European Commission highlighted the WeObserve efforts to consolidate knowledge collected from Citizen Observatories, Communities of Practice and other initiatives in the two recent policy briefs. Read below the article that was published in European Commission website.
Citizens Observatories are initiatives that engage citizens and other stakeholders in community-based environmental monitoring. The connection between citizens and the policy communities is often limited to data gathering. Active partnership in policy and governance are missing. In addition, the relevance of Citizen Science and Citizen Observatories has only recently been considered in GEO activities.
Citizen Observatories can shape environmental governance measures and complement the EU’s Earth Observation monitoring efforts by increasing the availability of ground-based observations for all 17 Sustainable Development Goal.
Project WeObserve has consolidated knowledge collected from Citizen Observatories, its Communities of Practice, and other related initiatives in two policy briefs with recommendations for policy makers on how to foster Citizen Observatories to address environmental challenges:
- ‘A Roadmap for Citizen Science in GEO – The essence of the Lisbon Declaration‘ aims to secure the integration of Citizen Science and Citizen Observatories into Global Earth Observation System of Systems (GEOSS).
- ‘Mission Sustainable: Fostering an enabling environment for sustainable Citizen Observatories’ provides four recommendations that can contribute to the generation, execution and sustainability of Citizen Observatories.