Can citizen reporting apps plug the data gap in the Himalayan wildlife trade?

Understanding the social impacts of enforcement activities on illegal wildlife trade in China

“…Enforcement agencies could also lay the foundation for social engagement to help meet the challenges posed by the increasingly concealed and organized illegal IWT (Sas-Rolfes et al 2019 ), such as leveraging citizen science on intelligence gathering platforms with digital technologies (e.g., Walsh and O’Connor 2019 ; Chauhan and Gallacher 2021 ). For example, in China, one of the online whistle-blowing platforms is on one of the most popular social media platforms (i.e., WeChat) through the official account called “Tencent For The Planet”.…”

“…The platform was jointly launched in 2015 by Tencent and several international conservation organizations (e.g., International Fund for Animal Welfare), with support from the main governmental agency responsible for conservation in China (i.e., NFGA). Optimizing the whistle-blowing platforms could either promote enforcement efficiency or increase public perceived behavior control, which could in turn motivate more people to participate (Klöckner 2013 ; Chauhan and Gallacher 2021 ). Future research could use the platforms to evaluate the effectiveness of social engagement and explore the trigger mechanism of public whistle-blowing to unpack the decision-making processes in conservation, as these details are almost always omitted in the news.…”

“…Future research could use the platforms to evaluate the effectiveness of social engagement and explore the trigger mechanism of public whistle-blowing to unpack the decision-making processes in conservation, as these details are almost always omitted in the news. Notably, while new technologies to improve social engagement have been developed in criminology (e.g., Walsh and O’Connor 2019 ; Chauhan and Gallacher 2021 ), implementing them in the IWT context and across various different societies might be challenging. Related regulatory efforts will need to carefully consider the social context, local norms and acceptability of such actions to minimize unnecessary side effects.…”

Conceptualising the Link between Citizen Science and Climate Governance: A Systematic Review

“…Among studies with a multifocal approach that collect data in different countries, six are comparative case studies [92][93][94][95][96][97], and two are conceptual articles which include case studies being discussed [98,99]. One interesting feature is that the study area often exceeds the national borders and embraces geographical regions or ecosystems characterised by the presence of relevant natural elements or resources, whose conditions are being impacted by climate change; i.e., the Baltic Sea [78], the Himalayan region [79,80], river basins [81][82][83], groundwater aquifers [84], forests [85,86], coral reef [87] and migratory flyways [88]. Three publications focus on the European context, especially delving into EU policy, regulations and research agendas, and their link with the practice of CS [89][90][91].…”

“…Moreover, themes of forests [86,106] and oceans [87,107,108] health protection and resilience boost a holistic approach to climate-related health risks which acknowledges the non-separateness of human and non-human communities [89]. [104,109,114,117,120] Food systems governance [89,98,103,104] Disaster management [80,115] Biosecurity risk monitoring [106] Infrastructure assessment [116] Governance of environmental heritage [78] Urban forest governance [96] Conservation 20 (45.45%) [79,[81][82][83][84][85][86][87][88]90,92,93,99,107,108,[121][122][123][124][125] Water governance [81,82,84,85,92,99] Biodiversity conservation [79,…”