Environmental citizenship in the making: the participation of volunteer naturalists in UK biological recording and biodiversity policy

Abstract

This paper documents research taking place in the midst of a series of shifts in biodiversity policy in the UK. It examines recent attempts to enrol volunteer naturalists and lay citizens into biodiversity action planning, suggesting that such attempts can be seen as a nascent form of environmental citizenship, which is based on the exchange of knowledge of nature among the different communities involved (policy makers, volunteer naturalists and lay citizens). By focusing on a range of knowledge practices, the paper explores the selective appropriation of some ways of knowing over others. It documents ways in which some actors involved are beginning to reflect on what it might mean for biodiversity policy to accommodate each others' knowledge and practices. The paper suggests that an increased sensitivity to the range of practices and knowledge embodied within these different domains may result in a redefinition and expansion of the category of citizen, and may in turn have implications for the way in which 'biodiversity' comes to be defined.

What happens at the gap between knowledge and practice? Spaces of encounter and misencounter between environmental scientists and local people

“…Wherever it is done, scientific research requires certain kinds of permissions attained at different levels of society, from official research visas to oral acceptance from a village chief. And, even if it is not always recognized as doing so, Western science incorporates (or actively ignores) many different kinds of knowledge (Harding 1991, Ellis and Waterton 2004, Lowe 2004. Thus, it is vital to take a closer look at these spaces to understand how what happens within them can have a significant effect on how the research itself is perceived.…”

Knowing Insects: Hosts, Vectors and Companions of Science

“…Today, amateur entomologists and their expertise are being actively sought out through public engagement initiatives of natural history museums. These initiatives help tap under-represented sources for collections, and at the same time shift notions of expertise by establishing 'amateurs as experts' (Ellis and Waterton, 2004).…”

Conflicting rationalities, knowledge and values in scarred landscapes

“…Light and Higgs (1996) had earlier argued that the act of restoring produces a "simultaneous positive value" for the restored landscape and the communities therein (p. 236). In addition, volunteerism in conservation and restoration can have numerous added benefits and can draw from differing knowledges and secular expertise and so can strengthen relationships between communities and landscapes (Ellis and Waterton, 2004), sometimes referred to as citizen science (Cooper, et al, 2007). Others have argued that while in the restoration of landscapes there is an inherent non-market return to communities, there is a more profound effect within communities that brings a focality or a deepening of people-nature inter-relationships in an ever urbanising society, and hence contributes to a wider awareness of environmental issues (Higgs, 2003).…”