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Setting the scene
I can be a little bit controversial, that I think that we should remove the narrative in which we say a person can change the world through changing their behavior. You have no impact as an individual. You need to gather forces, you need to gather other individuals, you need to create a movement, a community, and this community will expand at some point, then you will have an impact.
JANE
Luigi Ceccaroni is a scientist and an activist. He manages strategic innovation at Earthwatch Europe. He works on advancing citizen science in Africa. He is co-editor of The Science of Citizen Science. His passion for citizen science is a motivation for all of us. Let’s listen to what he has to say and see what it means for us. So Luigi, it’s a real pleasure to see you face-to-face in real life, as such.
LUIGI
It’s a pleasure too, but I suppose there is another dimension of real life. This is still a little bit weird one.
Citizen science in Africa
I hope so, yeah. We’re going to be talking about citizen science, in particular the African perspective. And before we actually get into it, could you give a brief description of what citizen science is for my listeners who might not understand what it means?
LUIGI
Yes, I can give a very simple description of it, which doesn’t go into all the nuances, but it should be easily understandable. So citizen science is when we do science with the participation of the citizens. So citizens can be involved in different phases of the scientific process. They can collect data, they can analyze data, they can be part of the decision about the scientific questions. So yeah, the important part is that there is a scientific research question and there is a participation of the citizen.
JANE
Very good. And I think that’s going to be continue to becoming more and more important these days when you look at everything that’s happening around us.
LUIGI
Yeah, it should.
Safecast crisis-driven citizen science
One comment you made in our earlier exchange of information was you said that the dynamics, the community dynamics of citizen science in Sub-Saharan Africa is quite different from what you call the crisis-driven models, like Safecast. And I interviewed one of the creators of Safecast, Pieter Franken, about a year ago. So if anyone listening to this is interested, they can check out that video. It was crisis-driven. There was a crisis and citizen science was used and created what people call Safecast. I’ve read somewhere that it’s considered to be one of the very most reliable citizen science data collections in the world. What is different about. First of all, do you agree with that? And if so, what’s different between, I would say, the Global North and the Global South, if we can simplify it?
LUIGI
Right. Well, first of all, maybe should we remind the listeners about what Safecast is? So Safecast is an app that allowed citizens to measure radioactivity, and it was created after, I think it was the Fukushima incident.
JANE
Yes. Yes.
Slower change means engagement of citizens in Africa
And so it was an initiative in Japan that allowed citizens to participate in this data collection about the radiation monitoring. So it was very successful. And let’s say it was, as you said, crisis-driven. So there was a clear crisis. It happened in 48 hours from the incident, so it was something that was created very, very quickly. In Africa, the situation is very different. So it is true that we have a crisis in Africa, we have crisis everywhere, but the timescale is different. So when we have pollution, when we have change in environmental conditions, when we have a change in water accessibility or let’s say water use, this is not something that is changing in days, something that is changing over years, over decades.
So the trigger is different. It’s not the same that we had in safeguards. So also the engagement of the citizens needs to be different. We need other elements that are able to engage the citizens. And these elements usually are related to empowerment. So we want to empower the local communities in something that is affecting this very community. So if there is water that is not drinkable both by humans or by animals, well, maybe the government is not doing anything. And it’s not that there is an incident and the water became suddenly polluted. It’s something that happened over a long period. And now we have the tools to empower the local communities to understand, through these citizen science methodologies what is the level of contamination, and so they can push for a solution. First, when I explained about citizen science, I explained it from, let’s say, a very general point of view, but maybe I can give quickly just a couple of examples so that people can understand better what, in practice, citizen science is.
Biodiversity monitoring into global repositories
And the two examples, two of the most common examples are one about biodiversity monitoring. So in this case, people use their phones to take pictures of animal or plant species and they recognize these species. They upload them to a global repositories where all the scientists of the world can then download the data and use them in their research. Another case is the one in which the citizens contribute to the environmental quality monitoring. So in this case, another example is that when we send the local communities, the citizens, very inexpensive kits that they can use to measure the quality of their water, their soil, their air, and in the same way, they upload this data into global repositories and then everybody can use this data. First of all, the scientists, but then if they are, let’s say, managed in a certain way, this data can reach the policymakers and they can make a real impact in how the environment around the communities is managed.
Trust in data collected and degrees of quality
Is the data trusted when it’s collected by normal people?
LUIGI
Should. Maybe sometimes, we have trust issues. In the case, for example, of Safecast and that Japanese initiative, they were using high quality instruments and the trust, both because of the kind of data they were measuring and also because of maybe the geographical context, we had an immediate high trust in the data. In the African context, things are potentially more complicated because there might be, initially at least, a question of trust. So when data are coming from plain citizens, immediately both the scientist and the policymaker tend to doubt about the quality. So first of all, we have to say that the quality is not something that is measured in black and white. So we have degrees of quality. So it is true that sometimes we have lower quality data and higher quality data coming from the citizens, but they can both be interesting. So depending on what you have to do, you might be fine with low quality data.
Maybe you just need a lot of density. So maybe spacial and temporal density, that’s maybe the most important thing. So the quality, the precision with which you collect the data maybe is not that important. So the important thing is that the quality of the data is documented. So if we have so-called metadata that record the quality of the data, then you use them if it’s the right quality for you. So the quality is not always needed at the same level. And then through this, you build trust. But I say that an important element in trust building is how the data are collected. So because when we think about citizens collecting the data, we are thinking about doing them in a way that is not scientifically correct. And we might think about collecting data in a biased way. So usually when we talk about the serious citizen science projects, we talk about project in which citizens are trained.
Treating bias – even in scientists
There is a foreign methodology that is used, and they just don’t go out there and collect data without knowing anything. There is a training phase made by more experienced citizens or by professional scientists until they show that they can collect data in the way in which they should be collected. And the other problem is the bias. It is true that data collected by citizens can be biased, but it’s true that data collected by professional scientists are biased. So bias is something that is not really possible to take out of the equation. Everybody’s biased. Scientists are biased in a way. Citizens can be biased in another way. We need to understand what this bias can be, and then we can work and, let’s say, treat this bias. But we cannot think that one kind of data is biased and the other kind is not biased. Everything is biased in science and we need to deal with that.
JANE
So by bias, you mean a particular point of view that the scientists or the citizens would be using to draw conclusions from their data? And I would imagine that sometimes, it brings up political issues.
LUIGI
Right. That’s a kind of bias. Another bias that is more intrinsic to the data is that, for example, citizens tend to collect data where they see the problems. So maybe the data can reflect problems that are not so, let’s say, common as they see, just because the data collection was concentrated in the problematic areas. And another thing is, for example, if you think about biodiversity monitoring, some species are collected in higher numbers because maybe the animal or the plant is particularly beautiful. So they are more attractive and they tend to receive more attention from the citizen.
Quality of data impacts decision-making
So if you have, let’s say, maybe a beautiful butterfly receives more, let’s say, observations than a rat. So we need to understand that these things exist and we just take that into account. And then, as you mentioned, there can be a bias in the interpretation, but I’m less worried about that because once you have the database, well, then you can rerun the interpretation. It’s easier to, let’s say, interpret things in the right way if you have a good base of data. Then if you have a database that is very biased and you don’t know how. Well, then all the following steps like interpretation, like decision-making on them, that can be problematic.
JANE
So the communities of people who are collecting this data, do they feel like they are part of really building knowledge or do they tend to see themselves as a data collectors? And if it’s the second, how can you get them involved in the true purpose of what they’re doing?
LUIGI
This is also something that is different according to different geographies. I mean, it is true that in the majority of the cases, citizens are doing the data collection. This is not the only task they do, but it’s the most common. So if citizens see themselves as data collectors, it can be true, it can be right, and it’s good. I mean, data collection is a very, very important part of the process. A lot of troubles are related to the fact that we don’t have enough data. So the fact that citizen science can collect a huge amount of data, especially in situation, in conditions and in context in which the official science is not there, is lacking presence or is lacking, let’s say, the right sampling rate. So that’s important.
Citizens acquire knowledge and own decision-making processes
But I think that, especially in the African context, what the citizens appreciate is this knowledge acquisition element. So okay, they collect data, but at the same time, they acquire knowledge about the particular situation affecting their community. And this is very important. And the other element is that through citizen science, through this knowledge acquisition, through this data collection, they acquire a stake in the problem that is at stake. So they feel that they are an element of the decision-making process that hopefully will try to manage that problem. So it’s not just knowledge acquisition, it’s ownership of the decision-making process that is going to happen.
JANE
Yeah, that’s a strong thing, what you just said, ownership of the decision-making process. That’s probably what motivates a lot of the participants.
LUIGI
Yeah, at least in some parts of the world.
Mobile-First from Africa spread to Europe
Earlier in our exchange of information, you talk about how it’s often mobile-first, that in these countries they have mobile phones. They’re not as well-equipped with computers. They don’t necessarily have high bandwidth, and they might even need tools so they can work with things offline because of lack of connectivity. Is that a problem?
LUIGI
It’s not a problem, but let’s say that, as you mentioned, the context, let’s say technological context in Africa, especially in rural Africa, can be something to take into account. It can become a constraint. So it is true that citizen science nowadays is mainly based on the use of mobile devices, mainly phones. This is everywhere. So in Europe, in our project, we ask participants to use their phones to collect data, to elaborate data, to sometimes also analyze data. In Africa, this is not really a choice. This is something that we have to deal with.
So that’s why we say mobile-first. So everything needs to be designed for a population that has, as main and often only device, a phone. So everything needs to work from a phone because if we have the need of a computer for any part of the process, we might find that the people involved don’t have a computer or they have to rely to a person that has a computer, so they need to transfer the data from the phone to the computer. It’s complicated.
Mobile-First means designed for saving the data
I’ve been in parts of rural Tanzania in which there were no computers, and we used a method that needed a computer to upload the data. And also in some parts of these rural areas, there was no coverage. So when you collected the data, even if you could use your phone, the phone was not connected because there was no connection in that particular part. So sometimes, we had to collect data on paper and then bring the papers to the person with the computer and have this manual uploading. But you can understand that this is not facilitating things. If you have to do it, I mean, even this was the standard way to do it 20 years ago, but now if we have to propose people to go back to pen and paper, you understand that there is a pushback.
So the idea is to make the app in a way that they can save the data, they can buffer the data in the phone, and when the phone is connected back to the internet, then they upload it automatically. And we have a lot of examples. So this is not a technology barrier anymore. It’s just a question of design. So when you design a project of this kind, you just need to use good technology. And the mobile-first is really something that needs to be integrated into the design of anything, if you work in Africa. And it’s good. It’s good.
I mean, things that have been developed for the African context, then we discovered that actually are better than other things that we were using in Europe. And so now we are using the same technology because if you can do everything with your phone, it’s just better for everyone. So this is the kind of learning that we have when we develop things for, let’s say, a context in which you have a resource restriction. At the end, you get products that are more robust and then you want to use them everywhere.
Interpreting data from different parts of the world
Yeah, I’ve read about that in other contexts. I can’t think right now of the guy who wrote about it, but it had to do with favelas and different places, mainly in South America, where people had less access to internet and tools like that. And so they invented ways of working that later spread in general. Speaking of spreading in general across the world, what about environmental and biodiversity, where we need to compare data from different parts of the world? We can’t do just the north or just the south, but we need to look at it as a whole, the earth as a whole planet. Is that happening sufficiently now?
LUIGI
It depends. Some things need to be looked at as a whole. Other things you can have a more local perspective, and that’s absolutely fine. So it depends on what you are talking about. Sometimes things are linked there. If we talk, for example, about, I don’t know, migrations, we have important migrations of birds from Africa and Europe and vice versa. So in that case, you need a very comprehensive geography to understand well how migrations work. So if you only collect data in Europe, you don’t understand anything about migration because there is this twinning between what happens in Europe and what happens in Africa. It’s just an example. I am more ignorant about other parts of the world, but I’m sure that there are migration everywhere. So also when we talk about some species distribution, we want to have a global view of it. And in other cases, we don’t need this global view.
But let’s say that if we have a general view about how biodiversity data are distributed and where they are collected and where the problems are, because problems are not uniform. We have parts of the world with much bigger problems and other parts of the world in which we have less important problems. We need to accept that. For example, I lived in Europe all my life, in different countries, and sometimes we try to think that the problems that we have in the UK or in Spain or in Italy, they are the most important problem and we should dedicate all the efforts of the world to solve those problems. This is just because we don’t enlarge our view and we check what the problems are in other part of the world. So if we go to especially Africa, some parts of Asia, some parts of Latin America, well, then we can really see that the level and the magnitude of the problems is just another one.
Citizen science for environmental problems in poorer areas
So we need to be cautious of that, that there are parts of the world where the magnitude of the environmental problems is much, much bigger. And curiously, these are also the part of the world that are poorer. And of course, there is a correlation about this. And also these are the part of the world where we have less data. So if we focus again on Africa, we have huge environmental problems with a lack of data and with a lack of resources to collect more data. And this is where citizen science really can make a difference. And this is why, I mean, even if I am an old white man, I’m talking about Africa because I think that we should really focus our resources more and more into helping solve the problems that we have in Africa as in other places.
I decided to focus my efforts in Africa because, through my work, that’s, let’s say, the geography that is more easily reachable. But I’m not saying that Africa is necessarily different from other parts of the global south. But let’s say this is where my knowledge is, and this is where I want to dedicate most of the efforts attracting funding, especially from Europe to Africa to solve these huge problems that it is true that are in Africa, but they are affecting population of species, quality of the environment all over the world. So if we have a problem in Africa at some point, we will also sometimes feel the consequences even if we live in other parts of the world.
Horizon Europe Research Program, the European Union open door for funding citizen science in Africa
And what about funding this research? There must be sources of money from people and from organizations. I’m not so sure about global organizations versus national organizations versus very rich people. How can this research be funded, especially in African countries, for example?
LUIGI
Yeah, I mean this question has many answers and it depends a lot on who is trying to get the funding. I cannot give a general answer. I can give you an example of an answer based on my expertise. So for example, as I said, I worked all my life in Europe and I’m working with European funding. So the funding that I use for my research is coming from the European Commission, the research program of the European Commission. As you probably know, the research program of the European Commission is the largest in the world. It’s about under billion every program. The program is seven years. So they dedicate around 100 billion euros or dollars, doesn’t matter, to fund research. And the good thing of this funding is that most of the countries in the world are eligible to receive this funding, not the very rich countries like the US or Australia or Japan, but all the 54 African countries are directly eligible to receive research funding from Europe.
So my efforts are precisely channeling funding from the European Commission through the Horizon Europe Research Program towards African countries that can use this money to improve research in African context. Together with Europe, of course. I mean, this is European money and is not European money that can be used only in Africa. It’s money that they used in collaboration between Europe and Africa. But the European Union has several programs that explicitly call for collaboration between the European Union and the African Union. So it’s a very good context that we can use. And this is my expertise. So if you ask me where the funding is coming from, I would say a good source of funding is the European Union. But I know that there are also US initiatives that fund research in Africa. I’m less expert about them, so I cannot really speak about them. But yeah, it’s definitely another source of funding, which is not available in Europe.
Europe and the US are competing in research. So from the European Union, we cannot fund US organization. And from the US, usually you cannot fund European organization. And this is okay. I mean, we all have our, let’s say, big source of funding and we can do with that. But I think it’s good, and I’m repeating myself here, but I think it’s important to understand that the European Union has an open door to all African organization to ask for funding for research in the context of Horizon Europe.
Storytelling engages people, gets to the heart of the community
Interesting. The last point that I’d like to cover with you is one that you brought up to me, which is storytelling and communication. And you talked about how you frame or build a narrative that helps mobilize volunteers in an African context, which is a different framework, a different mobilization than, say, European or North America. How does storytelling fit into that and how is it different in the two contexts?
LUIGI
Well, maybe I’m changing a little bit my mind in time about storytelling because I started thinking that storytelling is very important in an African context, but then I understood that is equally important in a European or global North context. Because at the end, most people, all kind of people are really engaged through storytelling. This is more and more the case and it is much more difficult to engage people based on evidence, based on pure data, because people are becoming a little bit less able to receive this kind of scientific data or scientific evidence. So scientific evidence is important, but what is important is the story that we are able to tell about this data. And of course, this is something that has two different faces. So I really think that, in general, and I wouldn’t really say that this is an African thing, this is something that is happening all over the world when we engage local communities, when we engage citizens.
The importance of knowing who tells the story if AI is used
We need the right storytelling. The problem is that, as you can imagine, nowadays we can have a lot of fake storytelling created by the new AI. So the new AI now is very, very able to build the stories that are not necessarily based on the best evidence or they can be manipulated. So here we are entering, let’s say, a field that is the field of disinformation that is especially, let’s say, important when we talk about storytelling, because it’s important who tells the story. It’s important if AI is used, if this AI is controlled by somebody with some interest. It’s important to understand if there is a bias. But let’s say that in general, if we can have a good control about the storytelling process, this is really the way in which we can get to the heart of the community and we can get the people engaged in a very sustained way.
Cold data is forgotten, stories last after the crisis is over
Because cold data can be sometimes be useful. If there is an emergency you show, for example, now that we have all this big data about the fires, about the heatwave. So we are trying to push a certain narrative into the population through these numbers, this emergency discourse, but there is no story behind it. When the fires will be over, people will forget everything and they will go back to their business and they will forget that there has been this impact. So I don’t see a real story built around the emergency. I only see the news and the need to attract attention, to sell advertisement, to capture attention.
I would prefer to have a story built around the situation where people understand that this is not the emergency of July and August. This is something that is happening and this is something that we need to have a role. If you want to change it, that is an active role that goes on all the time. It’s not just that we open our eyes in summer. So this is what we are trying to do with citizen science. We are trying to empower people with a story that goes beyond the news that we see on television that are related to an emergency, that are related to sometimes an exaggeration of things just to be able to attract attention.
Role of AI in science and citizen science
Luigi, are there ways in which AI can actually play a positive role in what we’re talking about, citizen science in countries around the world, or is it all negative?
LUIGI
Well, here I might be controversial again, but I really think that the impact of AI on science in general and on citizen science in particular is really more positive than negative. Of course, AI can help manipulating information in a bad way, but it can also help in manipulating information in a better way. Let’s say that it can be used to reinforce the messages that we need to reinforce. And especially lately I’m thinking about AI in a way that is maybe a little bit unconventional. So you know that AI now is strengthening its relation with humans. We see more and more human-AI relationships of all kinds. And sometimes this relation can be an emotional connection between humans and AI. And we see this emotional connection between human and AI that is exploited in all kind of bad ways. But we are working now on a new kind of connection between humans and AI so that the AI is guiding, let’s say, the way in which humans or citizen science are reasoning about the environment so that their relation with nature, their emotional connection with nature is reinforced.
Strengthening the relation between human and nature
So we are trying now to use AI to strengthen the relation between human and nature. And we think that this is possible, that we can use AI with this very positive outcome because if you strengthen the relation between human and nature, human and the environment, then you have the sustainability of this link in the futures. So if you are emotionally connected to the environment, then you will protect the environment in time because you care about it. It’s not just because you received some news about something bad happening. You care about it through citizen science, you are contributing to the monitoring and protection of it, and this can go a really a long way.
So this is one of the way in which we can use AI to, let’s say, improve the environment in the last instance. But also in general, I mean, I’m a scientist, I’m a researcher, and I see that AI is accelerating research immensely. So when we think about the environmental impact of AI, which is there, we also need to think about the positive impact of this acceleration of science through AI. So let’s not see only the negative elements, but also think about the positive elements of this AI development, at least in the short term. In the long term, and when I talk about long term, we are talking about 10 years now, I don’t really know what can happen.
JANE
I want to talk to you in at least a year from now. I bet a lot of things will have changed over the next 12 months.
LUIGI
I think so. Yeah.
People need to talk together, build momentum, movements and critical mass
To finish off our conversation, I would like you to tell me what you think the average person can do. What can I do? Now I’m producing my podcast. I’m trying to get some stories out, but forgetting that, what can a normal person do to make a difference?
LUIGI
Well, actually, I don’t want to forget about your podcast because the most important people can do really is talk to other people. An individual by themselves, they have no power to change anything. You can have a perfect life, you can recycle everything, you can be very careful with everything, but a person will not change anything. The impact of a person is zero. The impact of a community can be important. So that’s why your podcast is extremely important. That’s why people should talk to other people, should try to build that momentum, that critical mass that will then change things.
So if you think of you as an individual, you cannot really do much. You have no impact as an individual. You need to gather forces, you need to gather other individuals, you need to create a movement, a community, and this community will expand at some point, then you will have an impact. But I think I can be a little bit controversial maybe with this, but I think that we should remove the narrative in which we say a person can change the world through the change in their behavior. It will happen only if we had enough people doing that. And for this, we need your podcast, we need other people doing podcasts, we need scientists writing about science, but writing about science in not only in scientific journals, but also in generalist and journals. We need the community with the tool for their narrative.
Create a narrative by community, where individuals come together
So first of all, we need the community being able to create a narrative, and then we need to give them the tools so that this narrative is shaped in a way in which the policymakers can understand it, can receive it, and can act on it. So this is what really will change things. If we give the responsibility to the individual, so you should recycle this, you should, that’s, I think, a message that will not go anywhere if we just have the individuals thinking that they can change the world through their individual action.
Without a community behind it, without a large community acting in a certain way, we will not have the change that we need. We will have something that can look like a change, but it will not change. And we have seen it. We have seen a big failure in the last decades in which things don’t happen because there is not enough critical mass, not enough community effect to be able to change things.
JANE
So we need to build communities.
LUIGI
Yeah, we need to build communities.
JANE
And within communities, we have to generate ideas and actions that will trigger other people to join the community and to carry out these actions.
LUIGI
Exactly.
JANE
Is that an accurate summary?
LUIGI
It is. And if I can add, last thing is that our time, our resources are limited. So if I dedicate my time and my resources on my individual action, I will not dedicate this time and these resources to community action. So we don’t have infinite time and we cannot do everything. So when you think what you are going to do, instead of doing something that is more isolated, that maybe give a lot of return to you, but not to the community, maybe think it twice.
Earthwatch brings individuals to contribute to the community
For example, at Earthwatch, where I work, we invite people to collect data about water quality. And actually this is something that you do individually, but you do individually as part of the project that put all this data together. And at the end, we have a picture about the state of water quality all over the UK. If you do it individually, without being part of this big project, your effort will not go anywhere. Maybe you know better about the river in front of your house, but you will not change anything just with that if you’re not part of an initiative that is an initiative including a lot of other people like you.
JANE
Wow, that’s inspiring, Luigi. You have re-inspired me for my podcast. The name of it, Imaginize World, is to get people to imagine a different kind of world and how we can make things happen before things happen to us. And so I need to probably start an Imaginize World with community.
LUIGI
I think you already do it. I mean, with the podcast, you created a community and I think that this is just one of the best way of doing it.
JANE
Great. Well, been a very good conversation. I’ve really enjoyed it. Any last minute comment or are you good?
LUIGI
Yeah, no, it was a very enjoyable conversation also for me. Thanks for having me. I always like when I can explain more about the citizen science, especially the impact that it can have in low-income countries, especially in Africa. So I invite everybody to really think about it, invest your thoughts, invest your thinking about how you can be part of some initiatives that can improve the areas of the world where the environment needs it more.
JANE
Thank you very much, Luigi, for your time. It’s been absolutely fascinating and, for me, a great education.
LUIGI
Thank you, Jane. Thanks again for having me.
