Community (citizen) science for assessing nature's benefits: A systematic review and survey

Abstract The undervaluation of nature in decision‐making significantly contributes to the current global biodiversity crisis. However, assessing the benefits of nature for people is challenging, partly due to barriers in collecting relevant data. We therefore explore whether community (citizen) science could support holistic assessments of nature's benefits to inform national policies, using the UK as a case study. We use a mixed methods approach, featuring a systematic review of UK community science programmes, a survey of UK community scientists and a comparison of UK national guidance on assessment of nature's benefits with national community science programmes and scientist experience. Our study is the first to: (a) combine a systematic review and survey to examine the relationship between UK community science and nature's benefits, (b) assess community scientists' opinions of the use of community science for assessing nature's benefits nationally and (c) evaluate links between national guidance on assessing nature's benefits, current community science programmes and community scientist experience. Both the review and the survey found that while few UK community science programmes directly assess nature's benefits, many indirectly relate to nature's benefits, most often through the assessment of biodiversity, which underpins long‐term benefit delivery. Community scientists supported further expanding and integrating community science as a supplementary approach to evaluating nature's benefits, with some caveats. However, the review and survey also revealed divergences between national guidance on assessing nature's benefits, the academic literature on community science and the experiences and opinions of community scientists of nature's benefits, specifically for benefits from culture and recreation, soils and minerals and aquatic environments. Our results suggest that community science is a valuable tool for engaging communities in assessing the benefits of nature to people, to strengthen the evidence base for decision‐making and encourage pro‐environmental behaviour; however, future research and policy should better integrate community science into the evaluation of nature's benefits and vice versa. Addressing existing gaps in community science and expanding assessment methods to be more inclusive of pluralistic nature valuation approaches is crucial for a wider application of community science to assessing nature's benefits. Read the free Plain Language Summary for this article on the Journal blog.