Our Managing Director Rosy Mondardini was part of the international Citizen Science delegation that attended the Science-Policy-Business Forum at the UN Environment Assembly (UNEA4), with the aim of promoting Citizen Science at the world’s highest-level decision-making body on the environment.

A lot of the focus at UN Environment is quantifying the progress of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), but statistics are depressing as data are available on only around 30% of the indicators. There is huge potential for citizen science to fill these gaps, and the topic was discussed in most sessions. The delegation issued an official declaration in the closing plenary, and got citizen science referenced and endorsed in the UN resolution and on the statement of the Science and Tech Major Group.

The gathering was also a chance for a governance meetup for the new Citizen Science Global Partnership (CSGP), including welcoming CitizenScience.Asia and the Ibero-American network (Red Iberoamericana de Ciencia Participativa) in the Citizen Science networks, together with the well established US, European and Australian Citizen Science Associations.

The CSGP is currently running a SDG and Citizen Science Maximization group specifically with the SDGs issue in mind.