Can ‘Citizen Science’ Help Solve the Water Crisis?

The global water crisis today seems like a slow-moving car crash in the making – a crash where typical dashboard gauges will prove painfully insufficient.

The amount of water consumed by humans has increased fivefold in the last century and reserves are quickly depleting in most countries. In the meantime, our lakes and rivers have to grapple with a deadly circle of pollution that floods and droughts are only adding to, and making bathing waters unhealthy and requiring heavy treatment of drinking water. Conventional surveillance that depends on centralized and often resource intensive agencies fails to keep pace, resulting in gaps in data and blocking accountability.

In fact, as the UK Environment Agency intends to continue modestly with only slightly more water-industry inspections in 2026-27, one may wonder: is this just a part of a regular deck-chair rearrangement akin to a similar complacence held broadly across the world, or a paradigm shift still bubbling under the carpet? The solution to this may be a force that is overlooked frequently, however, is infinitely powerful: citizen science – a strategic reinvention of data collection, like a decentralized market-intelligence network shaking a monopoly off its incumbency.

The Crowd-Sourced Edge

The ability to reliably track freshwater bodies around the world, pinpointing hotspots of pollution with enough granularity to effect change, is an insurmountable task. Although a noble approach, the traditional one just cannot scale. Here, citizen science – active participation of citizens in research – comes in as a disruptive power to reckon with. Providing communities with basic test kits puts an army of distributed sensors into the field, producing data at the scale that could never be processed by the professional scientist, working alone.

Consider the pure speed and volume. International non-profit Earthwatch Europe’s Great UK WaterBlitz events, focused on nitrate and phosphate pollution, have recently attracted almost 8,000 citizen scientists collecting 4,000 surveys over a single weekend. This is more than just data – it is a real-time and high-frequency signal providing information on regulatory non-compliance and sources of pollution at a pace that traditional approaches can only envision in their wildest dreams. In Sierra Leone, the incorporation of citizen science data into governmental monitoring almost doubled the quantity of assessed bodies of water, with direct support of their Sustainable Development goals..

Yet the value proposition goes far beyond just data points. Citizen science builds an extraordinary, bottom-up pressure that transforms the accountability landscape entirely. Communities that have first-hand, undeniable information about the pollution affecting their local waters are better placed to speak against the polluters and policymakers alike, forging a strategic benefit to resilience and discipline.

With corporations such as Thames Water reporting big profits in times of crumbling infrastructure, citizen-generated data is the early warning mechanism of reputational harm and government fines. It pushes organizations further than compliance and makes them have true stewardship in the very DNA of their operations. The shift from a purely top-down regulatory framework to one impacted by informed community advocacy makes the system more dynamic and responsive, and it brings accountability on the part of all stakeholders. It is a game-changer on ESG considerations – from abstract ideals to concrete and evidence-based local sourcing.

Institutionalizing Collective Intelligence

Naturally, such a paradigm shift does not come easy. Traditionally, policymakers are suspicious of information created by citizens, and have historically turned to the authority of professional scientists. But this obsolete state of thinking is – fortunately – fading.

Current predicaments are mostly technical and organizational: how to make data compatible between different systems? How to keep citizens interested in the project? How to assure the project long-term funding? These are business issues which require innovative leadership and strategic investment.

To the ambitious executive, the message is simple: when structured and adequately financed, citizen science goes beyond being merely an instrument of data-gathering. It becomes a driver of cultural change as scientific inquiry becomes democratized and the spirit of collective stewardship is restored. It is a potent chance for organizations to reconsider stakeholder engagement, create trust and utilize distributed intelligence to invent never-before insights.

In order to respond to the freshwater crisis, it is perhaps time to make citizen science a mainstream and a fundamental pillar of water governance in the world. This is not simply river-saving, but about breaking new grounds in terms of governance, responsibility and community action.

__Read: Woods, S. (2025). How citizen science can help to solve the freshwater crisis. Nature, 644(7994), 582. https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-025-02614-7