Citizen Science and the Politics of Knowledge: Monitoring fossil fuel impacts with the ERICA project

The 2023 Production Gap Report (see Fig. 1) warned that by 2030 global production of coal, oil and gas is projected to be more than double the amount compatible with the 1.5°C pathway. Governments still plan to produce more than double the amount of fossil fuels in 2030 than would be consistent with the Agreement (SEI, Climate Analytics, E3G, IISD and UNEP 2023).

While diplomats negotiate scenarios of low fossil fuel use development, extraction continues to grow, and communities living near wells, refineries and pipelines are left to cope with increasing negative impacts on their air, water and land (Pellegrini et al. 2024).

This tension between promised scenarios and extractive realities is not new. It reflects the structural power of the fossil fuel industry, which not only drives emissions but also controls much of the knowledge about its own impacts.

Environmental data are often provided by the industry itself, raising questions about reliability, accuracy and transparency. Independent research is chronically underfunded, and regulatory authorities frequently rely on figures that are partial at best and misleading at worst. For affected communities, this means that even the most basic evidence, such as pollution levels in rivers or particulate concentrations in the air, can be disputed or dismissed, undermining their capacity to demand accountability (Ottinger 2021; Mena et al. 2019).

Against this backdrop, citizen science is increasingly showing it is both a practical tool and a political strategy. Citizen science monitoring initiatives can generate independent sources of evidence – producing pressure for a structural change (Leona et al. 2021). This participatory approach has already been exploited by thousands of communities facing environmental degradation to support grassroots campaigns, engage with politicians and institutions, contribute to academic research and raise awareness locally (Ossola et al. 2024). Beyond collecting the data itself, citizen science builds forms of collective knowledge that connect lived experience with evidence based on data, generating opportunities for shifting the terms of debate. It moves environmental issues from expert-dominated spaces into public arenas where communities can contest official narratives.

Over the last 15 years the European Union has increased its investment in citizen science. The ERICA project – Environmental Research through Inclusive Citizen Action, is one such EU-funded project. Awarded with funds from the Erasmus+ 2023 programme, this transdisciplinary initiative was developed via an international consortium formed by three European universities and four civic associations, led by the International Institute of Social Studies (part of Erasmus University Rotterdam). The project focuses on fossil fuel industry impacts, aiming to empower citizens through citizen science, improve public understanding of climate change and nurture climate actions and environmental protection engagement.

What distinguishes ERICA from many existing initiatives is its emphasis on actionable knowledge: trained citizens collect and manage data that can directly inform public debate, policymaking, education and awareness campaigns. This data aims at empowering civil society through accessible visualizations, supporting local authorities with reliable evidence and providing independent inputs for litigation, mediation and corporate accountability.

Unlike most ad-hoc citizen science initiatives that address single variables, ERICA tries to generate multi-variable observations tailored to stakeholder needs. It also goes beyond typical climate change projects by linking local environmental quality with climate change, enabling citizens to engage with both simultaneously. By making these connections visible, ERICA undermines the convenient separation between ‘local pollution’ and ‘global climate’ that often allows policymakers to sidestep responsibility. The project thus addresses both the everyday realities of fossil fuel extraction and the planetary crisis it sustains.

The innovation here lies less in the technology used and more in the politics of knowledge behind it. By insisting on actionable information, ERICA directly challenges the dominant expertise long held by industry and, in many cases, by state institutions complicit with extractive expansion. Citizen-generated data can be used to pressure companies, strengthen environmental litigation, expose regulatory failures and push municipalities or even EU bodies toward more ambitious climate action. By creating spaces where science, advocacy and civic participation intersect, the boundaries that usually keep these domains apart are productively destabilized.

Adopting a post-normal science approach (Funtowicz and Ravetz 1993), ERICA foregrounds the sociopolitical dimensions of knowledge production, asking:

• Who has the authority to define valid knowledge?
• What makes data good data?
• How should uncertainty be addressed?

These questions are built on framings by several scholars: Shiv Visvanathan (2005) (who coined the term ‘cognitive justice’), philosopher Miranda Fricker (‘testimonial injustice’, 2007), STS scholar Barbara Allen (‘knowledge justice’, 2018). In its first year, the project has identified best practices for producing actionable knowledge, emphasizing synergies between sociotechnical and sociopolitical strategies. The former include visibility, clear communication, policy relevance and accuracy; the latter focus on inclusive participation, justice-oriented approaches and socially robust data (Ossola et al. 2024).

The project highlights the value of transnational collaboration by monitoring fossil fuel impacts across three European locations, fostering collective learning and knowledge exchange among diverse monitoring communities. ERICA engages academic and non-academic actors in Basilicata (Italy), home to Europe’s largest onshore oil fields; Tarragona (Spain), where a vast petrochemical complex borders a community of 600,000 residents; and Konin (Poland), a lignite region with open-pit mines and coal-fired power plants. In each, grassroots mobilizations have emerged to challenge industry impacts through community monitoring and legal action. By producing an e-booklet with a literature review and best practices, and an e-learning platform with training modules specific for fossil fuel impacts, ERICA equips stakeholders with the skills and tools needed to generate actionable knowledge and strengthen local monitoring efforts. A counter-model of collective knowledge production -  building transnational solidarity - is fundamental at a time when nationalism and corporate lobbying fragment climate policy.

The fossil fuel industry continues to position itself as indispensable, even as its operations produce environmental damage at every stage of the supply chain. Meanwhile, governments often treat citizen science as complementary to official data, rather than as a challenge to it, risking co-optation. The danger is that grassroots monitoring becomes absorbed into institutional routines without changing the underlying dynamics of extraction. ERICA seeks to resist this by emphasizing civic engagement, peer-to-peer learning and the creation of community monitoring practices that can be sustained beyond the project itself.

Ten years after the Paris Agreement, it is clear that international agreements alone cannot deliver climate justice. The distance between high-level commitments and local realities is simply too wide. Projects like ERICA highlight the need to democratize environmental knowledge, not as a technical add-on but as a political necessity. By enabling citizens to document, contest and publicize the impacts of fossil fuel extraction, citizen science becomes a form of resistance to both industrial pollution and the inertia and fragmentation of climate governance. It shifts the question from how much data we have to who controls it, who interprets it and who benefits from it.

Since the drafting of this article, the International Institute of Social Studies has started a new citizen science project: Monitoring and Acting for Human Rights, Environment and Social impact (MARMOT) with five non-academic partners (Source International, Smart Revolution, Swedwatch, Social IT,  Centre d'Arbitrage Regional OHADAC) and Yaroslav Mudryi National Law University (Ukraine).