Indigenising Citizen Science Tools
River water quality and ecosystem health monitoring in South Africa is conducted not only by trained ecologists but also by citizen scientists. However, the monitoring tools have not been adequately modified to suit the linguistic aptitudes and purposes of black South African citizen scientists. This project seeks to address this stark lacuna by incorporating indigenous knowledge into river monitoring tools. The results will work beneficially in two ways: for the scientific community and those dependent on riverine ecosystems for their daily living. A key output is that the project will create enthusiasm about the tools local communities already employ – and vest ownership of those tools in them. In the first instance, these communities are knowledgeable because of their intimate dependency on the rivers and their resources. This project will locate, identify and employ indigenous knowledge in water resource management. This in turn will enhance citizen skills to facilitate the reporting and collection of ecological data.
PROBLEM ANALYSIS
Rapid biological monitoring of rivers in South Africa is conducted using tools modified from Western scientific approaches. The modifications of these tools are exclusively ecological, and have never extended to incorporate indigenous knowledge and languages.
In their current form, these tools thus assume execution by specialists or individuals conversant with English. Ecologically, the tools have been extended for use by communities or non-specialists through environmental stewardship programs such as Adopt A River.
This extension (in what is also known as community science, crowd science, crowd-sourced science and civic science) requires indigenisation of the attendant linguistic apparatus, which must be made more accessible for use by non-specialists.
This will be achieved by incorporating not only indigenous language but also local knowledge, to enhance identification of the organisms. The pivotal consequence will be creating enthusiasm about and ownership of the tools by local communities, plus environmental literacy, using languages they are familiar with.
Impact
The “science decolonial commitment project”, was intended to further indigenisation of citizen science tools. While it has been successful, there were areas for improvement.
First, on successes, I am proud to record that the team I assembled from the University of Pretoria and the University of KwaZulu-Natal worked together excellently as a multidisciplinary group. We engaged in intricate research endeavours. Our findings resulted in tangible research outputs, including reports, scholarly articles (https://doi.org/10.3390/insects14100795), posters and presentations of utility to others in this field. Second, we adopted the Signature Library based in Kholwani Primary School, located in Jabulani-Soweto.
Here I established warm relationships with the school management, learners, volunteer librarians and literacy activists, as well as with the Sandis’ Ubuntu Trust that helps fund the Signature Library Project. This has been a fulfilling journey and a source of beneficial knowledge and inspiration to me. As an advocate for knowledge preservation, I have found the library to be a great platform to share my passion with youngsters and likeminded peers.
While the Signature Library story represents success as part of community outreach and engagement, the work is still in its infancy. There are many more conversations that await. Thus, once the research findings have been published, they can be used as a basis to build further conversations with scientific communities and government agencies to widen support for this initiative.
