I want to understand what Citizen Observatories are
by learning about their history

The term ‘Citizen Observatory’ comes from the fields of environmental monitoring and Earth observation via satellite technology. Citizen Observatories build on citizen science approaches and focus on understanding and looking after our environment. They are part of a movement to empower communities to monitor their local environment and access the information needed to make effective environmental governance decisions. Citizen Observatories aim to bring together citizens, scientists and decision makers for better governance informed by citizen science data.

The first use of the term Citizen Observatory, to our knowledge, appears in Prof. Jacqueline McGlade’s 2009 Earthwatch Lecture entitled “Global Citizen Observatory – The role of individuals in observing and understanding our changing world”, in which she stated that “it is no longer sufficient to develop passive lists or reports to ‘inform’ citizens of changes in our environment. We need to engage with citizens and ask how they can ‘inform’ us.” 

In her abstract for the lecture, she calls for the use of Earth observation systems such as Global Monitoring for Environment and Security (GMES) (now known as Copernicus) and the Shared Environmental Information System (SEIS). Collecting and using local knowledge in this way will “help us empower citizens and … give us a better indication of what we need to do to be truly sustainable”.

To be able to report on the landscape of Citizen Observatories in Europe, the WeObserve project compiled a list of the Citizen Observatories that were funded under the EU FP7 and Horizon 2020 programmes.

These Citizen Observatories have been mapped on the WeObserve website in a Citizen Observatory Landscape Map that continues to grow as other practitioners and initiative leaders add their own Citizen Observatory  initiatives to the picture. It illustrates the growing range of Citizen Observatories across Europe and can be filtered to highlight different aspects such as project, entity, domain, status, scope and/or funding.

Screenshot of the CO Landscape Map on the WeObserve Knowledge Hub (20/11/2020)

A comprehensive list of the Citizen Observatories and Citizen Observatory-type projects funded by the EU through the FP7 and Horizon 2020 programmes is shown in the table below. The list was taken from the “D2.9 Roadmap for the uptake of the Citizen Observatory knowledge base” (WeObserve Consortium, 2021).

Looking at the historical pathway from the first Citizen Observatories funded by the European Union, there are now also a range of examples supported by national funding schemes (e.g. in Spain and the Netherlands) and by private sector funding (e.g. Coca Cola Foundation).