OTTERS Project Newsletter - March 2024
The OTTERS project made significant strides since its launch a year ago to help progress the goals of EU Mission “Restore our Ocean and Waters by 2030”, which aims to protect and restore the health of our ocean and waters through research and innovation, citizen engagement and blue investments. The OTTERS project’s role, in particular, is building efforts to scale up citizen science and engagement and to promote water stewardship by changing both hearts and minds.
In support of the EU Mission Ocean, the OTTERS project has endorsed the Mission Charter. This marks a significant milestone in the journey towards a cleaner and more sustainable future for our planet’s vital aquatic ecosystems.
Most notably, the project organised several impactful workshops that brought together experts, practitioners, policy makers, educators, and enthusiasts to discuss citizen science, water stewardship, and preserving our aquatic environments.
The first event was the ‘State of art in aquatic citizen science‘ workshop, held on February 8, 2023, in Berlin, Germany in a hybrid format. The workshop included presentations from OTTERS partners and other relevant citizen science projects from both marine and freshwater domains and discussed novel approaches in data collection, citizen engagement and behaviour, as well as metrics to evaluate project success.
Taking place as part of the 21st European Week of Regions and Cities (Brussels, 9-12 October 2023), a second workshop featured policy experts from the EU and United Nations, as well as Mediterranean-based citizen science initiatives, providing valuable insights and sharing experiences that contribute to the advancement of aquatic citizen science and water stewardship.
On October 20, 2023, OTTERS co-organised with the Iliad Digital Twins of the Oceans a side event at the Ocean Best Practices (OBPS) workshop VI titled ‘Challenges of using citizen-generated data for ocean sustainability and policy advancement’. The session included legal and policy experts, tech innovators, standardisation experts, academics, and the civil society as it dived deep into the opportunities of increasing citizen engagement using innovative tools, standardising data capture and management, ensuring data interoperability, quality, and accessibility, in the aim of policy compliance and advancement to ensure ocean sustainability.
Additionally, two more thematic workshops were organised. The first, conducted online on November 27, 2023, focused on the ‘Legal issues regarding citizen-generated data for the water domain‘. This event addressed critical legal aspects surrounding water-based citizen science and engagement, including GDPR compliance and citizens’ privacy concerns. The second, organised on February 15, 2024, delved into ’Ethical issues regarding citizen engagement and water stewardship’, from being mindful of our impact on aquatic ecosystems during projects, to informed consent, data authorship and ownership, data exploitation, and the use of artificial intelligence.
The outputs of these workshops will be used to develop a threshold report on key legal, ethical and data standardisation issues, providing a crucial resource for existing and future citizen science projects in the water domain.
Moreover, the OTTERS project has developed two draft White Papers on the standardisation and the potential role of citizen science in contributing to European freshwater and marine directives, respectively. These drafts will soon be published on open repositories and experts from both domains will be invited to openly review them before the final versions are published.
For outreach and communication for Mission “Restore our Ocean and Waters by 2030”, the OTTERS project also actively participated in diverse events spanning different corners of Europe and beyond, particularly in those that tackled various facets of citizen science, and increasing public engagement and ocean literacy, in the pursuit of societal transformation towards water stewardship.
Among the many events, we note here the project’s participation in the Digital Ocean Forum 2023 in Brussels, the Falling Walls Summit 2023 in Berlin, the GFCM Fish Forum 2024 in Antalya, the Mission Ocean Matchmaking Event in Brussels, meeting with European MPs at the Parliament to update them on Mission Ocean outcomes, and the Ocean Literacy in Action event, held recently in Brussels.
Lastly, the OTTERS project presented posters at the DG-Mare Fisheries Science Seminar 2023 – Citizen Science, the Forum Citizen Science conference in Freiburg, Germany, and the Mission Ocean Forum 2024, in Brussels, Belgium.
The recordings of all aforementioned events and copies of the presented posters can be found on our website: http://otters-eu.aua.am/
What’s to come next?
For its second year, the OTTERS project has planned a very rich agenda of events.
In April 2024, the project will be organising an important side event at the European Citizen Science Association (ECSA) Conference in Vienna, Austria (April 3-6, 2024) to review and discuss best practices in citizen science in the water domain. Several partners of the OTTERS consortium will be present at the conference, so if you are attending, do not hesitate to show up at our side event and reach out with ideas of collaboration.
From June 30th to July 5th, OTTERS is organising a Summer School targeting the educational sector and, more particularly, focusing on secondary teachers’ capacity building needs. The primary objective of this course is to equip educators with the essential tools and expertise required to empower students and enhance their understanding of the marine & freshwater environment.
The OTTERS Summer School will gather educators from Europe in a joint training event in the coast of Greece, as an initiative to highlight the importance of citizen science in schools and the power of students as change makers in their communities. If you are a school teacher and would like to participate to become an OTTERS school ambassador, you can register here.
In Spring this year, OTTERS will also start co-designing Spring-to-Sea Water Stewardship campaigns particularly in Italy, Portugal, and Armenia. These are regional, cross-community campaigns, aimed at clustering several ongoing citizen-science campaigns to facilitate joint efforts, the adoption of best practices, and greater community involvement, to increase ocean literacy and engagement in a broader aspect, from springs to the ocean. So if you are already involved in any water-related citizen science project and would like to be part of a bigger initiative, please do not hesitate to reach out to us!
As in the previous year, OTTERS will continue to organise a series of workshops and webinars to discuss pertinent issues related to citizen engagement and water stewardship to advance the ambitious goals of #MissionOcean. If you’d like to discuss any relevant topic with us, reach out and we’d be happy to organise a joint workshop. To make sure you do not miss any of our upcoming events, make sure to follow us on social media. We are present on most of the common platforms.
What can you do right now?
Firstly, you can follow us on social media. Secondly, if you are an educator or have already engaged with schools, students, or youth groups in citizen science, please complete this survey. We’ll use the results to better plan our upcoming activities involving schools.
Thirdly, if you or your institution is involved in any project or action related to water environments, then we urge you to endorse the EU Mission Charter of the ‘Restore our Ocean and Waters by 2030’. This will give you access to the Mission’s resources and dashboard, and you will be better informed about all relevant projects and events happening in your vicinity. The OTTERS project itself is a signatory of the charter, signifying a resolute step towards achieving a cleaner and more sustainable future for our planet’s vital aquatic ecosystems.
Thank you,
Garabet Kazanjian, OTTERS Project Coordinator