About Our Project
MAGEUZI YA MAARIFA
Transformative knowledge for people, forests and climate in Tanzania
This project brings together universities and community organisations in Tanzania to critically
examine the use of digital citizen science in ongoing forest carbon and resilience initiatives. We
investigate how and to what extent digital citizen science can empower citizens and local knowledge
systems, and what the implications are for policy and practice.
The overall objective is sustainable development in Tanzania, and global learning on public
participation in climate governance. The immediate objective is to produce insights and increase
research capacities on how and to what extent digital citizen science can support climate-related
forest governance and decolonise knowledge systems for resilient development policies
Research Questions
We address four research questions, each engaging one of the knowledge gaps:
1
To what extent do digital citizen science projects in Tanzania incorporate Indigenous and
local knowledge systems and address local community aspirations in climate- and naturerelated
forest governance?
2
How, why and to what extent do local communities engage, shape and adopt digital
citizen science technologies, and what are the differences across wealth, gender and
generations?
3
How and to what extent are citizen generated data applied in public climate- and naturerelated
forest management and decision-making, and how do different actor’s agency and
perceptions affect this?
4
To what extent do digital citizen science projects facilitate transformative knowledge
systems in Tanzania, and how can national policies and institutional frameworks support this?
Work Packages
Our research is organized into the following specialized work packages, each addressing key aspects of the project.