The situation caused by the COVID-19 pandemic outbreak made the organisation of this international conference particularly challenging. The CS-SDG team explored ways for holding a hybrid conference and complementing the live conference with digital formats for both conference participants and speakers to enable remote participation. In the end, this resulted in an event that could be followed both onsite and online via a conference software.
Impact
The conference programme was organised around the linkage of citizen science with all of the SDGs and comprised 19 sessions separated into three overarching themes in line with the objectives of the conference: “Addressing global challenges”, “Concepts and methodologies for the SDGs”, and “Policies, platforms and networks to achieve the SDGs”. In total, the conference programme included 81 presentations, 46 e-posters, 10 keynotes, 5 plenary talks, 2 panel discussions and 1 evening event.
An overview of the structure of the conference, as well as the descriptions of all sessions, can be found in the conference volume (
https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.4473072(öffnet in neuem Fenster)). 500 participants attended the conference online and 60 connected onsite in Berlin. All conference talks and formats were streamed and recorded, being made openly accessible in a YouTube playlist of the MfN (
https://cutt.ly/3ctiEyi(öffnet in neuem Fenster)). This list contains 32 recordings and a short film on the CS SDG Conference and Declaration.
Based on the conference evaluation, we can conclude that the conference was able to bring together the citizen science and SDGs communities as well as representatives of the quadruple helix, foster the development of new ideas and projects, and demonstrate that as many stakeholders as possible are required to join efforts in order to solve global challenges and achieve the SDGs. For that, exchange between society and the scientific community must be supported and encouraged. A big step in this direction is the Conference Declaration.
Declaration
The main aim of the Declaration is the communication of the complexity and reliability of citizen science transparent for all. Aspiring to bring together the Citizen Science and SDG communities, the CS-SDG project team organised a series of five virtual meetings called “Become an author of the Declaration” during the summer organised and moderated by Jörn Knobloch from the CS-SDG project team at the MfN and hosted by ECSA.
The Declaration groups the various important contributions of citizen science to the SDGs in three central recommendations: 1) Harness the benefits of citizen science for the SDGs, 2) strengthen citizen science and its connections with other communities, and 3) strengthen future citizen science systems. Between the 8th of October 2020 and the 9th of February 2021, a total of 290 individuals and institutions/organisations/projects (thereof 184 individuals and 106 institutions/organisations) have signed the Declaration.
Survey
While preparing and disseminating the conference, we invited citizen science practitioners to participate in the survey. The first findings were presented at the conference in the session “Partnerships towards the goals – Making sustainable change sustainable”. An open-access publication titled “A Self-Assessment of European Citizen Science Projects on Their Contribution to the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)” with a more detailed analysis co-authored by Nicola Moczek, Silke Voigt-Heucke, Kim Mortega, Claudia Fabó Cartas, and Jörn Knobloch has been published in the peer-reviewed journal Sustainability (
https://doi.org/10.3390/su13041774(öffnet in neuem Fenster)).
