Background: The City Nature Challenge

This seed innovation case study is centred around the free ‘iNaturalist’ app and its annual ‘City Nature Challenge’ (CNC) event taking place over a long weekend at the end of April. iNaturalist is a global citizen science network for recording species observations, ‘an online social network of people sharing biodiversity information to help each other learn about nature’ (www.inaturalist.org).  In 2023 alone, more than 1.1 million people submitted 41 million records of about 300,000 species, allowing free access to biodiversity data for research, governments, and the public. The iNaturalist CNC aims to engage residents and visitors of any registered location in collaboratively documenting urban biodiversity, with their participation in the challenge (number of records submitted) in turn stimulating and sustaining their interest in biodiversity (and use of the iNaturalist app) over the longer term. The 2023 challenge generated over 1.87 million observations from 66,000+ participants across 486 cities (www.citynaturechallenge.org).

Potential for transformative change

This case study involves transdisciplinary, place-based research, centred around the annual organisation and participation in the CNC in Coventry city-region (UK). It has been selected to explore and amplify the role of digital apps as educational tools, making species identification and recording accessible to the wider public and therefore enhancing biodiversity knowledge and nature-society relationships.  DAISY will expand participants practical, personal and political spheres of impact, including i) amplifying ‘within’ and ‘without’ by integrating activities and awareness-raising into the CNC events in Coventry, aimed at broadening the citizen science component to the monitoring of invasive alien species; ii) amplifying ‘without’ and ‘beyond’ by expanding the policy reach of iNaturalist to incorporate broader educational objectives (e.g. through the design of accompanying resources and training events for schools, aimed at upskilling teachers on ways to incorporate iNaturalist (or similar) app-based activities as educational tools for enhancing students’ knowledge of biodiversity and its relevance across the curriculum); and iii) amplifying ‘within’ and ‘beyond’ by identifying ways of expanding the intersectional inclusivity (e.g. age, gender, race) of the annual Coventry CNC (e.g. branding; additional targeted events), as a basis for involving a more representative cross-section of local society in transformative change for biodiversity and equity.