Based on the research deployed, we advanced the field beyond the state of the art, reaching the following conclusions:
• Civic monitoring is a powerful source of evidence for law enforcement. Action in court through evidence gathered by ordinary people can signal unaddressed civic demands to authorities.
• The hurdle of having civic evidence accepted by courts is lower where the process of gathering evidence is relatively non-technical and based on ordinary observations. The more sophisticated the sampling, the greater the likelihood the counterpart or the court may challenge the evidence.
• As there are no specific rules expressly dedicated to civic evidence, it would help future cases if enforcement authorities could provide guidance on the standards applied to assess such evidence. A legal recognition at a procedural level of this peculiar category could also be valuable, especially considering its potential to fill official reporting gaps.
• Civic monitoring can also be an occasion for cooperation between citizens and authorities on a shared issue. The practice is contributing to the provision of public services. Embracing it can be an opportunity for authorities to make governance models more responsive.
• Although at present there are no examples of judicial cases where environmental damage was prosecuted mostly based on citizen-gathered evidence in Europe, a potential for this type of evidence can be found in climate litigation.
• Performing civic environmental monitoring should be recognised as a rightful contribution to official enforcement of environmental law, in particular under the Aarhus Convention. This could unleash civic monitoring potential and shield environmental defenders from adverse consequences of their monitoring activities.
We ensured these results could reach the target audience, including civil society and policy and law-makers. In particular, to refine engaging methods of dissemination we cooperated with the JRC Science & Art initiative. We also joined efforts with two other MSCA IFs projects for deploying an outreach strategy, and we produced a factsheet and a catchy video with the support of the Horizon Results Booster.
The scientific, social and policy impacts of our research have been recognized by multiple actors. In 2023, we won the European Commission JRC Young Scientist Excellence Award and our research featured in the ‘#SHEU LEADS’ campaign launched by Commissioner Gabriel for Innovation, Research, and Culture. The project also received three honorary mentions in 2023: at the EU Citizen Science Prize, at the STARTS Prize for Science, Technology & the Arts and at the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions competition. In 2022, SensJus was chosen as ‘Breakthrough of the Year’, in the Science Engagement category of the Falling Walls contest, Berlin.
