Participatory Water Science and Resistance to Extractivism

Indigenous environmental justice (EJ) movements increasingly use citizen science (CS) for environmental monitoring. This project examines how as part of CS, EJ movements strategically incorporate water science to produce new knowledge, and whether and how the incorporation of water science shapes the outlooks and capacities of Indigenous water defenders to address potential threats to Indigenous communities’ health, livelihoods, and territories. This participatory project is a collaboration between a political anthropologist, a biosystems engineer, an environmental chemist, a medical geographer, Indigenous community organizations and governments and allied-NGOs, as well as community scientists. Interviews will be conducted to examine how Indigenous EJ movements use water science to not only address development, but to also shape the knowledge, ethics, and skills of movement participants. The project supports community access to water science and environmental mapping, develops a collaborative methodology for training community scientists, provides substantial graduate student training, organizes local meetings and conferences, and shares findings with environmentalists, academics, professionals, government agencies, and international audiences. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.