The ‘caring community’: Recognizing and shielding civic environmental monitoring

‘Community-based monitoring’, is a form of care for the land, and a manifestation of broader citizen science. The practice at times embodies resistance to the way environmental resources are governed, whereas other times is a healthy complementation to institutional environmental governance. However, often, the role of such ‘monitoring’ communities is not appropriately recognized and they are even, in some instances, criminalized. Unofficial forms of monitoring should be acknowledged by institutions, especially when these institutions fail to appropriately govern environmental issues. Two cases are discussed, which – first – demonstrate the aspect of ‘care’ entailed by community-based monitoring’ and – second – the need for recognizing the added value that the civic sentinels bring to environmental governance. The main argument developed is that forms of community care for the environment should not remain an unofficial and informal practice but, when needed and as appropriate, should be recognized beyond the engaged community, mainly through the granting of a legitimate status within the system. This recognition should occur while respecting the legal context, judicial processes and the separate and unique role of authorities competent for (environmental) law enforcement

Civic Monitoring for Environmental Law Enforcement

This book presents a thought-provoking inquiry demonstrating how civic environmental monitoring can support law enforcement. It provides an in-depth analysis of applicable legal frameworks and conventions such as the Aarhus Convention, with an enlightening discussion on the civic right to contribute environmental information. Civic Monitoring for Environmental Law Enforcement discusses multi- and interdisciplinary research into how civil society uses monitoring techniques to gather evidence of environmental issues. The book argues that civic monitoring is a constructive approach for finding evidence of environmental wrongdoings and for leveraging this evidence in different institutional fora, including judicial proceedings and official reporting for environmental protection agencies. It also reveals the challenges and implications associated with a greater reliance on civic monitoring practices by institutions and society at large. Adopting original methodological approaches to drive inspiration for further research, this book is an invaluable resource for students and scholars of environmental governance and regulation, environmental law, politics and policy, and science and technology studies. It is also beneficial to civil society actors, civic initiatives, legal practitioners, and policymakers working in institutions engaged in the application of environmental law

Citizen-gathered data to support public services under emergencies: promises and perils of openness

Society is experiencing sudden and sometimes unexpected crises mul- tiplying at a fast pace. The emersion of these crises requires a swift intervention under the form of providing public services. However, institutions often struggle to cope with crises. In such confronting situations, local people, networks of non- governmental organizations, and associations mobilize. They do so setting up ini- tiatives and producing (open access) data that could fall within the category of ‘citizen-generated data’. This contribution draws on theoretical notions such as ‘tech- nology appropriation’ and ‘collective intelligence’ in the context of citizen science initiatives to set the scene. It then dives into the analysis of two concrete examples of phenomenon discussed. Subsequently, it explores relevant stakeholders’ position on the matter, relying on insights gathered during a focused workshop. In the discussion, the article explores how the current EU legal framework and international standards for data sharing could ensure that these data flows flourish and are used by the public sector, while preserving potentially conflicting interests

Exploring the Role of Civic Monitoring of Coal Ash Pollution: (Re)gaining Agency by Crowdsourcing Environmental Information

Citizen-gathered evidence (CGE) gathered by individuals organized in collectives have the potential to demonstrate environmental and social wrongdoings in court. We identify (collective) agency and resistance in how individuals and communities that have been exposed to socio-environmental stressors turn to gather CGE. We explore the modes through which people gather scientific data, produce CGE, alert authorities to environmental harm, and the methods by which data can be shared with communities, beginning with the case studies of civic environmental monitoring addressing coal ash pollution in North Carolina. We analyze the case studies through a theoretical lens built on (1) the theory of civic monitoring 'as resistance'; (2) the argument that CGE can embody 'collective intelligence'; and (3) the concept of 'crowd science' through a decentralized yet coordinated network. In the first part of the article, we introduce the case studies. Then, we illustrate our theoretical frame as applied to the analysis of the cases. We discuss the cases and in particular the CGE at issue through the prism of the frame. We demonstrate how CGE can be valuable not only for civil society and civic organizations, but also for competent authorities. In our conclusion, we identify critical junctures of our case studies, such as that of 'knowledge crowdsourcing' to demand justice that triggers the government to take action and the existence of a 'coordinated' yet decentralized crowd to capture the full extension of the problem. Lastly, we outline the limitations of our study, a future research agenda, and still open questions

Coding of Far and Near Space in Neglect Patients

Far (extrapersonal) and near (peripersonal) spaces are behaviorally defined as the space outside armreaching distance and the space within arm-reaching distance. Animal and human studies have shown that this behavioral distinction corresponds in the brain to a composite neural architecture for space representation. In this paper we discuss how the activation of the neural correlates of far and near space can be modulated by the use of tools that change the effective spatial relationship between the agent’s body and the target object. When subjects reach for a far object with a tool, it is possible to show that far space is remapped as near. We shall also argue that space remapping may not occur when far space is reached by walking instead of using a tool

A place for people's knowledge in climate evidence: Exploring civic evidence in climate litigation

This article examines the possibilities for data gathered by individuals and communities to demonstrate climate impacts on people's lives in domestic and international climate litigation, as well as the likely procedural constraints that such evidence may encounter. Building on recent decisions of domestic, regional and international courts and bodies, and looking in particular at cases related to climate displacement, we consider the potential for civic evidence to provide valuable testimony in climate litigation, for example, grounding abstract and diffuse harms in personal and locally relevant frames. The article concludes by advancing a research agenda to test, and support or disprove, the argument developed that civic evidence from climate-affected people could be more robustly deployed in climate litigation and could have a complementary and reinforcing, rather than competing, role alongside institutional evidence

Exploring legitimization strategies for contested uses of citizen-generated data for policy

In this article, we investigate how citizens use data they gather as a rhetorical resource for demanding environmental policy interventions and advancing environmental justiceclaims. While producing citizen-generated data (CGD) can be regarded as a form of ‘social protest’, citizens and interested institutional actors still have to ‘justify’ the role of lay people in producing data on environmental issues. Such actors adopt a variety of arguments to persuade public authorities to recognize CGD as a legitimate resource for policy making and regulation. So far, scant attention has been devoted to inspecting the different legitimization strategies adopted to push for institutional use of CGD. In order to fill this knowledge gap, we examine which distinctive strategies are adopted by interested actors: existing legitimization arguments are clustered, and strategies are outlined, based on a literature review and exemplary cases. We explore the conceivable effects of these strategies on targeted policy uses. Two threads emerge from the research, entailing two complementary arguments: namely that listening to CGD is a governmental obligation and that including CGD is ultimately beneficial for making environmental decisions. We conclude that the most used strategies include showing the scientific strength and contributory potential of CGD, whereas environmental rights and democracy-based strategies are still rare. We discuss why we consider this result to be problematic and outline a future research agenda