The public mobilisation and democratisation of science, through citizen science processes supported by practical and accessible tools of science, can unlock an effective response to South Africa’s, and the world’s, water crisis.

Citizen involvement in the monitoring of South Africa’s water resources is showing encouraging potential for citizen science to effect meaningful change in water resource management and contribute towards improved catchment conditions, a new report compiled for the Water Research Commission (WRC) shows.

The report emerged from a project, the ‘Development of Citizen Science Water Resource Monitoring Tools and Communities of Practice for South Africa, Africa and the World’, which aimed to develop citizen science tools, interventions and social processes so as to better respond to the challenges related to water resources.

If citizens’ knowledge of water resources is improved, the greater understanding of and insight into the state of their resources empower them to interact with authorities and comanage their resources in a more meaningful way.

“Individual members of society can be data inputters instead of just data users,” says WRC CEO Dhesigen Naidoo, noting the need to eliminate the outdated concept of relying solely on centralised decision-making processes based on central experts.

The incorporation of citizen science into the broader system has the potential to be “powerful” in the fundamental management of the scarce water resource, he says.

The report, specifically dedicated to citizens as scientists in their own right, provides simple water quality monitoring tools for all water resource types, thereby equipping citizens with a toolbox to enable them to pursue more tangible, action-taking processes of comanaging their water resources.

This active engagement will, in turn, effect greater change and better management of the scarce resource.

According to the report, the key objective of the research project was to develop a suite of tools for use in community-based water resource monitoring.

“This process included the dissemination of the developed toolkit to promote citizen science and school-level education and awareness of catchment and river health,” it says.

With persisting and increasingly complex water challenges, the authorities generally do not have sufficient capacity to monitor, manage and overcome the issues, and the citizen science launch marks the beginning of the establishment of a national and Southern African Development Community citizen science network or society.

The current water quality pollution status shows that all water resources, from mountain streams and wetlands to rivers, estuaries and groundwater, are in “serious trouble”.

More than 80% of South Africa’s rivers are threatened by pollution of one kind or another, the report warns.

South African National Biodiversity Institute (Sanbi) freshwater biodiversity planner Namhla Mbona says government is currently constrained in terms of resources, funds and limited personnel to do complete comprehensive monitoring assessments and care for the country’s vast biodiversity.

“We need South Africans to also engage in assisting with this task. Citizen science contributes in areas where we would not be able to,” she tells Engineering News.

“The current citizen science tools developed by the WRC [for example], are assisting us in trying to take the big scientific platforms and put them in a simple citizen-science understandable way and still feed them into the [large Sanbi] assessment reports and policy decision-making.

Ground Truth director Dr Jim Taylor, coauthor of the report, says existing and new tools for citizen and school-learner monitoring of water resource and catchment health indicators were identified and developed.

A strong focus has also been placed on the development of school lesson plans and materials on water resource tools to be integrated into the school curriculum.

“This project found that approaches to social change that are more inclusive and action orientated are more likely to be successful than the more passive awareness-raising exercises,” the authors note in the report.

The Citizen Science Tools

The key aim of the research project is to develop a suite of tools for use in community-based water resource monitoring, based on the review and assessment of key water resource types, including rivers, streams, wetlands, estuaries, springs and rainfall.

The tools developed included an aquatic biomonitoring tool, including the further refinement of the existing mini SASS tool and associated phone applications; the Riparian Health Audit; the Water Clarity Tube; the Transparent Velocity Head Rod, or Velocity Plank; the Wetland assessment tool; the Estuary assessment tool; the Spring tool; various weather monitoring tools, including Citizen Science Rain Gauges; school lesson plans; and the Enviro Picture Building game to investigate catchment issues.

The project has also resulted in the development of a new, electronic, virtual toolbox on the Internet that can be added to as new tools emerge and where current tools can be further refined or developed.

“This organic and virtual toolbox is complementary to pre-existing tools and websites and is designed to give life to this project beyond the current funding cycle,” the report concludes.