OPENER: Scoping out a national cOmmunity of Practice for public ENgagement with Environmental Research

Environmental research has the power to connect with people's everyday lives and spark their imaginations. In 2016: a NERC scientist's graphic illustrating global temperatures spiralling upwards went viral on social media and was then used during the Opening Ceremony of the Rio Olympics, being seen by more than 1 billion people; 12.3 million people watched episodes of BBC's Planet Earth II programme making it the most-watched nature show; over 500,000 volunteers contributed 8 million sightings to the RSPB's Big Garden Birdwatch; 12,000 people donated the idle time of their computers to ClimatePrediction.net to run climate models; and 500 people were involved in Biohacking and DIY Science experimentation.

Our ambition is for large-scale public involvement in participatory research practices, such as citizen science, in order to benefit research, researchers and members of the public. We want to progress from 'engagement' being solely passive consumption of media-channelled facts, or ad hoc one-off contribution to a single initiative, to an ongoing active and routine engagement with environmental research, participating, questioning and debating. Our vision is to leverage the power of the people and their involvement in environmental science at all stages of the research - from research design to explaining the evidence and impact - to address major environmental challenges, co-produce novel research and engage on their own terms. We want to create a generation of researchers who know how to utilise these techniques of successful public engagement and citizen science, and pay attention to the ethical and social implications of participation and the environmental issues in question. We want to establish the research commitment and NGO link that will enable successful co-production of environmental knowledge.

Recent research by ComRes (2017) suggests that people's interest in environmental research increases when they are able to make a connection to their own lives. Yet, only a minority understand what constitutes or regularly engage with environmental research, although many want to hear more. In order to create genuine and sustainable change in public engagement with environmental research, OPENER combines the shared enthusiasm for the environment and the public's curiosity for the natural world with the expanding public engagement capacity of multidisciplinary researchers, practitioners, public-facing organisations and community groups.

OPENER will scope out and build commitment for a national community of practice (CoP) for public engagement with environmental research. We believe that active public engagement and debate must:

1. be a multidisciplinary and partnership-building endeavour;
2. actively build on existing expertise in citizen science and participatory engagement;
3. acknowledge people have a complex identities, often with contradictory opinions;
4. respect and value all knowledge as meaningful and promote pluralism in expertise;
5. develop increased capacity, interest and skills of researchers and audiences;
6. enable avenues of engagement that acknowledge different needs, interests and availability;
7. facilitate public involvement in all stages of the scientific process and make explicit links to everyday life.

Our Team who co-created OPENER is made up of national- and world-leaders in: environmental science (climate, ecology, soil, marine); public engagement and citizen science; cross-disciplinary social science; and public- and membership-facing organisations. We share a commitment to collective learning and embrace the new ways of thinking and doing required to ensure the sustainability of a national CoP. We will engage with a wide range of stakeholders to deliver an intergrated vision, mission, core values and joint activities for public engagement with environmental research in the UK.