Page - 216 - in Freshwater Microplastics - Emerging Environmental Contaminants?

7 ExpandingCitizenScience:TheBottom-UpApproach Thus, citizen sciencecanserve to integrate citizens in scientificprojects increasing the scientificdatapool andenablingcitizens toobtainamore informed foundation for developing riskperception.There are however limitations to the current useof CS. Projects such asMarine LitterWatch and International Pellet Watch can be characterizedas top-downCS,where scientistsdefine theproblemandaskcitizens to help collect data to either illuminate and/or possibly solve the problem.While this is importantwork, it isdependentonandlimitedtotheproblemsscientistshave identified, and the citizens are primarily seen as “supporters.” In this context, we refer to thisasa top-downCSapproach.Analternative(butnotmutuallyexclusive) approachcanbecharacterizedasabottom-upapproach,wherecitizensareincluded already in the problem definition phase, potentially transcending a role as “sup- porters.”Thiscan facilitate strongercooperationbetweenscientist andcitizensand lead to amore sustainable development [62]. Such an approach has some advan- tages that wewill address below, before concluding the chapter by evaluating to what extent CS can serve as a valuable tool for increasing and qualifying risk perceptions. Clausen [62] argues that the current dominating paradigm for inclusion of specific stakeholders in policy and environmental planning processes (i.e., gover- nance) comes at the cost of the participation and influenceof citizens in a broader sense andhas a tendency to alienate citizens fromnature andnature conservation. This isdueto thefocusonexpertelicitationinthegovernanceprocess(althoughthe currentgovernanceparadigmincludesmoreanddifferentstakeholderscomparedto traditional expert-centeredplanninganddecisionprocesses),whichhasa tendency to decouple political processes from lay persons’ perception of the problem. Clausen [62] further argues that by involving citizens in evolving shared norms and activitieswithin a given topic, it is possible to facilitate the development of a communitygovernanceand thereby initiateacontinuoussustainableprocesswhere citizens gain stronger ownership of (managing) the environment they are a part of. The earlier inclusion of (local) citizens can further strengthen the scientific foundation for addressing an environmental problem.Valinia et al. [63] discussed howthe inclusionof localcitizens’knowledgeaboutaSwedish lakecould improve the scientific foundation for assessing the anthropogenic impact on the water quality. The authors argued that local citizens possessed historical knowledge, which theyused toconceptualize referenceconditions in regard to theenvironmen- talstateof the lake[63].Theyshowedthatbycomparing localknowledgewithdata fromfishandwaterchemistrymonitoring,aswell aspaleolimnological reconstruc- tions of water quality, local citizens’ knowledge corresponded well with the historical data, helping to deliver a more detailed picture of the present state of the lake.This localknowledgeenabledabetter assessmentof thewaterqualityand could thus contribute to developing a better scientific foundation for regulation [63].Andthis isnotall.AsshownbyNielsenetal. [64], thiskindof involvementof local citizens in natural resource management certainly broadened out the total 216 K.Syberg et al.