Source · Select Committees · Environmental Audit Committee
Recommendation 79
79
Acknowledged
Paragraph: 375
Citizen science should not be seen as an alternative to adequately funded environmental monitoring by...
Recommendation
Citizen science should not be seen as an alternative to adequately funded environmental monitoring by regulators but it should be encouraged and recognised. We recommend that the Environment Agency explore how best to support the contribution of citizen science to environmental regulation and to incorporate citizen science analysis in its work wherever possible and appropriate. The Environment 130 Water quality in rivers Agency should, for instance, consider how best to provide a publicly-available platform for citizen scientists to enter water quality readings in a way that would allow results to be verified by other users, regulators or companies.
Government response summary AI-generated
The Government welcomes the focus on citizen science and CaBA partnership monitoring and encourages water companies to engage with CaBA partnerships. They expect the Environment Agency's links to the water industry and catchment partnerships should ensure citizen science data is taken into account.
Summary of the government's response below — read the verbatim text to verify.
Paragraph Reference:
375
Government Response
Acknowledged
HM Government · verbatim extract
Acknowledged
We agree that citizen science can play an important role, including in assisting the Environment Agency with monitoring, particularly through Catchment Partnerships. Citizen science builds local awareness beyond that of specialist water managers and can drive a move towards the design of new indicators for catchment condition. This is already happening through the Catchment Monitoring Cooperative which obtained £1.7 million in funding from Ofwat’s Breakthrough Water Challenge fund last year to kickstart the scheme in eight catchments. The Environment Agency is also working with the Association of Rivers Trusts to support their Catchment Systems Thinking Cooperative (CaSTCo) initiative. The CaSTCo project will establish a more focussed and better supported toolkit of methods and approaches that are interoperable and can be shared through common platforms. Over a three-year period, the CaSTCo project will develop and implement their proposal in eight demonstrator river catchments across the country which we will engage with and support.
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