Zenodo_D51-KC- final-201130


 
   
 

 
 

The CoAct project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 
Research and Innovation programme under grant agreement No. 873048 

  
 

 

 

  
Co-designing Citizen Social Science for Collective Action 

 

 

 
#5.1 

Report on Knowledge Coalition Building  

Environmental Justice 

 

 

This document is shared under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License 
(CC BY 4.0). 

 

Cite as: Arza, Valeria, Actis, Guillermina, Marchegiani, Pia, Velarde, Malena, Cane, 

Santiago, Buchsbaum, Malena & Swistun, Débora (2020). CoActD5.1: Report on 

Knowledge Coalition Building. Environmental Justice. Zenodo. 

http://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.4498635 

DISCLAIMER: The present Project Deliverable has been submitted to the European 
Commission for review. The information and views set out in this report are those of the 
author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the official opinion of the European Union. 
Neither the European Union institutions and bodies nor any person acting on their 
behalf may be held responsible for the use which may be made of the information 
contained therein. 



#5.1 Report on Knowledge Coalition Building  
 

   
 

 
 

 
The CoAct project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 Research  
and Innovation programme under grant agreement No. 873048 

 

 

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Date – 30 November 2020  
Dissemination level - Public   
Responsible Partner - UNSAM  
Author(s) / credits 

Arza, Valeria (CENIT/UNSAM): writing original draft, conceptualisation, methodology, investigation, formal analysis, 

supervision 

Actis, Guillermina (CENIT/UNSAM): writing original draft, conceptualisation, formal analysis, investigation. 

Marchegiani, Pia (FARN): writing review and editing, formal analysis, investigation and supervision 

Velarde, Malena (CENIT/UNSAM): writing review and editing, investigation, methodology, software, data curation, formal 

analysis, visualisation 

Cane, Santiago (FARN):  formal analysis and investigation 

Buchsbaum, Malena (CENIT/UNSAM): writing review and editing, data curation, formal analysis 

Swistun, Débora (FARN): Investigation 

Reviewers - Isabelle Bonhoure, Teresa Wintersteller, Mariam Malik, Veronika Wöhrer, Katja Mayer   
 

 

Document History  
Version Date Contributor Comments 
1.0 9th November 2020 

 
Arza, V et al (lists of 
authors above)   
 

First draft KC report to 
be commented by 
Consortium 
coordinators. 

2.0 17th November 2020 
 

Arza, V et al  
 

Second draft after 
incorporating 
comments by UB. To 
be read by Consortium 
members. 

3.0 26th November 
 

Arza, V et al Final draft of the 
report. 

  



#5.1 Report on Knowledge Coalition Building  
 

   
 

 
 

 
The CoAct project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 Research  
and Innovation programme under grant agreement No. 873048 

 

 

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Table of Contents 
 
 

1. Executive Summary 6 

2. Introduction 7 

2.1 CoAct General Concept 7 

2.2 Definition of the Knowledge Coalition 8 

2.3 R&I Action #3 Scope 9 

3. Knowledge Coalition formation 12 

3.1 Local context mapping 12 

3.1.1 FARN Experience in Promoting Sanitation and Facilitating Citizen Participation in the Basin
 12 

3.1.2 CENIT/UNSAM Experience with Open Science and Citizen Participation in the Production of 
Knowledge Towards Transformation 16 

3.1.4 Other Citizen Science Initiatives in the Riachuelo Basin 19 

3.2 Knowledge Coalition constitution process 19 

4. Knowledge Coalition in action 21 

4.1 Knowledge Coalition Activities 22 

4.1.1 Initiating First Contact: the Interviews 24 

4.1.2 Micro-workshops, a tool to Co-produce Knowledge in Lockdown Time 25 

4.1.3 Narrowing the Scope: Focussing on Strategic Topics 26 

Participants 31 

Methods - Dynamics 32 

4.1.5 The Knowledge Coalition as a Network Approach 34 

4.2 Knowledge Coalition Outcomes 37 

4.2.1 Introduction 37 

4.2.2 Socio-environmental Problems and Practices to address them 38 



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4.2.3 The Meanings and Processes of Citizen Participation in Policy Making (for Community and 
Policy Actors) and on Knowledge Production (for Scientific Actors) 46 

4.2.4 The First Steps Towards Platform Co-design 48 

5. Concluding Remarks 49 

6. References 53 

 

 

  



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List of Figures 

Figure 1: Citizen Social Science in Action 

Figure 2: Network expansion in 18 months within and outside the Matanza-Riachuelo basin. 

Figure 3: Wordcloud of nouns for interviewees’ responses to the question on socio-environmental 
problems in the basin. 
Figure 4: Basin map and socio-environmental problems classified in six categories 
 

List of Tables 

Table 1: Technologies and main features of previous two versions of FARN’s QPR 

Table 2: Participants in different activities organised as part of CoAct R&I # 3 from April to October 

2020 and digital tools used. 

Table 3: Selected Environmental Justice issues in Matanza-Riachuelo basin in connection to FARN´s 

agenda. 

List of Abbreviations 

ACUMAR: Matanza-Riachuelo Basin Authority 

CSS: Citizen Social Science 

CSOs: Civil Society Organisations 

GDPR: General Data Protection Regulation 

IC: Informed Consent  

PISA: Plan Integral de Saneamiento Ambiental (Sanitation Plan) 

QPR: Qué pasa Riachuelo? (What’s up Riachuelo) 
  



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1. Executive Summary   
CoAct (Co-designing Citizen Social Science for Collective Action) aims at co-designing concepts, 

methods and tools for Citizen Social Science around wicked global social issues. Four different 

research and innovation (R&I) actions organised the empirical work of CoAct and this report presents 

the process of building the knowledge coalition network for one of those R&I actions developed in the 

frame of CoAct WP5.  

This R&I action aims at co-designing citizen social science tools to facilitate actions contributing 

towards Environmental Justice in the Matanza-Riachuelo river basin. The basin covers 64 km-long 

and 6 million people live there, most of them in vulnerable socio-environmental situations. In 

particular, we aim at co-designing a digital platform to produce and share data that can contribute 

to mapping different socio-environmental problems as understood by a diversity of stakeholders and 

promote concrete actions for addressing those problems. 

The Knowledge Coalition works as a network of actors that intervene throughout the project’s R&I 

cycle, by discussing, defining, and co-designing different activities. We define it as the network of 

stakeholders who are interested in and informed about the R&I project goal and vision and who play 

an active role, either participating in or co-designing different actions.  

We expect the network to be continuously evolving and different types of commitment by a variety of 

actors is foreseen over time, depending on expertise, interests, synergies and project activities. FARN 

and CENIT/UNSAM identified three different types of actors that would be part of the Knowledge 

Coalition: researchers working in academic organisations doing research about different socio-

environmental problems of the basin; public policy actors from the different jurisdictions involved in 

the basin (Municipal, Provincial and National) and community actors, which includes people living or 

working who belong to territorial organisations and also civil society organisations (CSOs) at large. 



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We had to modify our original plan for the Knowledge Coalition creation due to the Covid-19 

pandemic and associated lockdown restrictions. We organised three types of virtual engagement 

activities with candidates to be part of the Knowledge Coalition: interviews, micro-workshops and a 

platform co-design workshop. In total we reached around 30 actors (research groups, public policy 

organisations and territorial and civil society organisations) inside and outside the basin, who 

participated in some of those instances and expressed their interest in being involved in the R&I 

action’s future activities.  

We managed to identify main socio-environmental problems in different locations in the basin as 

understood by different stakeholders who participated in our action. We also started to delineate the 

main purpose of the citizen driven platform, which will initially systematise and co-produce 

information on three main socio-environmental themes: conservation of green areas, water quality 

and relocation of people living in areas with environmental risks.  

2. Introduction   

2.1 CoAct General Concept 

CoAct (Co-designing Citizen Social Science for Collective Action) is proposing a new understanding 

of Citizen Social Science as a participatory research co-designed and directly driven by citizens and 

citizen groups sharing a social concern (See Figure 1). CoAct proposes to face four “wicked” social 

global issues by engaging citizens in a vulnerable situation. The approach represents a new 

understanding of the underexplored field of Citizen Social Science (CSS), understood here as 

participatory research co-designed with citizen groups sharing a social concern. The joint effort will 

result in the implementation of new or improved science-related policies and the advancement of the 

CSS approach with regards to its applicability in concrete fields or research.  



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Figure 1: Citizen Social Science in Action, with citizen groups, a specific concern, and with the support of the 

Knowledge Coalition 

In all CoAct R&I Actions (Mental Health Care, Youth Employment and Environmental Justice), citizens 

in a vulnerable situation are placed at the centre of the research and their role and dedication 

conceptually recognize them as Co-Researchers. In parallel, the Knowledge Coalition is a 

network of stakeholders who are informed about the R&I Actions’ goals, and play an active role, 

either participating in or co-designing different actions, to harness Co-Researchers' efforts and 

implement policies and measures based on scientific evidence.  

2.2 Definition of the Knowledge Coalition 
 
Knowledge Coalitions are formed by representatives of Public Administrations, Civil Society 

Organisations (CSOs), educative organisations and Co-Researchers –to name a few.  All R&I 

Actions involve people from different areas of the political, academic/scientific and social realm, 

according to their field of research. They strive to assure that the composition of the Knowledge 

Coalition reflects the diversity of actors within their field and is sensitive to gender balance and other 

socio-structural categories that might become relevant such as ethnicity or age. The involvement and 

collaboration of the Knowledge Coalition members varies according to the specific R&I Action and 

different actors may participate in different activities according to their expertise, interest and 



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expectations regarding synergies with their own activities associated to the social concern. The 

participation of the individual parties of the Knowledge Coalition can take place in various forms and 

in different moments of the R&I cycle: creating a structural framework for research, participating in 

the actual research process, informing on corresponding issues, implementing and discussing 

possible solutions or getting involved in the dissemination of the project and the transformation of 

research results into actions according to its acting potential. Regardless of the role, each R&I 

Action facilitates spaces for dialogue and action with different actors promoting the creation of a 

dynamic network and building from synergies among different initiatives adding therefore to the 

collective effort towards transformation. In order to coordinate the network and opening up spaces 

for deliberation, the R&I Actions use different methods and approaches, from joint discussions, 

workshops, expert talks and digital tools to strategy meetings, which aim at a diversity of on- and 

offline participation possibilities. 

2.3 R&I Action #3 Scope 
 
The R&I Action on Environmental Justice explores socio-environmental problems in the Matanza-

Riachuelo river basin with the aim of promoting transformative action.  

The Matanza-Riachuelo is a heavily contaminated 64 km long river that runs along the southern limit 

of the City of Buenos Aires, where 6 million people live. It is estimated that 1.8 million people in the 

basin live in highly vulnerable conditions1, in terms of housing and access to basic infrastructure. 

There are several socio-environmental problems related to: 

 
1 See social vulnerability index build by ACUMAR (2018) p. 31 



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i) contamination from production activities (mainly industrial but also agriculture); sewage 

effluents since 50% of population in the basin is not connected to sewage system 

(ACUMAR, 2020, p. 44) and open garbage dumps 

ii) poor infrastructure in terms of housing (around 800 people live in informal settlements and 

slums (ACUMAR, 2018, p.31), some of them built on garbage dumps), lack of access to 

safe water for 21 % of the basin population (ACUMAR, 2020, p.36), and poor access to 

health system, which exacerbate the social impact of contamination.  

The Knowledge Coalition works as a network of actors that intervene throughout the project’s R&I 

cycle, by discussing, defining, and co-designing the different steps towards constructing a digital 

platform to produce and share data that can contribute to the development and advancement of 

concrete actions or solutions for the basin’s problems. 

We will learn from the experience in designing and using a previous platform developed by FARN: 

QPR which stands for Qué pasa Riachuelo? (What’s up Riachuelo?). This platform will be re-built 

through co-design mechanisms incorporating different perspectives and viewpoints from the basin 

communities, scientists, and public authorities. 

The Citizen Science platform will produce knowledge and understandings about the nature of 

different socio-environmental problems starting from three of them: water quality, threats to green 

spaces such as wetlands, and the resettlement of families previously located in the basin towline 

path. By doing so, it aims to provide useful information to design potential solutions.  

FARN and CENIT/UNSAM will guide and implement a set of activities to co-create the Citizen 

Science platform and promote its dissemination: 1) open-ended interviews and workshops to identify 

socio-environmental problems in the Matanza-Riachuelo basin as they are understood by different 

actors as well as practices and activities aiming at addressing them; 2) co-design workshops, where 



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The CoAct project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 Research  
and Innovation programme under grant agreement No. 873048 

 

 

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participants discuss the main functionalities and obstacles for the digital platform development and 

sustainability; 3) dissemination activities to generate new data sets on socio-environmental problems 

perception and to define how it can be contrasted with existing information sources and 4) open 

hackathons for data analysis, interpretation and visualisation of the results.  

The R&I Action on Environmental Justice’s main Knowledge Coalition actors, the Matanza-Riachuelo 

basin communities, scientists, and public bodies representatives, are identified through web-based 

research, bibliometric sources and FARN and CENIT/UNSAM previous connections.  

We have carried out three activities to reach these actors: interviews, micro-workshops and platform 

co-design workshops. During interviews, they narrate their experiences in the basin and their 

understanding of main problems and how citizen participation may help in the production of 

knowledge for transformative actions in the basin. Community actors also participate in micro-

workshops designed to add bottom-up perspectives to social-environmental issues and identify key 

practices addressing them. Finally, socio-environmental problems identified through interviews and 

micro-workshops are discussed by the Matanza-Riachuelo communities’ actors, public bodies 

authorities, members from NGOs, and scientists in a platform co-design workshop. This context 

provides the opportunity to review preliminary outcomes on the identified problems from an 

enhanced perspective. The main goal of the co-design workshop is to have instances to reflect on the 

purpose, type of data and functionalities of the digital platform and to anticipate obstacles that may 

come up both when designing and using it.  

Workshops’ participants and interviewees who explicitly communicate their interest in being 

connected to projects activities and outcomes are all considered members of the Knowledge 

Coalition, which is then defined as a stakeholder network of actors interested in and informed about 

the R&I project goal and vision. This network includes activists, social and territorial organisations, 

NGO’s representatives, neighbours, scientists and policy makers mobilized to promote Environmental 



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Justice. The Knowledge Coalition contributes to frame both the R&I Action’s items goals and co-

design different activities related to the Citizen Science platform. All actors in this network have 

experience in putting forward different activities aiming at providing knowledge and actions towards 

Environmental Justice. We plan to promote synergies with these actors’ practices. We foresee that, 

responding to their own interests in the different subject matter, actors in the Knowledge Coalition 

network will participate in and co-organise activities aiming at the design, dissemination, use and/or 

impact of the Citizen Science platform throughout the project.  

3. Knowledge Coalition formation 

3.1 Local context mapping 
The idea of creating a Citizen Science platform to address socio-environmental problems in 

Matanza-Riachuelo basin was first sketched in 2017. This project was inspired by FARN’s 

development of the citizen-driven data platform QPR and CENIT/UNSAM research experience on 

open science and citizen participation in the production of knowledge aiming at transformation. 

3.1.1 FARN Experience in Promoting Sanitation and Facilitating Citizen 
Participation in the Basin 

In 2004 a group of local residents and workers from Villa Inflamable presented a lawsuit before the 

Supreme Court of Justice of the Nation (hereafter the Court). The lawsuit focused on environmental 

pollution damage in the Matanza-Riachuelo basin and a series of demands and claims against the 

National State, the Province of Buenos Aires, the Government of the City of Buenos Aires and forty-

four companies. 



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In 2006 the Matanza-Riachuelo Basin Authority (ACUMAR) was created. ACUMAR is an autonomous 

public organisation which combines the work of the three levels of governments that have authority 

over the territory (National, Buenos Aires Province, and Buenos Aires City). It is the highest authority in 

the area on environmental issues. In 2008, the Court, in a landmark ruling, instructed ACUMAR: i) to 

repair air, water, and ground damage caused by discharges to the river; ii) to improve the quality of 

life of the citizens of the entire basin and iii) to prevent future damage.   

Also, in 2008 a group of Civil Society Organisations (CSOs), including FARN2 were admitted by the 

Court as third parties interested in the legal cause. Together with the Ombudsman, and other three 

CSOs, the Collegiate Body was created by the Supreme Court's ruling to monitor the environmental 

clean-up and the progress of the Sanitation Plan (PISA Plan Integral de Saneamiento Ambiental in 

Spanish). Specifically, among the given roles was to promote citizen participation in the monitoring of 

the environmental clean-up and associated activities of the basin. It was subsequently decided that 

this Collegiate Body assumes the actual representation of the public in that process of sanitation. 

The Court mandate was to foster citizen participation in the monitoring of ACUMAR´s work, 

especially in its compliance with the Sanitation Plan. 

In 2010 FARN and other CSOs initiated the project QPR Qué pasa Riachuelo? and in 2011 they 

launched the geo-referenced platform that enabled open access to data related to the ACUMAR’s 

PISA. The final expected outcome was that communities could monitor these activities’ execution and 

influence public policies in their territory.  

In a second stage, QPR published citizen-generated data, which was a very innovative move. QPR 

became one of the first citizen-driven platforms in the country. The new section, “Social Monitoring'', 
 

2 The other CSOs were Greenpeace Argentina Foundation; Social and Legal Research Centre (Centro de Estudios 
Legales y Sociales) and Neighbours Association of La Boca. 



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established active mechanisms to control and watchdog the Sanitation Plan’s execution. This section 

included a new feature: a form that could be completed anonymously by citizens. This form gathered 

information that was then uploaded and published as a “story” (a neighbourhood alert taken by 

FARN to request further information on the matter to the competent authority) or as an “action” (an 

activity carried out by the community); whose responses were also published. “Social Monitoring'' 

section also included a “News” subsection that displayed a social survey on the presence of the 

issues associated with the Basin in the media. For more information on the case, please see Fressoli 

and Arza (2016) and Mira (2016). 

In its first stage of development, FARN and other CSOs established an agreement with ACUMAR to 

fetch data about PISA execution and to publish it on an interactive map. Neighbours from different 

parts of the basin and the CSOs involved were able to visualize this information and to contrast it 

with the cleaning up activities carried out in the basin’s territory. This was a key step since information 

was neither systematised nor easily accessible at that point in time. 

 QPR 1 

(2011) 

QPR 2 

(2012-2014) 

Data Fetch data from ACUMAR. 

Display data on an interactive map. 

Fetch data from ACUMAR, TECHO. 

Publish data produced by social 

organisations.  

Display data on an interactive map. 

Citizen 

participation 

features 

Upload citizen-generated alerts using an 

online form administered during face-to-face 

workshops and meetings.  

Upload citizen-generated alerts using 

an online and public form. Platform 

provides environmental traffic light 

based on that data 



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Technologies   
USHAHIDI, JavaScript, CSS, HTML, ApacheConf 

Data cleansing  Different instances of information cleansing: 

Collegiate body, FARN. Platform strategy 

development environment (Garage Lab). 

Citizen alerts and reports validated 

collectively during meetings.  

FARN staff checked citizen-generated 

data before publication. 

Data openness Datasets open to the public in csv format 

available on http://datospublicos.org/ 

Datasets open to the public in csv 

format. 

Dissemination 

activities 

Workshops at Matanza-Riachuelo basin schools. Workshops all along the Matanza-

Riachuelo basin. Contact local newspapers.  

Table 1: Technologies and main features of previous two versions of FARN’s QPR 

Although FARN organised workshops and other activities within the community to foster platform use, 

spontaneous participation was rather low. First, neighbours from the basin did not perceive the 

platform as a tool to solve their problems and eventually lost interest in reporting any situation as 

there were no concrete responses carried-out by ACUMAR. Second, neighbours feared reprisals by 

powerful groups with conflicting interests (e.g., industries verting waste). Third, the wide digital and 

technology gap in the affected communities limited the platform’s use to the FARN workshops.   

The QPR’s dependency on workshops to feed its database weakened its community impact. As soon 

as the project ran out of funds to sustain the workshops, the generation of systematic information 

could not be further guaranteed. Funding was also needed for the cross-reference validation done 

by FARN’s own staff on the citizen information about breaches to existing regulation and on the 

follow-up with national authorities on the different issues raised on the platform. 



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Overall, QPR's main success was to push ACUMAR to grant access to information related to the 

Sanitation Plan, to systematize existing data and to make it visible. This was a central claim from 

communities seeking solutions to long-lasting socio environmental problems. In fact, ACUMAR 

ended-up developing its own geo-referenced tool showing information on socio-environmental 

basin’s problems, among other issues. However, the goal to foster citizen-generated data remained 

unfulfilled.  

The mentioned experiences made it clear that a new version of QPR had to be re-conceptualized to 

become a tool that could be uptaken by citizens. This goal not only aims at increasing the amount of 

citizen-generated data but also to build a sustainable platform that might become more 

independent from resources raised by leading organisations.  

3.1.2 CENIT/UNSAM Experience with Open Science and Citizen Participation in 

the Production of Knowledge Towards Transformation  

In 2015 CENIT/UNSAM led a research project to understand how participatory science could 

contribute to overcoming health, inclusion, and environmental challenges in Argentina. This project 

was part of the Open and Collaborative Science in Development Network and CENIT/UNSAM 

research team analysed the Sanitary Camps (Campamentos Sanitarios) in different rural and peri 

urban settings. These camps were organised by medical faculty and students responding to 

communities’ demand for epidemiological data in locations exposed to pesticide sprayings.   

The Sanitary Camps were held from 2010 until 2019 as part of the medical curricula at the National 

University of Rosario School of Medicine and produced epidemiological data representing more than 

100,000 people (Verzeñassi & Vallini, 2019). The camps involved communities and local 

governments in the research process and the dissemination of the collected data. Their action had a 

tremendous political and social impact, especially for Sprayed Peoples (Pueblos Fumigados) and 



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other socio-environmental movements that tried to document the detrimental human health impacts 

of the agro-industrial system based on extensive use of pesticides, a research area barely studied. 

Eventually, the Sanitary Camps were dismantled by the School of Medicine’s authorities. A great 

opportunity for transformation was lost and the question on how participatory science aiming at 

transformation in a political conflictive situation could overcome social, cultural and political barriers 

remains open. These are typical obstacles in undone science (Hess, 2007) and studying them is 

particularly critical for open science scholars as we struggle with the question of how to incorporate 

political angle when dealing with methodological decisions, such as how to share data and 

information without risk of data being misused or the projects being boycotted/suppressed.  

When researchers from CENIT/UNSAM first learnt about QPR, they got very enthusiastic about the 

role the tool had in pushing public policy forward. They also saw the potential to go beyond its social 

monitoring role and to use it to create relevant knowledge for solving pressing socio-environmental 

problems, influencing public policy and promoting transformative actions. As the Sanitary Camps 

experience showed, when the community gets involved in participatory research, they do so 

mobilised by the urge to change their reality. The community could tell what types of practices could 

work better than others. Social scientists and CSOs could also contribute methodologically and by 

promoting strategic alliances to push data and ideas to convert into public policy and actions.   

CENIT/UNSAM has been very active in advocating open science policies in Argentina. The research 

centre has actively collaborated with other research organisations, CSOs and public policy, 

including the Science and Technology Policy authority to advance discussions on both the promotion 

of open and citizen science and how to articulate it into public policy schemes. Activities included 

seminars, policy workshops, technical assistance, festivals, community workshops and other 

dissemination activities. All these activities allowed CENIT/UNSAM to better understand the potential 



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challenges in developing citizen science projects, addressing also the necessary alliances for 

conducting this type of research. 

3.1.3 CoAct Riachuelo  

In 2017 both teams started to collaborate and jointly developed the vision that citizen participation 

facilitated by digital tools could promote transformative actions towards Environmental Justice in the 

basin. They agreed to learn from QPR experience and re-launch a new platform to share and create 

new knowledge on citizen’s understanding of socio-environmental problems and their practical 

experiences in dealing with them. Based on their previous experience and connections, FARN and 

CENIT/UNSAM defined that there were three types of actors that had to be involved to put forward 

their project on Citizen Science for Environmental Justice. First, CSOs that had been participating in 

the basin's judicial conflict and the public policy catalysed by it and territorial organisations or 

individuals from the community with personal experience in searching for solutions to socio-

environmental problems to be prioritized (see below). FARN is the primary contact point for their 

previous experience working with these local groups or organisations. We aim at good gender and 

geographical balance.  

Second, academic organisations and researchers working on those socio-environmental issues or 

with experience in advancing Citizen Science projects. CENIT/UNSAM is the main contact point, and 

selection considers disciplinary and gender diversity, with a particular focus on Universities located in 

the basin and research groups with previous experience in participatory science.  

Third, policy makers from different jurisdictional levels (municipalities, provincial and national) with 

presence in different geographical areas of the basin, with special focus and responsibilities on 

environmental or sanitation policies. FARN and CENIT/UNSAM would work side by side to bring along 

these stakeholders, building from their previous networks and expertise.   



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3.1.4 Other Citizen Science Initiatives in the Riachuelo Basin 
We must also mention some particular experiences of Citizen Science in the Matanza-Riachuelo 

basin, associated with socio-environmental problems, which are close cousins of our R&I action and 

whose main representatives are also part of our Knowledge Coalition. On the one hand, AppEAR is a 

project with both scientific and educational goals, that aims at mapping aquatic habitats of the 

continental water bodies in Argentina. It also includes educational content and games in a mobile 

application and web-based platform (Cochero, 2018). The basin’s territory is included in the more 

400 sampling sites of the project. Anticipando la Crecida was launched in 2014 as an extension 

project from the University of Buenos Aires. Since 2017 it has an agreement with Municipality of La 

Matanza, one of the jurisdictions that is more affected by the risk parameters identified by ACUMAR 

(ACUMAR, 2018). Biodiversity in the Matanza-Riachuelo basin (Biodiversidad de La Cuenca 

Matanza-Riachuelo · INaturalist, n.d.) is a Citizen Science initiative promoted by FARN in the context 

of the international program “Humedales sin Fronteras” (Wetlands without borders). The initiative 

uses the platform iNaturalist to register citizens observations of natural species in the area, 

promoting their conservation and the visibility of the threats that affect them.  

3.2 Knowledge Coalition constitution process 
Once we identified the three different groups—policy makers, science actors and community 

actors—we started mapping potential candidates within each of them. FARN included community 

members who were known to be active in the basin, based on their own experience and also drawing 

from existing networks of territorial organisations and other CSOs working with them. CENIT/UNSAM 

searched for academic actors by analysing public bibliometric databases as well as the national 

portal on information in science and technology, which includes projects, researchers and scientific 

database. The list of candidates of policy actors include all relevant organisations working on 

environmental and sanitation policy in the basin. From these lists CENIT/UNSAM and FARN 



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collectively selected 45 people (50% female) as potential candidates to be invited to the project 

activities and who therefore could become part of the Knowledge Coalition. We sought to promote 

diversity in terms of variables mentioned above: gender, geography, political jurisdiction and 

discipline. In addition, especially in the case of community and policy actors, previous connection 

was also a variable that weighed heavily in our selection decision.  

Before formally contacting any of these actors, we worked on the ethical and data security aspects 

of these activities. This proved to be challenging since there is not much experience in ethical 

procedures for social sciences in Argentina. Neither UNSAM nor FARN had an Ethical Committee 

who could revise our procedures. We reviewed several informed consent (IC) procedures for other 

research areas, and we studied Argentinean regulation both on Personal Data and science and 

technology activities, which are both consistent with General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). 

Our research activities are aligned with the ethics requirements contemplated in the 3º article of the 

Argentinian Law 25.467 of the National System of Science, Technology and Innovation, regarding 

the inalienable and universal principles for conducting research activities. Additionally, the project is 

compliant with the Law 25.326 of personal data protection requisites, as the investigation 

procedures contemplate informing the participants about how their personal data will be handled 

and processed. For this purpose, IC forms have been developed, in order to make participants aware 

of their rights and of the data's different uses. The procedure was approved by the UNSAM Vice 

Dean office, which is responsible for research projects in UNSAM.  

We developed different IC forms for the different planned activities; these were later modified, to 

adapt to the online activities as imposed by the Covid-19’s lockdown measures. Eventually we also 

simplified them using plain language techniques and video formats to address certain obstacles (see 

more on section 4.1 below). The IC forms and procedures for our R&I action also benefited widely 

from contributions by other researchers in the CoAct consortium. 



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Finally, regarding Data Protection, we discussed our research data cycle for the development of the 

data management plan by Open Knowledge Foundation, part of CoAct consortium. When our 

research activities started and we began to generate and collect data we consulted with the UNSAM 

information technology team on cybersecurity issues in the context of home office imposed by the 

lockdown. They informed us to continue working with the institutional accounts of the cloud service of 

GDrive provided by the UNSAM. We have also requested remote access to the institution’s service to 

make monthly backups.  

4. Knowledge Coalition in action   
Our plans to build the Knowledge Coalition had to be modified due to the Covid-19 pandemic and 

associated lockdown measures that started in mid-March 2020 and continue until the present time 

(early November 2020). People need special permits to move further than 500 meters away from 

home and gathering indoors is forbidden. Thus, our planned activities had to go fully virtual and it 

became challenging to reach both community actors —who had poor or no connectivity— and policy 

makers. Our research takes place in the areas more heavily affected by the Covid-19 spread. In 

addition, Argentina is going through an economic crisis, which preceded the lockdown but has 

worsened by the pandemic and associated lockdown measures. Therefore, both community and 

policy makers are affected by high degrees of sanitarian and economic urgencies. 

To build the Knowledge Coalition we planned to perform interviews from the above-mentioned list of 

45 people, and to organise a “recognition workshop” to consolidate it, and jointly co-design the 

upcoming activities. The workshop was planned for the first semester of 2020 and was first 

postponed under the expectations that restrictions were going to end within a few months. As this did 

not happen, we eventually had to cancel the face-to-face format. We proceeded to interview 



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potential Knowledge Coalition actors and replaced the “recognition workshop” with other types of 

virtual workshops as discussed in more detail below.  

4.1 Knowledge Coalition Activities 
For developing the network of actors to be part of the Knowledge Coalition we developed three 

different types of activities: interviews, micro-workshops with the community, and a platform co-

design workshop. Table 2 briefly summarises the characteristics of participants and the digital tools 

used in each instance, which are described in more detail below.



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Date Platforms used 
  

Science actors 

Public 
policy 
actors 

Community actors Total participants 

Territorial 
organisations 
from the Basin 

NGOs 
or 

other 
CSOs 

People 
Organisations 

/ projects 

Micro- 
Workshop 1 
participants 

11/8/2020 Zoom 
People 

- - 
6 2 

8 2 
(Organisations) (1) (1) 

Micro-
Workshop 2 
participants 

25/8/2020 Zoom 
People 

- - 
6 2 

8 4 
(Organisations) (3) (1) 

Interviewees 
April to 

September 
2020 

Zoom/Meet 

People 11 5 1 4 

21 17 (Organisations. 
/ research 
groups) 

(9) (4) (1) (3) 

Workshop 
participants 

29/10/2020 

Zoom/ 
Jamboard/ 
Mentimeter/ 
Padlet 

People 2 9 4 7 

22 17 (Organisations. 
/ research 
groups) 

(2) (6) (3) (6) 

Actors in the Knowledge Coalition network  
(counted only once, although they may have participated in different activities) 

 
51 30 

Table 2: Participants in different activities organised as part of CoAct R&I # 3 from April to October 2020 and digital tools used 



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4.1.1 Initiating First Contact: the Interviews 
We designed three types of questionnaires for one-hour interviews with the three different types of 

actors. The questionnaire includes some questions that were common to all types of actors and some 

actor-type’s specific ones. Among the former, we ask about the role/experience/activities of each 

actor in the basin; the problems/issues that each actor understands as the most relevant and the 

best/possible solutions that they identify. In addition, we asked all of them about the role of citizen 

participation in policy making (for community and policy actors) and on knowledge production (for 

academic actors). Finally, we also ask them to recommend some other groups or projects that may 

be interested in our project, so as to continue enlarging our network. Regarding the specific sections, 

for community actors, there were questions regarding the role of public policies; for academic actors, 

there were questions about the contribution of science in policy making; and, finally, for policy 

makers we asked about their priorities in the basin and how they matched those coming from 

community actors.   

We performed 18 interviews, some of them to individual actors and others, to a couple of them jointly. 

As can be seen in Table 2, there were 5 people from the community or CSOs, 11 from the scientific 

organisations and 5 from the policy sector; 57% of them were women.  

In all interviews IC forms were sent in advance, 30% provided oral consent during the interviews. 

Most interviews were recorded. IC for interviews included a series of statements for which people 

could choose their preference regarding the use of personal data. In general, people have agreed on 

us sharing direct quotes from interviews and attributing them with full names, but they normally 

requested us to show quotes beforehand. Particularly for community actors, IC procedures resulted 

to be cumbersome. Some of the expressed obstacles were associated with the provision of digital 

signatures and with the length and technical language. To address these, we opted for oral consents 



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in some cases and eventually simplifying the content and changing the procedure for community 

members (see below).  

4.1.2 Micro-workshops, a tool to Co-produce Knowledge in Lockdown Time 
During July and August, we organised online micro-workshops to be held only with members of the 

basin’s local communities. The purpose of these workshops was to collect these stakeholders’ 

collective views on socio-environmental problems and their practices to overcome them. They were 

planned together with Iconoclasistas, the art-group that is also part of our Knowledge Coalition, who 

are the experts in the collective mapping methodologies that were part of the activities we had 

planned for our R&I action pre-Covid-19.  

So far micro-workshops have been organised with participants from two different locations of the 

basin. There were six participants in each workshop, who knew each other and lived nearby and 

belong to territorial organisations such as museums, schools, and neighbour associations. Workshops 

were coordinated through WhatsApp groups to agree on schedule, to share information, including IC 

materials and to answer specific questions. They were conducted through video calls in the Zoom 

platform. They were only audio-recorded. 

During the workshops, Iconoclasistas worked with maps of the neighbourhoods and asked 

participants to use a piece of paper, which was divided in three columns. In each of them they had to 

identify problems, positive practices to address them, and most prominent territorial organisations 

responsible for those practices. They were also asked to geo-reference those elements. Micro-

workshops lasted over two hours and a half, during which people shared their annotations and 

thoughts while Iconoclasistas were taking notes on the maps. People interacted while presenting 

their views, complementing their experiences and getting involved in conversations about problems, 

practices, actors and locations.  



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The micro-workshop method was an adequate approach for producing rich information and could 

work as a first step in the process of co-designing a Citizen Social Science project in a digital 

environment: it allowed to engage the communities in a discussion with researchers in a dynamic 

way, because it generated a sense of collective belonging. Through the dialogue it allowed the 

development of a collective vision of socio-environmental problems. Since the method contributes to  

the identification of actors and practices that help to solve problems, it facilitates the discussion 

about future possible pathways for action. This information was very rich for expanding the map of 

actors and also for identifying positive practices.  

Based on our experience with IC forms in interviews with community actors, for micro-workshops we 

decided to change our IC procedures. FARN produced a video which explains the main activities of 

our R&I action, including how the information was going to be used. The video and a statement on 

our commitment regarding the use of the data was sent by WhatsApp, and participants had the 

chance to ask questions using the same platform. In addition, we dedicated the first half an hour to 

read a plain language version of the aspects that required consent, showed the video again, 

answered any question and recorded an oral statement of agreement from all participants. 

4.1.3 Narrowing the Scope: Focussing on Strategic Topics 

Based on the information gathered during interviews and considering FARN's experience and 

agenda in the basin, we decided to start working on three issues, all of which are of great relevance 

in relation to Environmental Justice and citizen participation. Those issues are water quality; 

protection of green areas and relocation of population affected by situations of environmental risk.  

The decision to focus on these issues was both strategic and practical. On the one hand, FARN has 

been leading both judicial activities and territorial engagement on these topics, and thus it makes 



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sense to focus the development of the platform on issues well connected to FARN’s current and 

future agenda. On the other hand, given lockdown restrictions, and because we were not able to 

organise collective mapping workshops as initially planned, we decided to start working in the 

platform’s co-design using virtual on-line workshops. To make them manageable, we needed to 

reduce the quantity of socio-environmental issues and thus, decided to start working on the topics 

that were identified —in interviews and micro workshops— as relevant and coincide with FARN’s 

own agenda. The platform could then incorporate other socio-environmental demands. 

Water quality is a key issue in the Riachuelo basin. The water receives sewage and industrial 

effluents, as well as solid urban waste, which represent the main causes of contamination in the 

basin. By jointly analysing the water quality and the evolution of associated regulation, it is possible 

to observe both the advances or setbacks in polluting factors and in public policies aimed at 

rebuilding the environment and preventing future damage.  

ACUMAR has the leading role in terms of ruling about water quality. The Collegiate Body is currently 

demanding the setup of new limits in terms of permitted discharge amounts and water quality goals 

that may allow the restoration of the river. In 2017 new regulation was issued which modifies 

parameters but expected improvements in terms of water quality based on those new values and 

assessment methods are marginally. The water quality goal that has been established, according to 

the Collegiate Body, is also insufficient to reduce contamination.  

By including this topic on the platform, the population could report isolated events, such as strange 

spills, increased rubbish in the water mirror. Also, they could share their understanding or personal 

experience on water quality or public policy, and how that matters for their lives. For several years, 

FARN brought evidence on these issues, partly collected using the preliminary versions of QPR as a 



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social monitoring tool3. The organisation systematically discussed in Court the importance of water 

quality, since it is a central issue for environmental recompositing.  

The wetlands of the basin are the most significant green spaces, the sites with the greatest 

biodiversity in the basin, where nature becomes present in an urban setting. This issue has been 

prioritized because it accounts for the relation between people and ecosystems, their involvement in 

taking care and valuing the last remaining natural areas within a highly dense metropolitan region. 

The state of wetlands is highly relevant for basin environmental health. They provide fundamental 

environmental services and constitute the main tool for environmental re-composition since the river 

has minimal slope, with almost stagnant waters. Nevertheless, wetlands in the basin are territories 

under dispute, with several different actors pushing for their access to land. 

Citizens groups have collectively requested the legal protection of these areas for a long time. Some 

protection was achieved in some areas of the basin. However, both real estate companies and 

different private projects (including a waste management company) have occupied these areas, 

putting them in danger. There are different kinds of conflicts in the area, involving not only different 

jurisdictions but also diverse economic, habitational and nature conservation interests. Many of these 

conflicts are taken to the judiciary powers.  

 
3 The regulation of water quality and its control have been highlighted by the Collegiate Body in the last hearings 
convened by the Supreme Court in 2016 and 2018, as can be seen in the public access file (Autos “Mendoza, Beatriz y 
otros c/ Estado Nacional y otros s/ daños y perjuicios (daños derivados de la contaminación ambiental del Río Matanza 
Riachuelo)”, expte. Nº CSJN 1569/04(40-M)) and especially in presentations “Opinión del Cuerpo Colegiado 2016” and 
“Resumen de la presentación - Cuerpo Colegiado - Audiencia 14-3-18”. Also in the published document “9 años del 
fallo de la Corte. Una política de Estado todavía ausente. 2017”. On the other hand, in the execution file of the sentence 
in relation to water quality (“Acumar c/ Estado de Aguas, napas subterráneas y calidad de aire” FSM 052000003/2013, 
that processes before Juzgado Federal de Morón Nº2) there are numerous presentations by the Collegiate Body in 
relation to Resolution 46/17 on water quality. 



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Moreover, a draft law on the protection of wetlands is being discussed at the national level in 

Congress, which could have a high impact on the Riachuelo Basin. 

FARN has been working on protecting wetlands for several years4. The organisation has advocated 

for wetlands to become natural reserves, using different legal strategies including litigation. Hence, it 

has strong ties with territorial organisations and residents who work for their protection. Some are 

members of the Knowledge Coalition and co-researchers in this R&I action. FARN is currently part of 

a campaign to achieve the legal protection of Ciudad Evita´s wetland and also monitors the situation 

of other wetlands, making legal presentations as to avoid alterations to those ecosystems.  

Finally, we included relocation of the population5 living in areas with environmental risks for three 

reasons. Firstly, this is a question of great social and legal relevance: as part of the judicial mandate 

of the Supremes Court, around 17,700 families had to forcibly move in order to restore the 

 
4 Through its biodiversity area, FARN has been working on the protection of wetlands for several years, throughout the 
national territory and particularly in the Matanza Riachuelo Basin. FARN promotes the enactment of a wetland protection 
law (https://farn.org.ar/leydehumedalesya-ambientalistas-piden-avanzar-con-un-texto-unificado/) and works for the 
specific protection of wetlands in the Riachuelo through studies (https://farn.org.ar/wp-
content/uploads/2020/10/Reserva-Ciudad-Evita.pdf), written and audio-visual publications (https://youtu.be/-
gN7A2o0Arw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_pMRW2Lihto&feature=youtu.be https://farn.org.ar/preocupacion-
por-la-reserva-municipal-santa-catalina/),presentations to administrative authorities (https://farn.org.ar/alerta-en-
santa-catalina-por-obras-de-ampliacon-de-vias/ https://farn.org.ar/farn-pidio-al-poder-ejecutivo-de-la-provincia-de-
buenos-aires-vetar-la-ley-que-desafecta-64-hectareas-de-la-reserva-natural-laguna-de-rocha/ ) and before the court 
of execution of the sentence "Mendoza", where various intrusions in the wetlands of the basin have been denounced and 
the judge was able to order the creation of an environmental evaluation system in ACUMAR of works and projects to be 
carried out in wetlands or protected natural areas and to protect (all this can be seen in the public access file 
“Ordenamiento territorial (autorización de mov. de suelos) s Contencioso” FSM 052000017/2013, that processes 
before Juzgado Federal de Morón Nº2).      
5 Part of the actions that FARN has developed in this matter can be reflected in the hearings cited in note 1 and in the file 
of relocations of the execution of the sentence “Mendoza” (“Acumar s/ Urbanización de villas y asentamientos precarios 
s/ Contencioso Administrativo”FSM 052000001/2013, that processes before Juzgado Federal de Morón Nº2). There, 
irregularities have been reported in construction projects, shortcomings in moving processes and lack of compliance by 
political leaders. The organisation also participated in a public hearing held to create a relocation protocol 
(https://www.acumar.gob.ar/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/Informe-Final-Audiencia-P%C3%BAblica-2017.pdf ).  



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environment and avoid risks to the population. New houses have been slowly built (over 4000). There 

have been discussions about the quality of the new houses, their location (in relation to the life plan of 

the people and the environmental status of the new locations), the quality of the constructions, the 

participation of the people affected in the processes and decision-making. As a matter of fact, this is 

the only issue included in the judicial cause that had direct participation of affected people. There 

are many different ways in which policy making has responded to these processes. But the 

information is dispersed; each process has been carried out without information from the others. The 

platform could then be a very relevant tool to facilitate participation, to share experiences and 

practical knowledge, and to strengthen connections that may enable transformative actions towards 

improving living conditions for communities in the basin.  

Issue 
 

Relevance 
 

Connection to FARN’s agenda Platform´s potential 
contribution (examples) 

 
 
water quality 
 

Sewage and industrial 
effluents, as well as solid 
urban waste, represent the 
main causes of 
contamination in the basin. 

For several years, FARN brought 
evidence on water quality. The 
organisation systematically discussed its 
importance in Court. 

To share people 
understanding or personal 
experience on water quality 
or public policy, and how 
that matters for their lives.  

protection of green 
areas 

Green areas provide 
fundamental environmental 
services and constitute the 
main tool for environmental 
re-composition. 
Nevertheless, wetlands in 
the basin are territories 
under dispute, with several 
different actors pushing for 
their access to land. 

FARN has been working on protecting 
wetlands for several years. The 
organisation has advocated for 
wetlands to become natural reserves, 
using different legal strategies including 
litigation. 
 

Articulation among 
different organisations, for 
instance to share strategies 
towards green area 
conservation. 

relocation of 
population 
affected by 
situations of 
environmental risk 
 
 

As part of the judicial 
mandate of the Supremes 
Court, around 17,700 
families had to forcibly move 
in order to restore the 
environment and avoid risks 
to the population. There 

FARN has been active in reporting 
irregularities in relation to relocations in 
different judicial causes. The 
organisation also participated in public 
hearings held to create a relocation 
protocol 

To share experiences and 
practical knowledge, and 
to strengthen connections 
that may enable 
transformative actions 
towards improving living 
conditions for communities 



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have been discussions about 
the quality of the new 
houses, their location (in 
relation to the life plan of the 
people and the 
environmental status of the 
new locations), the quality of 
the constructions, the 
participation of the people 
affected in the processes 
and decision-making. 

in the basin. 

Table 3: Selected Environmental Justice issues in Matanza-Riachuelo to start working in the platform co-

design  

4.1.4 Targeting the Platform: the Co-design Workshop 

The goal of the workshop was to produce a first brainstorming of ideas about how the platform could 

become a useful tool for sharing ideas, experiences and practices in relation to problems and 

solutions involved in each of the three selected topics. At the same time, this workshop enabled the 

interaction among members of our Knowledge Coalition network for the first time. Therefore, it had 

the double purpose of formally launching the project and creating a space for the stakeholders to 

start interacting. We needed a virtual space designed for people to share their ideas regarding the 

project’s purpose, in the context of lockdown restrictions, this had to be virtual. We adapted methods 

for a digital experience taking into consideration that it included people who were not necessarily 

accustomed to digital tools, neither they knew each other.  

Participants 
We built a list of 120 potential candidates to be invited to the workshop. Among them there were 

15% from scientific organisations, 33% from policy and 52% from the community. The invitations 

included a flyer for advertising the event, the workshop programme and a registration form which 



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included the video on information of personal data management (same video as in micro-workshops). 

To register for the workshop, people had to agree on our data policy, and they could opt for their 

names to be mentioned as participants. Only those properly registered were contacted with the 

virtual credential to attend the meeting. Especially among community members, there were some 

people that were not included in the original list but learned about the workshops by other members 

of the community and asked for permission to participate, which was granted in all cases. Members 

of CENIT/UNSAM and FARN pursued a dedicated follow-up of invitees.  

In total there were 34 registered participants and over half of them actually participated in the 

workshop. Among participants, there were around 10% from scientific organisations, 45% from 

community and CSOs and 45% from Policy covering different jurisdictions; 50% of participants were 

female and their interests were evenly spread around the three thematic areas. Some people that 

had registered to participate afterwards explained that they had overlapping activities but were still 

interested in the project. Also, at the last moment some community members who had registered to 

participate had to deal with some emergency situation in their territory and did not attend. We will 

follow-up on this too. 

Methods - Dynamics 
The workshop lasted two hours and included plenary and group sessions. The main goal of the 

activity was to gather information on the participants’ inputs on the project main outcome: an open-

source Citizen Science platform for promoting actions towards Environmental Justice 

There were three plenary sessions, with group sessions in-between. We used several digital tools as 

mentioned below and enabled the Zoom chat for conversation and reactions. 

The first plenary included presentations by representatives of both leading organisations (FARN and 

CENIT/UNSAM) about the project and its Citizen Social Science approach. After these, a collective 



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exercise to gather information was conducted using the online tool of wordcloud of Mentimeter. Two 

questions were posed to the group in order to understand participants' perception of the existing 

problems: first, we presented a question on the main socio-environmental problems in the basin; and 

second, we proceeded similarly but focussing on of each the three topics of interest: conservation of 

green areas, water quality and relocations. The wordclouds that emerged from this session were then 

used as inputs for the discussions on both group sessions. The second plenary session consisted of a 

brief presentation of FARN’s previous versions of QPR platform and their interest in promoting the 

participation in the basin as a fundamental aspect of Environmental Justice. The relevance of the 

three thematic areas was also briefly discussed. Finally, the last plenary session included the 

presentation of the group discussions and a reflexive exercise conducted by ZSI to gather 

information on the participants’ expectations about the project using the Padlet tool.  

The group discussions were facilitated and annotated by CENIT/UNSAM and FARN teams. The first 

group session aimed at identifying how people got informed about socio-environmental problems in 

the basin with the idea to create an initial map of the type and sources of information about the basin 

that could be included in the platform. Therefore, we used the first group session as a first anchor in 

the process of collectively discussing the project: stakeholders were asked about their knowledge 

regarding information sources and formats and the problems they face when using it. This 

contributed to focus on the project’s main goal (to create an online Citizen Science platform to map 

socio-environmental problems and potential solutions) by broadening out the diversity of 

perspectives of what is considered useful information.  

The second session was more directly associated with the project’s expected output: we asked 

participants to discuss their ideas about the platform’s purpose and the information to be produced 

and shared through it on each thematic topic.  We used the wordclouds from the mentimeter exercise 

as reflexive points but with the focus on online interactive formats (as presented by the examples 



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from the first session). We also asked about obstacles and problems that may turn up when designing 

and using such a platform. 

The group sessions were organised through breakout rooms where the facilitators used the Google 

Jamboard tool to introduce the discussions in interactive ways, and for the participants to be able to 

write their thoughts and opinions in a more direct way, considering they may not feel initially 

comfortable with sharing them out loud. The boards also aimed at providing a record of the 

discussions, and to allow the facilitators to have inputs to catalyse the conversation, as they were 

shared online and the annotations visible for the participants in the other breakout rooms, allowing 

for cross fertilization of the debate.  

4.1.5 The Knowledge Coalition as a Network Approach 
We initiated the project idea in close collaboration with a dozen of actors among policy makers, 

CSOs and community actors, and researchers from academic organisations, all of whom wrote 

letters of support for the project proposal in March 2019. In Figure 2 we draw how the network 

expanded both outside but especially inside the Matanza-Riachuelo basin. New actors who shared 

the R&I action were contacted by FARN and CENIT/UNSAM to take part in some of the activities we 

described above. There were also some few cases that initiated the contact themselves. Those that 

expressed their interest to remain connected are considered part of the Knowledge Coalition 

network, reaching a total of 32 actors, classified in research groups (28%), public policy 

organisations (22%) and CSOs (50%).6   

 
6 In Table 2 we stated that there 29 unique organisations which participated in the R&I action activities but in Figure 2 
there are two additional organizations (one NGO and one territorial organization) which are part of our knowledge 
coalition since 2019.   



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Thus, we define our Knowledge Coalition as a network of stakeholders who are interested in and 

informed about the R&I project goal and vision and who play an active role, either participating in or 

co-designing different actions. Actors in this network interact and deliberate in spaces mainly 

facilitated by the project's coordination team. In all cases, we seek to build from synergies of their 

activities in the basin. 



 
   
 

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                                   Figure 2: Network expansion in 18 months within and outside the Matanza-Riachuelo basin



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4.2 Knowledge Coalition Outcomes 

4.2.1 Introduction 
This section is organised in three blocks. First, based on interviews and micro-workshops, we present 

the socio-environmental problems and actors’ socio-technical practices addressing them. We found 

an extensive list of socio-environmental problems affecting the basin that we classified in broad 

categories, developed to allow comparability with other sources of information, especially ACUMAR. 

We contrast these understandings across different types of actors and in different locations.  

Second, we focus on the concept of participation for the production of knowledge that could 

contribute towards transformation. We are interested in reflecting from the perspective of different 

actors conforming the Knowledge Xoalition their understandings on the value of participation and 

also on how participation could be implemented and supported. We believe it is important to 

recognize that there are different ways in which participants could engage with Citizen Science 

projects (Haklay, 2018), depending on their interests, capabilities and project goals. Thus, in our R&I 

action we also expect that participation will adopt different characteristics for different actors in 

different activities and processes. Particularly, we are interested in addressing how the communities, 

in general, and co-researchers who are part of the Knowledge Coalition will participate. In this 

section we will present an approach to the stakeholders’ perceptions of citizens’ participation in both 

policymaking and knowledge production processes. These inputs are key to better understand the 

expectations and tensions that may appear when co-designing the project and defining its focus in 

the different instances with the knowledge coalition members 



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Third, we present preliminary results on the co-design workshop, particularly in relation to the 

participating stakeholders’ experience in using available information about the basin and their ideas 

on the purpose and potential obstacles in using the platform. 

4.2.2 Socio-environmental Problems and Practices to address them 
Figure 37 depicts the most important issues raised by different actors when asked, in an interview 

setting, about socio environmental problems.  

 
7 This wordcloud displays the frequency of nouns used by interviewees to answer the question “What are the Matanza-
Riachuelo basin’s main socio-environmental problems?”. We used the bag-of-words method coded in Python to 
represent the multiset of the words used in this part of the interview and then we filtered all terms that did not match the 
noun criteria. Finally, we rendered the resulting dataset using nubedepalabras.es 



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Figure 3: Wordcloud of nouns for interviewees’ responses to the question on socio-environmental  

problems in the basin 

Those words come as responses to the specific section in the questionnaire asking about socio-

environmental problems. Thus, issues related to the water, sanitation, floods, sewage system, 

settlements (informal housing), rubbish, contamination and health stand out in the wordcloud. 

However, there are also other nouns, which do not represent problems, specifically, but relate to the 

situated experience of actors in the basin: such as river, neighbourhoods, neighbours, water streams, 

territory, work, people, etc.  

The interviews’ and micro-workshops’ materials (transcriptions and notes) were analysed to map the 

main issues of the basin identified by the stakeholders. After listing these problems, we codified them 

into six categories that emerged from the project's original proposal and could work to contrast our 

findings with official public policy’s documents. The six categories of problems are the following: 



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• social vulnerability: includes any reference from the interviewees or micro-workshops’ 

participants to the conditions affecting the living standards of communities in the basin. 

These conditions include infrastructure deficiencies related to the provision of public 

services and basic rights such as access to food, health, education and housing as well as 

references to the stigma that such conditions may produce.   

• contamination: the material consequences of different activities that affect the basin’s 

environment related to productive activities, deficient public infrastructure and/or 

individual behaviour. 

• green spaces conservation: actions and situations that refer to the disturbance of public 

areas that provide environmental and recreational services to the basin. Some of them 

were legally defined as objects of protection. 

• flooding: references to the events produced by the covering or submerging of normally dry 

land by heavy precipitations and river overflow. 

• health problems: all the individual or collective discomforts or diseases that actors directly 

associate with living in the basin or with contamination.  

• public policy (actions and inactions): the issues identified as part of the actions or absence 

of them that are meant to be implemented by the public policy authorities (national, 

provincial or local) to comply with the judicial sentence request, and translated into the 

PISA. 

These categories have some relation with the ones contemplated by ACUMAR’s risk maps, develop 

to determine the prioritization of the different policy interventions8. The authority refers to social 

 
8 In 2018 the authority developed an environmental risk map (ACUMAR, 2018) with the purpose of guiding public policy 
interventions (mainly relocations/urbanizations and infrastructure) and a health risk map   (Pasqualini et al., 2018) that 
incorporates among other variables the Integral Evaluations of Environmental Health in Risk Areas (EISAAR for their initials 
 



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vulnerability—defined as the ascertainable condition of certain groups associated with their 

exposition to socioeconomic, habitational, sanitary, nutritional, psychosocial and environmental 

factors that determine their capacity to recover from catastrophes and threats—when including as a 

variable the people’s housing conditions (for which there is available consolidated official data). 

Floods and contamination are reflected as several of the threats that are determinants of risk: 

landfills (sites identified and tracked by the Direction of Solid Waste Management), presence of 

industrial establishments (considered as priority for control as these industries have been categorized 

as high in environmental complexity) and the quality of the underground water for human 

consumption (evaluating the presence of nitrates, as an indicator of potential contamination by 

industrial activities). The health index considers several issues associated with the morbidity and 

mortality produced by environmental diseases and contamination (as evaluated by ACUMAR in air, 

water, land, etc.). Finally, protected areas and wetlands in particular are monitored by a program 

that seeks to create a database for their sustainable management and preservation, although it 

includes water and sediments parameters only, for the hydrogeological characterization of the 

wetlands.  

In Figure 4 below we map the problems that were mentioned during both interviews and micro-

workshops and their locations according to actors’ narratives. It goes without saying that data 

displayed there does not represent a complete picture of the problems faced in each location, but 

attempts to highlight both the complexity of the socio-environmental phenomena ahead and the 

extension of situated experiences that conform our network. In addition, since research activities 

 
in Spanish) that the authority has been conducting (in alliance with the municipal jurisdictions) since 2016 to  evaluate the 
population’s environmental health by along the basin. In 2019 (ACUMAR, 2019) it also published a report for which it had 
begun working in 2016 with the National Scientific and Technical Research Council to produce an inventory of the basin’s 
wetlands, following the judicial demands as well as the Collegiate Body’s recommendations.  



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were carried out in the context of Covid-19 pandemic and lockdown restrictions, all actors, but 

especially community and policy actors, were overwhelmed by daily sanitary and economic 

emergencies, which may have changed their own priorities regarding socio-environmental problems. 

The construction of the Knowledge Coalition network is proposed in this project as a dynamic 

process. So far, we have connected with actors with experience in eight of the fourteen 

municipalities included in the Matanza-Riachuelo basin: Avellaneda, Almirante Brown, Merlo, Lanús, 

La Matanza, Lomas de Zamora, Esteban Echeverría, and Buenos Aires City. In most jurisdictions we 

map socio-environmental problems belonging to several categories, with important specificities in 

each of them. 



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Figure 4: Basin map and socio-environmental problems classified in six categories



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When the analysis is organised by types of actors, we could identify different problems’ prioritisation 

and also different practices aiming at addressing them, as shown below. 

CSOs and territorial organisations in our network frequently referred to issues related to social 

vulnerability, particularly in relation to poor access to housing and lack of access to public services 

such as drinkable water and sewage. Contamination of water and land coming from industrial and 

sewage waste and rubbish was also pointed out frequently among main problems. Since one of our 

micro-workshops was organised with neighbour associations defending natural reserves, green area 

conservation and changes in habitat conditions also turned up as important concerns. Finally, this 

type of actor was the one more prone to identifying problems they suffered that were directly related 

to policy action or inaction.  

CSOs’ and territorial organisations also reported activities to address those issues. These involve the 

organisation of complaints, mobilisations and environmental awareness campaigns against rubbish 

dumping, the destruction of natural reserves and the sale of public spaces. CSOs in particular, have 

a leading role in making visible main issues and in claiming for participation on both regulatory 

design and monitoring policy processes. 

Policy makers in our network identified problems similarly to communities but their priorities focus on 

the social vulnerability —housing deficit and lack of access to public services, but also basic needs 

such access to food, health and employment. Besides, they also mentioned environmental 

contamination problems which cannot be underestimated such as rubbish dumps and dumping of 

sewage and industrial effluents, and their associated health problems they may cause. The deficit of 

green areas and the risk of gentrification that can follow the improvements at the basin’s environment 

were also mentioned in some interviews, although not as main problems.  



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It must be noticed that actors from policy bodies have been in office for less than a year 

(governments in all jurisdictions changed in December 2019) and during pandemic time. Thus, 

although they mentioned some specific practices that were carried out in their jurisdictions to 

promote citizen participation (e.g., municipal forums for the conservation of green spaces) or 

environmental monitoring (e.g., creation of technical observatory of agrochemicals), they were still 

incipient and overpassed by other activities to deal with current emergency.  

Finally, members of research organisations tend to focus on single issues related to their research 

specialisation. They usually highlight how those issues are important for communities wellbeing. 

Water quality was one important research goal, and therefore, environmental contamination due to 

several causes included industrial, agricultural and sewage waste; rubbish dumps were highly 

mentioned. Researchers relate contamination with health problems and they mention that social 

vulnerability, especially the one associated with housing and lack of essential public services, only 

worsen the relation between contamination and health. In addition, the conservation of green areas 

was also mentioned as vital importance to avoid recurrent floods, aggravated by solid waste disposal 

obstructing streams, that cause evacuations and even deaths. 

As mentioned, activities and experiences by researchers from scientific organisations in our network 

were mostly related to analysing contamination, particularly in relation with water quality. For 

example, how water remediation tools used in other countries could be applied at the basin, or the 

elaboration of methods to control water use or the use of Citizen Science methods to monitor aquatic 

environments. There were also biological studies related to metal contamination, engineering studies 

for monitoring water bodies throughout the basin to anticipate floods and social studies on the 

effects of relocation on people and neighbourhoods. Most of these studies attempt to have an 

impact on public policy. 



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4.2.3 The Meanings and Processes of Citizen Participation in Policy Making (for 
Community and Policy Actors) and on Knowledge Production (for Scientific 
Actors) 

In our R&I action—and in citizen social science more generally—we envisage that people who 

engage are politically interested in changing a reality that affects them. They may contribute not just 

with information or data production about problems as defined by researchers, but also with their 

personal and situated experience in seeking for solutions. Yet, (their) participation could be 

organised in different ways by establishing the appropriate governance mechanisms. In this section 

we discuss how this idea is seen by different actors in the knowledge coalition, when we asked them 

about their understanding of the role of citizen participation.  

In our Knowledge Coalition network, citizen participation was recognised as having different roles 

which could be broadly associated to the different types of actors we interacted with. From a civil 

society perspective citizen participation in policy making has a democratising role; it is seen as the 

opportunity to be treated as equals in the definition of public policies priorities. In turn, from the 

perspective of public policy, citizen participation has a contributory role as it allows for a better 

identification of community priorities. If successful, this contributes to policy actions to be culturally or 

socially appropriated by the community, an important dimension for both the effective 

implementation as well as the sustainability of public policy.   

Academic actors were asked about the role of citizen participation in the production of scientific 

knowledge. In general, participation was seen as a route to improve the responsiveness of science. It 

was claimed that scientific projects could better reach community needs when working closely with 

them. In addition, due to that very same reason participation also contributed to the legitimisation of 



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science, before society and public policy actors, which is valued particularly during periods when 

public investment in science is questioned.  

Regarding policymaking processes, civil society actors see that community organisation is a 

necessary condition for participating in public policies, but it is not sufficient. Articulation with public 

policy bodies is also important to build trust relations that may be conducive to more effective 

participation. There are several important experiences in the basin where participation has 

accomplished important achievements, such as producing information about the sources and 

consequences of pollution (Pereira & Tobías, 2014), mapping and contrasting the results of the policy 

implementation (del Castillo & Fressoli, 2016; Radtke, 2018) and co-producing protocols for the 

relocations processes (Demoy et al., 2016). In all cases, there were social organisations and NGOs 

involved in the mobilization of different stakeholders. Yet, the organisations and community actors 

we interacted with identified a risk of citizen discouragement, since participation can be very 

demanding and—although included in the basin’s sanitation policy judicial sentence—there are no 

binding  

mechanisms created for participation to be translated into tangible public policy measures: existing 

mechanisms such as the “working roundtables” and public audiences are not binding. In addition, 

processes are so slow that can be frustrating. 

In turn, policy makers discussed the difficulty of balancing participation and deliberation with 

contexts of emergency decision-making (such as those imposed with the difficulties of Covid-19 

times). But they also discussed the lack of appropriate mechanisms that would enable more engaged 

participation (innovating from the traditional consultative approaches). 

Finally, although as we mentioned there are some well-established experiences of Citizen Science in 

the basin, most researchers we interviewed do not consider citizen participation as an integral part 

of the knowledge production phase of the research cycle. They see it as part of University outreach 



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activities or introduced through traditional channels such as interviews to obtain data, or 

communication strategies, to share research outcomes, and in some cases, for social monitoring of 

environmental data. Outside specific Citizen Science networks, there is little knowledge about 

Citizen Science projects. Researchers working in Citizen Science projects, argued that it proved to 

be difficult to sustain collaboration with communities for a long time, especially because those 

activities are not recognised in scientific evaluation schemes and also because it was too demanding 

on time and energy to be ready to commit to those activities in the long run. Dealing with community 

expectations, especially in the context of social vulnerability, was also mentioned as an important 

barrier.  

4.2.4 The First Steps Towards Platform Co-design 
One of the goals of the workshop was to identify current use of digital information by different 

stakeholders and the problems they face in general when looking for information. Participants 

discussed in small groups the information they use in their daily activities in the basin and we also 

asked specifically about some sources of information which share digital open data, to understand 

their experience with them in terms of access and use. There were 30 unique sources of information 

mentioned in the almost 50 post-its written in Jamboard. The distribution of digital vs. analogue 

sources was 20 to 6, with 4 that were classified as ambiguous (as they could be consulted either way 

and participants did not specify). We also found that in all break-out rooms participants mentioned at 

least one local source of information (from municipality’s websites or contacts to local press, 

organisations and neighbours). In relation to people's experience when using available information, 

the issues mentioned were: information’s obsolescence (due to lack of update or website 

maintenance); data format which made it difficult to reuse; visualization issues; and data 

fragmentation.  



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The second purpose of the workshop was to initiate more concrete discussions with members of the 

Knowledge Coalition on our R&I action goal of building a Citizen Science platform for mapping 

socio-environmental problems and promoting actions towards Environmental Justice. We divided the 

discussion on break-out rooms per thematic areas, but we found that there were some common 

topics that stood up in all rooms: to share experiences and narratives regarding the problem matter, 

and to facilitate networking and dialogue among different initiatives. The main concerns regarding 

the use of a digital platform that emerged in the three sessions were related to restrictions in 

technological infrastructure; lack of technical capabilities; potential misinterpretation or inadequate 

use of the uploaded information; and the need for data validation. 

5. Concluding Remarks 
Our R&I action involves fairly complex and diverse socio-environmental phenomena in a large 

territory which is densely populated. In this context, we seek to articulate with a large network of 

allies, with previous experience and responsibilities in the basin. Network formation is dynamic and 

the participation of actors in the R&I activities will vary over time and the type of action. From our 

experience, we could argue that three variables affect engagement by different types of actors: 

thematic expertise and/or interest of participants; degree of synergies with their own activities in the 

basin and the specificities of the expected contribution for each planned action. We envisage that in 

order to address the complexity of socio-environmental issues involved in R&I action we need to 

enable participation from a diverse set of stakeholders, who could contribute to better identify 

problems, mobilise resources and facilitate socio-technical transitions, as the academic and policy 

literature suggest (Bäckstrand, 2003; Gallopín & Vessuri, 2006; Sauermann et al., 2020; Stirling, 

2007). However, as these authors claim, the social impact of Citizen Science projects depends on 

overcoming several challenges that turn up when trying to guarantee scale, diversity and intensity of 



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participation (Den Broeder et al., 2018; Heiss & Matthes, 2017; Kythreotis et al., 2019; Sauermann 

et al., 2020). Challenges are related to how to sustain participation and how to respond to the time, 

technical and regulatory constraints that each participant faces in their own institutional and cultural 

context for action. Thus, to promote sustainability of such participation we need to link to interests 

and previous and future activities of these heterogeneous participants. That is why we believed a 

network structure of stakeholders’ participation is more appropriate than a fixed coalition of 

stakeholders. This implies that stakeholders will participate on and off in the different activities we 

propose but they are nevertheless well informed and connected to the project activities; they will 

actively participate when they find it suitable in terms of their own agenda. The challenge is then how 

to promote synergies among diverse stakeholder agendas without departing from the R&I action 

vision, that is to encourage citizen participation facilitated by digital tools to promote transformative 

actions towards Environmental Justice in the basin. The virtual environment imposed by Covid-19 

pandemic added new challenges, particularly when considering the digital gap affecting people 

living in vulnerable conditions.  

Network formation is a dynamic process and therefore it is always a work-in progress. Yet, people in 

the Knowledge Coalition network have manifested explicit interest in participating and being 

informed on our activities. Therefore, despite important challenges ahead, especially in relation to 

Covid-19 related restrictions and uneven and poor digital infrastructure in the country, we think we 

have been able to create a yet incipient but growing network of actors interested and connected to 

our R&I action.  

The main challenge we encountered so far was to work in a lockdown situation with communities 

living in vulnerable situations with poor digital infrastructure. On more than one occasion, it was not 

possible to contact interested members of the community due to connectivity issues. Articulation with 



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public policy actors was also very complicated in this situation; we could do not more than 

acknowledge that they were buried in daily emergencies and we were not as successful as we 

expected in reaching them. Interviews and workshops turned virtual. For the former and for the cases 

the digital barrier was overcome, we faced some challenges in administering the Informed Consents. 

We learnt from the process and it went more smoothly over time. For the latter, we originally thought 

it may have been complex to gather a diversity of actors in a virtual environment, especially due to 

asymmetric power, digital capabilities and potentially conflicting interests. But after building trust 

through interviews, information communications and micro-workshops we managed to organised a 

very productive interactive workshop, some six months after the R&I action formally initiated.  

Challenges in relation to implementing the IC procedure were manifold. Firstly, we needed to design 

the tool almost from scratch. Informing participants of the research processes and obtaining their 

explicit consent is a common practice in biomedical projects in the country. However, in those cases 

people are the object of research and therefore tools used in those contexts are not straightforwardly 

adaptable to the participatory and collaborative approach of our R&I action. When the project 

began and prior to our initial activities we designed the IC forms and procedures. We documented all 

the participatory activities and made decisions in terms of the information we would share with the 

consortium’s members, discussing the types of personal data to be collected and measures of 

protection. We followed our colleagues’ recommendations and studied their forms’ proposals, as well 

as our local normative guidelines and examples of consent for other disciplines and developed our 

own for the different types of stakeholders and their participation, translating them to English as well.  

When we had to reprogram our activities due to the lockdown, we needed to design new tools for 

unforeseen activities such as micro and co-design virtual workshops. The impossibility of meeting 

face-to-face led us to innovate in our procedure, simplifying the language but also the format for 

providing information: FARN communication team produced a video and we implemented both oral 



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consent and electronic agreement through Google Forms, with identification assured by requesting 

confirmation with emails.   

Going through those challenges made us confident in our capacities to adapt our plans and remain 

flexible to new turns in the context of uncertainty. We have relied on stringent mechanisms for 

organisation and articulation among main partners. We established a fortnight team meeting fixed 

schedule since the beginning of the lockdown, which allowed us to thoroughly discuss necessary 

changes in original plans. We also documented decisions and established follow-up mechanisms.  

In addition, for building the Knowledge Coalition we rely on both organisations’ previous networks 

and we devote time and effort to build trust with new contacts, which is of paramount importance for 

the success of our project activities. We learnt it could be gained even in the absence of face-to-face 

interaction.  

We were also positively surprised by the good reception of digital tools among workshop 

participants. Yet we believe in future workshops and interactive activities we need to provide more 

time for oral discussions. In the co-design workshop, we realised that some of the group discussions 

were cut down before they could properly finish.  

Overall, we found that virtual interactions worked better in more institutionalised environments. 

However, in the case of community members along the basin we still need to experiment with 

alternative mechanisms.  

  



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6. References 
ACUMAR. (2018). Identificación de áreas prioritarias para intervenciones en la cuenca Matanza-

Riachuelo. Análisis de riesgo ambiental. 

ACUMAR. (2019). Estudio de Humedales en la cuenca Matanza-Riachuelo. Estado de situación. 

ACUMAR. (2020). Informe de Mandas. Estado de cumplimiento y acciones.  

Bäckstrand, K. (2003). Civic Science for Sustainability: Reframing the Role of Experts, Policy-Makers 

and Citizens in Environmental Governance. Global Environmental Politics, 3(4), 24–41. 

https://doi.org/10.1162/152638003322757916 

Biodiversidad de la cuenca Matanza-Riachuelo · iNaturalist. (n.d.). Retrieved 26 October 2020, from 

https://www.inaturalist.org/projects/biodiversidad-de-la-cuenca-matanza-riachuelo 

Cochero, J. (2018). AppEAR: A citizen science mobile app to map the habitat quality of continental 

waterbodies. Ecología Austral, 028(02), 467–479. 

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8_n02_p467 

del Castillo, M & Fressoli, M. (2016). ¿Qué pasa Riachuelo? In M. Fressoli & V. Arza, The impact of 

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Demoy, M., Yacovino, P., Olejarczyk, R., Swistun, D., Campos, N., & Lekerman, V. (2016). 

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Den Broeder, L., Devilee, J., Van Oers, H., Schuit, A. J., & Wagemakers, A. (2018). Citizen Science 

for public health. Health Promotion International, 33(3), 505–514. 

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Fressoli, M., & Arza, V. (2016). Discussion. In M. Fressoli & V. Arza, The impact of citizen generated 

data in Argentina (pp. 42–53). CIVICUS DataShift. 

Gallopín, G., & Vessuri, H. (2006). Science for sustainable development: Articulating Knowledges. In 

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Haklay, M. (2018). Participatory citizen science. In Citizen Science: Innovation in Open Science, 

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Hess, D. J. (2007). Alternative pathways in science and industry. MIT Press. 

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Chambers, C., Miller, B. A., & Castree, N. (2019). Citizen Social Science for More Integrative and 

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Mira, J. (2016). Activismo verde: Participación ciudadana por el derecho al ambiente sano en la 

Argentina. http://ri.conicet.gov.ar/handle/11336/28611 



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Pasqualini, M. F., Bañuelos, C., Faure Montania, E., González, J., Hepp, Y., López, F. E., Malinovsky, 

V., & Mayo, P. (2018). Mapa de Riesgo Sanitario Ambiental de la Cuenca Matanza Riachuelo 

(ACUMAR, Ed.). ACUMAR. 

Pereira, P., & Tobías, M. (2014). Políticas de agua potable y saneamiento y demandas locales en el 

Área Metropolitana de Buenos Aires. MG Merlinsky, Cartografías Del Conflicto Ambiental En 

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