How we measure sustainability matters. In a new World View article published in Nature Sustainability, IIASA researcher Dilek Fraisl explores why citizen science and other participatory approaches should play a greater role in developing the indicators and methodologies that guide international action on climate, biodiversity, and sustainable development.
How we measure progress towards global sustainability goals influences what gets prioritized, funded, and acted upon. Yet the indicators that underpin international frameworks are often treated as objective measures, even though they are shaped by political choices about whose knowledge is valued, what evidence counts, and which issues are emphasized or overlooked.
This question gained renewed relevance when Parties to the Paris Agreement adopted the 59 Belém Adaptation Indicators in November 2025. Like indicators used for the Sustainable Development Goals and Global Biodiversity Framework, they translate political commitments into measurable outcomes, but are also shaped by institutional priorities and power.
As an expert on citizen science and sustainability monitoring, IIASA Senior Research Scholar Dilek Fraisl has helped demonstrate how citizen science data can strengthen environmental monitoring, support the Sustainable Development Goals, and improve evidence-based policymaking. Her research has helped advance the integration of citizen science into global sustainability monitoring and governance and highlighted its potential to make global monitoring systems more inclusive, representative, and effective.
In her World View article, Fraisl shows that the question is no longer simply whether citizen science can produce robust, high-quality data, but whether governance systems will integrate it into official monitoring and allow citizen science communities to influence what is measured and how. Practical barriers including limited capacity, resources, and data-management systems, constrain its uptake, but do not fully explain its limited role.
The deeper challenge is political and institutional. Indicator development is largely led by governments, government-nominated experts, and international organizations. This leaves limited opportunities for local communities and scientists working with them to influence which knowledge and data sources are accepted as valid evidence.
Fraisl argues that integrating citizen science into indicator and methodology development would do more than fill data gaps. It would give local communities, scientists, and civil society a greater role in shaping sustainability monitoring, improve representation in under-monitored regions, and can also reveal discrepancies between official statistics and lived realities, including higher levels of pollution, biodiversity loss, or land degradation.
Ultimately, the politics of measuring sustainability is not only about data. It is about whether institutions are prepared to broaden participation, confront the power dynamics behind measurement, and share influence over how progress is defined and assessed.
Read the full World View article in Nature Sustainability.