The Impact of Citizen Science on Sustainable Environmental Governance

Dear Colleagues,

The unprecedented problems facing the planetary environment need multiple complex changes at all levels of the socio-economic system towards more aware, knowleadgeable, careful actions. To deal with changes, individuals and institutions, both public and private, are involved in specific decisions regarding the design, the financing and the management of interventions to influence actions to induce the positive environmental impact. There is a need for new approaches, from pluridisciplinary perspectives, based on community participation. Ethics, motivation and engagement guide the actors’ actions, adapting to their needs and constraints, but maintaining the common values targeting the sustainability. It is a new way of thinking, which requires transformative learning, aiming the empowerment of citizens and transformation of institutions to obtain new understandings of things they change.

This Special Issue is meant to provide researchers and other interested stakeholders the opportunity to share new findings on the subject of citizen science as transformative learning tool in the process of sustainable environmental governance. There are expected original research papers, reviews, case studies and specific interventions presentations, focusing on topis such as, but not limited to:

• Citizen Science;
• Sustainable Environmental Governance;
• Projects focusing on Citizen Science for Sustainable Environmental Governance;
• Transformative Learning in Education for Sustainable Development;
• Participation models in Sustainable Environmental Governance;
• Limitations and potential improvements of Citizen Science in Sustainable Environmental Governance;
• Collaborative process and models in Citizen Science on Sustainable Environmental Governance;
• Information and communication technologies in Citizen Science on Sustainable Environmental Governance.

References

1. McKinley, D.C.; Miller-Rushing, A.J.; Ballard, H.L.; Bonney, R.; Brown, H.; Cook-Patton, S.C.; Evans, D.M.; French, R.A.; Parrish, J.K.; Phillips, T.B.; et al. Citizen science can improve conservation science, natural resource management, and environmental protection. Biol. Conserv. 2017, 208, 15–28. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.biocon.2016.05.015.
2. Bonney, R.; Shirk, J.L.; Phillips, T.B.; Wiggins, A.; Ballard, H.L.; Miller-Rushing, A.J.; Parrish, J.K. Next steps for citizen science. Science 2014, 343, 1436–1437. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.1251554.
3. Vohland, K.; Land-Zandstra, A.; Ceccaroni, L.; Lemmens, R.; Perelló, J.; Ponti, M.; Samson, P.; Wagenknecht, K. The Science of Citizen Science; Springer Nature: Berlin/Heidelberg, Germany, 2021; p. 529. Available online: https://library.oapen.org/handle/20.500.12657/46119 (accessed on 10 November 2022).
4. Fraisl, D.; Campbell, J.; See, L.; Wehn, U.; Wardlaw, J.; Gold, M.; Moorthy, I.; Arias, R.; Piera, J.; Oliver, J.L; et. al. Mapping citizen science contributions to the UN sustainable development goals. Sustain. Sci. 2020, 15, 1735–1751. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11625-020-00833-7.

Prof. Dr. Camelia Lucia Drăghici
Prof. Dr. Dana Perniu
Dr. Cristina Mihaela Salcă Rotaru
Guest Editors

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• transformative learning
• citizen science
• environmental data collection
• community participation
• community values
• sustainable governance
• environmental governance
• sustainable development goals