PARENT SESSION
Symposium 15: The bringing together of professional ecologists and educators with citizen science
Organized by: KA Yee and P Marra
Wednesday, August 10, 1:30 PM - 5:00 PM, Meeting Room 517 C, Level 5, Palais des congrès de Montréal

Forging partnerships between stakeholders in citizen science programs.

Oliver, Peter ^{*,1, 2}, Whelan, James ^{2, 3}, ¹ Natural Resources and Mines, Nambour, Queensland, Australia² Coastal Zone Cooperative Research Centre, Indooroopilly, Queensland, Australia³ Griffith University, Nathan, Queensland, Australia

ABSTRACT- This paper reports on outputs from a three-year, action research citizen science case study in South East Queensland, Australia. These outputs give a rich understanding of barriers and bridges to effective collaboration and partnership between grassroots natural resource management (NRM) groups and one of the regional NRM bodies established by the Australian government. Australia now has fifty-six such bodies. This study differentiates between collaboration, which involves stakeholders working together to achieve mutually desired goals, and partnership which involves them re-negotiating power, risk and decision-making when they collaborate. Although the term citizen science is not commonly used in Australia, community and industry have been increasingly encouraged to assume this role over the last two decades. Landcare, catchment management and other grassroots NRM groups have engaged people from community and industry as citizen scientists to better understand local ecosystems and to plan, monitor and manage the land, water and biodiversity that comprise them. A new era of Australian Government funding arrangements is encouraging citizens to manage natural resources regionally, in partnership with government. Citizens from environmental and other groups who may not have been as well supported by previous funding initiatives are now more involved. Outputs from this study centre around four themes. Firstly, regionalisation appears based on assumptions that geographic scale of interest of citizens will be congruent with regionally established boundaries and that roles and responsibilities of stakeholders are clearly understood. Secondly, stakeholders need to have realistic expectations of regionalisation, particularly of resources available. Thirdly, matters central to working collaboratively such as inclusiveness and mandate; stakeholder time and travel; indigenous involvement; when to act deliberatively or according to procedures; and the need for critique, learning together and adaptive management need careful consideration. Finally, conflict between stakeholders appears integral to NRM regionalisation and needs to be embraced and addressed. The project will be completed by June 2005. Outputs from the final stage of this research are also reported on as part of this paper.

Key words: Citizen Science, Partnership, Regionalisation