Through education, communication and collective construction of knowledge strategies, the initiative seeks to involve different audiences, including students and local communities, in the collection of scientific data.
Study, question, invest, discuss, share and conclude: this is the basic guideline of the scientific method applied by Citizen Science in the Doce River Basin, an initiative arising from the cooperation between the Renova Foundation, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) and five other institutions in the Doce River Basin .
The program fosters scientific knowledge among members of local communities and young people from primary, secondary, technical and higher education – including university students and graduate students. By bringing the population closer to the concepts of environmental sciences and encouraging active participation in monitoring water and biodiversity, Citizen Science allows communities to become protagonists in the search for solutions and the protection of natural resources.
The actions promoted by the program follow two basic premises: education and communication. Through them, participants are involved in co-participatory monitoring activities for both water and terrestrial and aquatic biodiversity in their regions. The theoretical and practical activities of the projects work as a training course, with classes remotely, online, with exclusive teaching materials and even tests, combining practical, everyday knowledge with scientific foundations from disciplines such as geography, biology and chemistry.
The fronts of Citizen Science in the Doce River Basin
In the educational field, there are five different projects, according to the academic profile and age of the participants:
- Junior Environmental Agent: aimed at elementary school children in schools around the Sete Salões State Park (IEF), in the mid Doce River region.
- Young Scientist: its target audience is high school teenagers from Linhares (ES), from the Bartouvino Costa and Nossa Senhora da Conceição schools.
- Citizen Scientist for technical education students: serves students of the Technical Course on the Environment, in Colatina (ES)
- Citizen Scientist for undergraduate and graduate students : students at the Vale do Rio Doce University (Univale) in Governador Valadares (MG).
- Participatory Water Monitoring: focused on residents of the communities of Cava Grande, Baguari, Pedra Corrida and Tabaúna, in Minas Gerais; and Regência, in Espírito Santo
The program completed two and a half years of operation and, over that time, reached important numbers, such as:
- 488 elementary school students in the area covered by the PESS in the municipalities of Conselheiro Pena, Itueta, Santa Rita do Ituêto and Resplendor, in Minas Gerais
- 116 teachers benefited from the Course “Environmental Education and Citizen Science in the Doce River Basin ” in Conselheiro Pena, Itueta, Santa Rita do Ituêto and Resplendor in Minas Gerais
- 417 high school students in the city of Linhares/ES;
- 32 students from the Environmental technical course at IFES-Colatina;
- 20 academics from Univale – including three undergraduates contemplated as direct scholarship holders of the project
- 75 places in the Participatory Water Monitoring project for communities
- 33 places for the second cycle of Participatory Water Monitoring for members of the Doce River Basin Committee (CBH-Doce)
Other significant milestones were the spread of knowledge from educational to civil society communities. Among the results collected by the projects, some publications were developed, with essential information on biodiversity in the regions where the actions were carried out. In addition, participants shared their knowledge on the website iNaturalist, aimed at the scientific field of local biodiversity.
The Participatory Water Monitoring Project presented an exceptional result in its second year of operation: the students who stood out in the previous year became monitors. Bringing greater engagement to the new group of the project, with the training of these students and with the partnership with CBH-Doce, the trend is that the action will continue regardless of the existence of the Renova Foundation and cooperation with Unesco, becoming a cyclical project open to the entire community.
In the long term, the Citizen Science initiative in the Doce River Basin aims, in addition to recovering the ecosystem, at training citizens who are aware and engaged in environmental conservation and building a more sustainable future.