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Problems affecting development are so complex that it is best to think of them as systems of interconnected issues. However, as they are likely to be approached from different perspectives for different aims, and with different tools, these interventions may sometimes end up competing or contradicting each other.  Take, for example, environmental problems. They are related to the incentives for governments to act timely. But they are also related to citizens awareness, that is, how they could be engaged and persuaded to comply with these policies, and more generally, to have environmentally friendly behaviors. We learned that citizen science can be a means to approach different dimensions of this issue. These conclusions arise from two experiments aiming at shading light on the effects of different environmental citizen science solutions. Below, we share the results.

 First, it is worth recalling what we mean by “solutions”.  Solutions are the things that people unfold daily in their neighborhoods to deal with their problems. In the Accelerator Labs of UNDP, and particularly in ours, the Co_Lab of Argentina, we identify and grow what works in these grassroots innovative solutions to accelerate our knowledge of these complex problems that hamper development, such as climate change or other urgent environmental issues. We do it in different learning loops and with portfolios of actions through which we address several frontier challenges, like our present loop and portfolio on environmental citizen science.

The effects of climate change and other environmental issues have a variety of negative consequences, both for people and communities, especially in developing countries. This complexity becomes apparent, for instance, when oftentimes, citizens do not acknowledge these issues in their daily lives. This is worse for those left behind beset by other more urgent problems. Consequently, they may not be aware of how their behavior can contribute to worsening the problem, or to its solution.

Interventions to cope with environmental issues are urgent. However, identifying these negative effects of climate change is difficult, so citizens neither advocate for policies to address them nor make politicians accountable for the lack thereof. In addition, in developing countries, local governments not only lack resources, but they must focus on their issues, such as poverty, education, and social unrest, among others.

Given this complexity of the environmental issues and the specific challenges they pose for policy making in developing countries, we wondered: how we could nudge environmental awareness for citizens on the one hand, and the governments’ innovation and policies on the other. Therefore, we designed two experiments testing different citizen science solutions looking for some clues. The experiments’ results were presented at the International Political Psychology Association meeting that took place in Athens on July 14-17, 2022 and were received with great interest by academics from different countries, who shared good ideas to continue exploring and about their implications for public policy.

In the first experiment, we made a small-scale panel survey in which a subgroup of the interviewees took part in an experience of citizen science. Our aim was to test its potential effect on the participants’ opinions and environmental awareness.

The experiment was conducted in the span of three weeks in Quilmes City, in Buenos Aires, Argentina, with the collaboration of Lab Ciudadano, an initiative of the Agronomy Department of the University of Buenos Aires. We measured the before and after of environmental awareness of those who took part in this citizens science experience against those who did not.