A Buzz for Sustainability and Conservation: The Growing Potential of Citizen Science Studies on Bees

Expanding involvement of the public in citizen science projects can benefit both volunteers and professional scientists alike. Recently, citizen science has come into focus as an important data source for reporting and monitoring United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Since bees play a...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inSustainability Vol. 13; no. 2; p. 959
Main Authors Koffler, Sheina, Barbiéri, Celso, Ghilardi-Lopes, Natalia P., Leocadio, Jailson N., Albertini, Bruno, Francoy, Tiago M., Saraiva, Antonio M.
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Basel MDPI AG 01.01.2021
Subjects
Agricultural production
Bees
Biodiversity
Collaboration
Crowdsourcing
Data collection
Developing countries
Ecosystem services
Environmental education
Hunger
Knowledge
LDCs
Monitoring
Participation
Partnerships
Plant reproduction
Pollination
Production methods
Quality of education
Science
Sustainability
Sustainable development
Sustainable use
Systematic review
Volunteers
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Summary:Expanding involvement of the public in citizen science projects can benefit both volunteers and professional scientists alike. Recently, citizen science has come into focus as an important data source for reporting and monitoring United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Since bees play an essential role in the pollination ecosystem service, citizen science projects involving them have a high potential for attaining SDGs. By performing a systematic review of citizen science studies on bees, we assessed how these studies could contribute towards SDG reporting and monitoring, and also verified compliance with citizen science principles. Eighty eight studies published from 1992 to 2020 were collected. SDG 15 (Life on Land) and SDG 17 (Partnerships) were the most outstanding, potentially contributing to targets related to biodiversity protection, restoration and sustainable use, capacity building and establishing multi stakeholder partnerships. SDG 2 (Zero Hunger), SDG 4 (Quality Education), and SDG 11 (Sustainable Cities and Communities) were also addressed. Studies were found to produce new knowledge, apply methods to improve data quality, and invest in open access publishing. Notably, volunteer participation was mainly restricted to data collection. Further challenges include extending these initiatives to developing countries, where only a few citizen science projects are underway.
ISSN:2071-1050
2071-1050
DOI:10.3390/su13020959