizen science data. The results were reported as part of Ghana's 2022 Voluntary National Review for the SDGs and in the UN SDG Global Database as country-validated data.
The results will also inform policies. To ensure the sustainable management of its oceans and marine resources, Ghana is now implementing various aspects of its National Plastics Management Policy. The country is developing an Integrated Coastal and Marine Policy, which puts an emphasis on pollution, notably marine litter, and how it affects the ecosystem. The results of this citizen science effort will feed into the situational analysis for these policy formulation processes, as well as for monitoring and evaluation of implementation strategies and management approaches. Beyond these contributions, this project has helped to bridge the local data gathering efforts of individuals and communities with international monitoring procedures and policy agendas by utilizing the SDG framework.
Not only did the project have an impact on addressing the marine litter problem in Ghana but it also helped all of the stakeholders to become more aware of the value of citizen science data for the SDGs. The government partners gained familiarity with Ghana's landscape of citizen science activities relating to marine litter as well as the citizen science methodology and data. Civil society organizations that organize beach cleanups and data collection activities in Ghana gained a better understanding of the potential and impact of the data they produce for policy making, which can encourage them to further improve the quality of their data. Moreover, the data validation process implemented can be replicated by any country aiming to use citizen science data in their national SDG reporting efforts. Most importantly, the results of this project can provide a pathway that can be adapted to other SDG indicators, where there are currently insufficient data.
Our work on integrating citizen science into SDG indicator 14.1.1b has taught us that we need to think more deeply about how to mainstream citizen science data activities, moving beyond pilot projects, to fully realize the potential of these data to close data and policy gaps. As proven by this project, data can count on everyone and everyone can count on the data.
Resources:
Fraisl, D., See, L., Bowers, R., Seidu, O., Boakye Fredua, K., Bowser, A., Meloche, M., Weller, S., Amaglo-Kobla, T., Ghafari, D., Laso Bayas, J.C., Campbell, J., Cameron, G., Fritz, S., McCallum, I. (2023). The contributions of citizen science to SDG monitoring and reporting on marine plastics. Sustainability Science. DOI: 10.1007/s11625-023-01402-4
Olen, S.M. Citizen science tackles plastics in Ghana. Nat Sustain 5, 814–815 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41893-022-00980-y
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