Advocacy means taking action to effect change in an issue that personally matters to you. Advocacy makes up a large portion of activity undertaken in community science projects. These projects often produce much-needed data about an environmental issue, and that data needs someone to speak for it [1] to different audiences:

• Your neighbors
• Elected representatives
• The press
• Regulatory agencies
• In court

This page is a place to collect and organize resources on advocacy. Visit the advocacy tag page to see the latest community posts about advocacy on Public Lab, and get updates on this topic by following:

Follow Advocacy

Also visit related pages on organizing, community science, and law and policy.

Sources: [1] @kgradow1’s presentation about the bucket air monitor.

Lead image: Peter Blanchard, CC BY

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Advocacy methods

Within the five main types of advocacy efforts (communicating with your neighbors, the press, elected representatives, regulators at government agencies, and through litigation in court), here are some particular processes that projects may seek to generate or contribute to:

Connecting with peers

• Telling your story
• Relationship building (see section on audiences, below)
• Awareness raising & education
• Community organizing
• Mobilizing with those working on adjacent, interconnected issues

Increasing your reach

• Getting media coverage
• Nonviolent direct action

Bumping it up a level

• Power mapping to know where to focus your efforts
• Pressuring elected officials to act on an issue
• Making an issue a focus of an upcoming electoral campaign season

Engaging with environmental governance processes and political realities

• Providing public input to established regulatory processes such as permitting for land uses that are continuing, changing, or new.
• Documenting exceedances or violations to trigger agency investigation, administrative action, and/or enforcement action
• Identifying gaps in regulatory coverage and designing new regulations
• Providing political cover to regulators so they can stand up to corrupt political/economic influence (Example: showing proof of valid grounds to sue the government agency for not acting)
• Litigation against government agencies for not meeting legal standards for environmental protection

Interacting with more powerful corporate neighbors

• Mediation with industry
• Litigation against industry

Additional methods published on Public Lab and tagged with advocacy will appear on the advocacy methods page: https://publiclab.org/methods#advocacy

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More on the types of audiences projects may seek to reach

Image: from this post by @a1ahna

• Others who are affected
• Neighbors who are also constituents
• Community leaders in churches, schools, civic associations, care businesses
• Landowners making private land use decisions
• Elected representatives
• Agency civil servants
• Industry employees, management, ownership, or board of directors
• Journalists
• Environmental lawyers

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Activities

Activities on Public Lab that have been tagged with activity:advocacy will appear here

Research notes

You can find all research notes on Public Lab that have been tagged with advocacy here: https://publiclab.org/tag/advocacy

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Join the conversation

Questions from the community

• See if other community members are asking questions like yours
• Ask a question so other community members can offer support
• Sign up below to be notified when someone asks an advocacy-related question

Questions tagged with question:advocacy will appear here

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Post an Issue Brief

Share information about a local environmental health concern and get support from the Public Lab community by writing and posting an Issue Brief. Visit “Write an Issue Brief” to find information on what an issue brief is, see examples, and learn how to write one.

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Stories in community science advocacy

Image: by @mlamadrid, from this story about using balloon mapping to temporarily stall eviction proceedings in Kampala, Uganda

• Environmental & Public Health Advocacy Success Stories
• Stories from the Public Lab community
• Air monitoring bucket successes in South Durban and Sasolburg, South Africa, and in Tonawanda, New York

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Further reading and resources

• Beautiful Trouble

Wikis on advocacy