Bridging Citizen Science and Climate Communication for Integrated Water Resource Management 

Connecting Citizen Science with Climate Communication
The world is inflicted with multi-layer climate change crisis intertwined with poverty, health, water scarcity, and food insecurity. Essentially, well-being of the people and planet has been responded through science, technology, and innovation, but in silos. However, a recent report by UNESCO¹ on Draft Recommendation on Open Science highlighted for better integration of science with society to address the global climate change crisis. Public participation in science has received immediate attention in the report.

In this context, Citizen Science is one of the foremost instruments to gain public participation and connecting policy with praxis. The process is not limited to listening or reading highly qualified research but engaging the public in hands-on activity. Development Alternatives has adopted the Citizen Science approach in its ongoing study supported by the Danish Ministry of Foreign Affairs – DANIDA (Danish International Development Agency) Fellowship Center on Integrated Water Resource Management of Ahar River Basin, Udaipur. The study aims to improve the basis for developing sustainable integrated water resources management in the Udaipur district, Rajasthan.

As part of the intervention, a Citizen Science Network involving 25 institutions has been formed in Udaipur. The network engages students at schools and universities as the primary target group owing to their knack for building knowledge and learning diverse subjects. The students are trained through various communication tools for collecting data on rainfall, water quality, ecological health, and well monitoring of water resources in Udaipur.

Figure 1: Methodology for the study

Climate Action Communication Tools for Citizen Science

The tools for citizen science communication are designed in a contextualised manner that sensitise citizens to know about their water resources as well as provoke them to design solutions for the water problems. The communication framework mainly comprises questions that start from why there is a need to think about water resources, how citizens can strengthen themselves to know the state of their water resources, and end at how citizens can be the foremost drivers of climate resilient and sustainable water management practices. The tools include:

• Training materials such as presentations and guidebook to guide citizens; especially high school students on the different water resources, understanding their interlinkages, and a need to study them together. These materials are made interactive by asking questions from observations around water. A guidebook on water resource assessment is underway, which shall enable citizens to learn about their water resources through an interactive method. The guidebook would be designed according to the users and will act as a valuable tool to disseminate information about citizen science in water.

• Focused group discussions to interact with communities to understand their knowledge about water resources and how it has changed over years. These group discussions could be an enabler of effective dialogue between researchers and communities to learn from each other and think of solutions that are shaped by both scientific and indigenous knowledge.

• Leveraging social media to enhance communication with students by creating WhatsApp groups for each school to monitor and collect data. This also helps in keeping active engagement with the Citizen Science network by making it a knowledge sharing platform.

• Developing ICT platforms: IWRM website to develop scientific understanding of Ahar river system, combining ground and satellite data to develop integrated model for water management, and a database for academicians and policymakers to devise evidence-based solutions.

• Using established ICT platforms such as My Well application to upload citizen science data by citizens themselves. This helps in creating a citizen-owned database for water components such as rainfall measurement, water quality, well monitoring, and ecological health assessment.