Afnan Agramont
Researcher in water and environmental governance at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB) Department of Water and Climate
Millions of people rely on water that is never tested. This gap is particularly pronounced in low and middle-income countries, where less than 3% of global water quality data is produced.1 Monitoring systems are often costly and technically complex, limiting their implementation in rural communities. As a result, socio-environmental risks remain largely invisible, even when they directly affect human health and the biodiversity on which livelihoods depend. Drawing on experiences in Bolivia and Kenya, this article shows how the lack of accessible water quality information shapes how communities understand and respond to environmental change. In the Katari River Basin, Indigenous communities live with ongoing pollution but lack the data needed to support claims of environmental injustice. In the Yala Swamp, citizen science makes visible how the wetland improves water quality, while also revealing growing pressures on its ability to do so. These cases show that the challenge is not only about collecting more data, but about making information meaningful and usable. Citizen science can help bridge this gap, but its impact depends on stronger links between local knowledge and decisionmaking processes at various levels.
