How science communication can transform communities
Four women in the Global South make waves with water quality research through community collaboration
By involving a more diverse range of people in the scientific endeavor, we bring a broader range of minds to the problems the world needs solving. That's the premise of inclusive research.
In the Global South, these exceptional scientists are harnessing the power of inclusive research to solve major challenges in their countries and beyond. It's rooted in a deep understanding of these communities and active engagement with its members. Recognizing the critical role of clean water in a community’s health and economic prosperity, they have pioneered innovative solutions to enhance water quality in Honduras, Bangladesh, Tanzania and Sri Lanka. This year, they were honored as the recipients of the OWSD-Elsevier Foundation Award for Early-Career Women Scientists in the Developing World.
Here, we explore their research and its potential to benefit communities worldwide.
How community collaboration can maximize the impact of research
The beauty of the coral reef led Antonella Rivera to study the sewage that blights it. Through her work, she discovered the power of community
For Dr Antonella Rivera, a marine biology researcher in Honduras, it was a trip to the Bay Islands north of the Honduran mainland. For her bachelor’s degree, she was doing volunteer work and training throughout a marine park there.
“It was my first time diving and seeing the coral reefs. They were so beautiful and impressive and inspired so much peace. I also spoke to the local communities and realized how much they depend on them — for their livelihoods and as a fundamental part of their culture and identity.”
Antonella went on to get a scholarship that allowed her to pursue a master’s degree in Marine Biodiversity and Conservation at the University of Oviedo in Spain followed by a PhD in Social Ecology.
For the last eight years, Antonella has been back in Honduras working as Principal Investigator for the Coral Reef Alliance.
Her love of the marine world may have been inspired by the beauty of the Mesoamerican Barrier Reef system, but a much less attractive ocean feature has become the focus of her investigations — sewage:
“I started noticing how important sewage treatment and water quality is here in the Caribbean. It might not be such a flashy concern if you’re not seeing it happen. But what if we can consistently show that if sewage isn't treated properly before it goes into the ocean, it not only affects human health but it also affects the reef? Sewage can make the reef more susceptible to bleaching and more likely to have diseases.”
Antonella collaborated on a white paper looking at integrated watershed management, examining exactly what pollutants are travelling into the watershed and marine environment. This project highlighted issues in the approach to sewage treatment across Honduras:
“We have sewage treatment, but across the whole mainland, including close to the capital, many people have septic tanks. There are not clear regulations around how these are built and maintained, which can lead to improperly treated sewage leaking off.”
Antonella Rivera is a Principal Investigator for the Coral Reef Alliance in Honduras.
Antonella Rivera is a Principal Investigator for the Coral Reef Alliance in Honduras.
“Speaking to the local communities, I realized how much they depend on the coral reefs for their livelihoods and their culture and identity.”
Grassroots collaboration
For several years, the Coral Reef Alliance in collaboration with the Bay Islands Conservation Association had been working with a local water board to properly manage and update a sewage treatment plant on Half Moon Bay, Roatan — the largest of the Bay Islands of Honduras. Antonella started intensively studying the results of this work to see what impact it had for the community and local reef. The results were very encouraging. She explains:
“The changes that took place in Half Moon Bay were really from the bottom up. It was very grassroots, with the local community getting together and then joining up with the government. I saw they had been able to treat some 30 million gallons of sewage and had a very satisfied community. And the reef was doing so much better. There were about three orders of magnitude less of pathogens.”
Looking to the future
Antonella believes water quality will continue to be a top priority across the Mesoamerican Barrier Reef system and beyond. To ensure more people can benefit from her findings, she wants to make sure they are shared with the public and those on the ground who need them — and on a much wider scale:
“I think my overall goal is to bring science to the developing world, making sure everybody has access to the data. There are so many amazing organizations I've had the privilege to meet, including lots of smaller, local NGOs. They're doing an amazing job but don’t have the time or resources to have someone in-house doing the necessary research. I want to help get the information to them so they can share it with the public in a way that's accessible. I feel very passionate about finding a way to do that.”
Communicating research leads to healthier living conditions
A desire to impact people and planet led Dr Choudhury to focus on environmental contaminants
For Dr Tasrina Rabia Choudhury, a Bangladeshi chemist, a career in science was inspired by her passion for the world around her:
“I have a fascination with the natural world. I also have a desire to help solve environmental pollution, to ensure a quality and safe life for mankind.”
Tasrina is Principal Scientific Officer and Quality Manager in the Analytical Chemistry Laboratory of the Atomic Energy Centre of the Bangladesh Atomic Energy Commission in Dhaka. She has an MSc and PhD in Applied Chemistry and Chemical Engineering from the University of Dhaka, Bangladesh. Her dedicated work has led to the publication of numerous papers and prestigious awards.
The focus of Tasrina’s research is analyzing and addressing major and minor trace essential and toxic elements in different environments. She has intensively studied heavy metal contamination in water and other ecosystems, examining the impact on human health and working on solutions. She explains:
“Heavy metals such as lead, cadmium, arsenic, mercury and chromiumetc — as well as emerging contaminants like microplastics — pose significant risks to environmental quality and public health due to their persistence, toxicity and widespread occurrence. Finding ways to identify and remove those contaminants is a critical area of environmental science. It can make a huge difference to people’s health.”
Tasrina’s research has involved extensively investigating the river systems throughout the coastal regions of Bangladesh. This year, she was the lead author of a groundbreaking study appraising heavy metal contamination in five coastal river systems, published open access in Elsevier’s journal Regional Studies in Marine Science. Using advanced techniques, the research team conducted a detailed analysis of metal distribution and pollution levels:
“We uncovered extreme levels of contamination significantly above safe limits and found that the source was primarily human-made. Urbanization, industrial activities, or unrestricted disposal of waste into water bodies, were all contributing to that contamination. This study clearly shows the need for urgent and effective water management strategies in Bangladesh’s coastal regions.”
Dr Tasrina Rabia Chodhury presents her research at a conference in Bangladesh.
Dr Tasrina Rabia Chodhury presents her research at a conference in Bangladesh.
Tasrina and her research team have developed innovative solutions for remediation. To promote their adoption, spreading the word is key. To this end, Tasrina has authored various studies, most of which are published open access in Elsevier journals.
Leveling the playing field through open access
As a scientist from a developing country, Tasrina says the process of publishing requires considerable effort and perseverance:
“Access to high-impact journals can sometimes be limited due to financial constraints or a lack of institutional subscriptions. This means careful selection is needed to find suitable platforms. Language barriers can also complicate the process.”
Despite this, Tasrina has found many routes to success in achieving high visibility with research:
“I have been involved with many collaborations, including with organizations like the IAEA. Collaborating with international partners and participating in research networks is so important to gain access to resources and expertise. It’s also a huge help to get research more widely shared.”
“I think open access is an amazing tool.”
Tasrina also highlights how open access publishing — along with increased recognition of the importance of diverse perspectives — are gradually leveling the playing field for researchers from developing countries:
“Open access publishing represents a transformative shift in scholarly communication. It can democratize knowledge and foster greater collaboration and innovation, and … that collaboration can be hugely helpful for researchers like myself.”
The fact that open access publications can be easily and widely accessed represents a great opportunity, Tasrina says:
“Publishing via open access can lead to greater citations and broader dissemination of findings. That in itself can accelerate progress in addressing societal challenges.”
Reducing financial barriers for open access
In January 2024, Elsevier launched its Geographical Pricing for Open Access (GPOA) across 142 of its gold open access journals to make open access article publishing charges (APCs) more affordable for authors in low- and middle-income countries. With this model — a publishing industry first — Elsevier aims to reduce financial barriers that have traditionally hindered researchers and institutions in low and middle-income countries from publishing the latest research in gold open access journals.
Creating a sustainable future
If open access holds great promise for the future of science, then it is a great match with Tasrina’s ambitions:
“My overarching goal as an environmental scientist is to make a positive impact on the world by contributing to the protection of our natural resources. I also want to help promote environmental justice and equity for all communities. Through my work, I hope to contribute to creating a more sustainable and resilient future for our planet and its inhabitants.”
How trust in science played a pivotal role in water resource management
Tanzania’s Rufiji River Basin is a crucial water resource. Water engineer Dr Augustina Alexander shares lessons learned from a research consortium that involved many community stakeholders
When Augustina Alexander was just 8, she told her family she wanted to study medicine so she could be a doctor one day. Her mother, who was an accountant, told her that to achieve her ambition, she needed to take science subjects at school.
This was the first step in a journey that would ultimately lead Augustina to research water resource management in a highly competitive water region. In fact, she dealt with water scarcity in her town growing up. But for now, she was set on pursuing medicine.
Then in high school, she made a discovery that changed her career path: She realized that her real aptitude was for physics — not biology. That aptitude meant she would be better suited for engineering than medicine.
The next hint of an obstacle came from a tutor.
Is there a place for women in engineering?
“My tutor was about to start university and told me there were no women in his class taking subjects like environmental engineering,” she recalled. “He seemed to be implying that women could not excel in this field because they weren’t studying it.”
But the idea of pursuing a male-dominated specialty did not put Augustina off — it had the opposite effect: “This gave me a big push! I thought, ‘OK, I need to change this.’”
Childhood struggles with water
Augustina went on study at the University of Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, taking courses in civil and water resources engineering. She soon fell in love with the field, finding herself transported back to the challenges she had experienced as a child in her local community:
“This was a field I could relate to directly. I’ve seen the issues of water becoming diseased and the challenges most women in rural areas face with water and sanitation.”
“I grew up in a town where tap water was always available — but then there was a time when the water just stopped,” she explained. “We had to carry buckets to a distant village to get water, joining a long queue of people. When access to water suddenly stops, you soon realize how much of your life functions on the availability of it.”
Augustina went on to earn a master’s degree in Water Resource Engineering from the University of Dar es Salaam, followed by a PhD in Civil Engineering at Tshwane University of Technology in South Africa. She is now a Lecturer in the College of Engineering and Technology at the University of Dar Es Salaam.
Competing needs for water in Rufiji
Augustina’s research has focused on water supply and treatment, hydrological modeling and climate change. Since 2020, she has been working on a major project investigating water resource management in the important Rufiji River Basin catchment.
Source: RESBEN Project Report, 2023
Source: RESBEN Project Report, 2023
The Rufiji catchment has a huge number of competing claims for its precious water. It serves the population in many nearby cities and towns. It is an economically significant power source, with one of the country’s biggest hydropower plants located downstream. The area is agriculturally significant, known as the national breadbasket, with small farms and large plantations all needing water to produce food. The river also flows through Ruaha National Park, one of the world’s largest wildlife sanctuaries, supporting animals in desperate need of water to live.
As part of a research consortium of African universities, Augustina looked into how best to manage this complex and significant resource:
“Any approach to water use needs to balance competing needs and be able to withstand climate variation and the stress created by a growing population.”
Dr Augustina Alexander measures groundwater levels during a field survey with colleagues from the Rufiji River Basin office.
Dr Augustina Alexander measures groundwater levels during a field survey with colleagues from the Rufiji River Basin office.
A shared sense of responsibility
“We wanted the people who used the water to feel like they owned the process. It was important they start thinking about how they could use water in a better way.”
To give all water users a shared sense of responsibility, the consortium brought various stakeholder groups together to help each understand the water needs of the others. This was a gradual process:
“We started forming teams and getting them to look at why it’s important we share this water resource equally. We helped them understand what they need and what they see the future looking like. We discussed ways of different users working together to achieve their various objectives.”
Augustina attributes the success of these discussions to the sensitive way they were managed:
“We didn’t bring people together and just tell them what to do. We got them to talk to us about what’s happening with the resource — because they are the ones living there. Once they started sharing in their words what was happening, we could try and give the scientific explanation for it.”
With so many different stakeholder groups involved, it was also important to create an environment where everyone felt comfortable to share:
“We created clear rules of engagement. We wanted everyone to feel able to speak up. For example, some smallholder farmers in the groups may have found it hard to articulate their views. If they can’t share, we lose the opportunity for them to challenge our findings.”
One technique to get around this was creation of storytelling sessions:
“We created short videos. In these sessions we used the stories of the people in the village to explain their challenges around water and how it affects their wellbeing. We worked using a level of communication that everyone can understand.”
These collaborative community sessions have had very positive outcomes:
“There has been a significant change in perception. Instead of the different groups fighting or blaming each other, they’re trying to work together.”
Earning scientific trust
Dr Augustina Alexander (third from right) and her consortium colleagues in the Iringa region after a successful Adaptive Planning Process (APP) workshop that brought together a wide range of stakeholders to share different perspectives of water resource management.
Dr Augustina Alexander (third from right) and her consortium colleagues in the Iringa region after a successful Adaptive Planning Process (APP) workshop that brought together a wide range of stakeholders to share different perspectives of water resource management.
The success the consortium has achieved with stakeholders did not happen overnight. It took time to earn their trust in the process and scientific intervention, Augustina explained:
“You might think, of course they should trust what we’re doing, it’s for their good. But it doesn’t just happen instantly. In the first workshops we held, many participants were very reserved — they were unsure of each other’s motives. By the final workshops, they were talking comfortably and even referring to each other's situation. They were making connections with how one action could affect everyone else.”
Augustina attributes some of this change and sense of collaboration to a mapping session, looking at how the activities of each stakeholder impacted the others:
“That really opened things up. They were so engaged and really started sharing their views. The participants started developing their own ideas around activities they could stop doing, or helped point out gaps in our knowledge about what was happening.
“It was so important to have this level of engagement, where they could tell us openly what was happening. It’s an issue of trust and it does take time to build.”
Collaborating globally for the future
This year, Augustina's research recognized with a prestigious award: She and the other women featured here were recipients of the 2024 OWSD-Elsevier Foundation Award for Early Career Women Scientists in the Developing World, giving her even more visibility for her research.
Augustina would like to have more capacity to look into water resource use across the country. As part of this, she would love to see more students enrolling in fields relating to water and sanitation:
“Once we have more people working in this area, their research can add into the efforts to solve the many water challenges,” she said. “I’m so passionate about the research work I’ve done around the Rufiji River catchment. We want to take it a step further and implement the framework we are developing. If that can be put into policy, perhaps it can be implemented at a higher level to help manage and develop our water resources in different catchments.
“I want to see if I can help influence policies and regulations that support governance of water resources,” she added. “This could allow everyone to be able to share benefits.”
“There are many unsolved problems around water all over the world. I’m involved in some international networks, and I believe we could work systematically together to tackle issues around water. We need to find a way to connect and move together.”
Gaining funding (and trust) for a freshwater algal bloom alert system in Sri Lanka
As a plant virologist, Prof Shirani Widana Gamage is developing solutions to critical water pollution issues. But that’s just part of the challenge.
For female scientists in some developing countries, access to opportunities can present a significant challenge. Dr Shirani Widana Gamage, Senior Lecturer in Botany at the University of Ruhuna, Sri Lanka, describes the great fortune of pursuing her passion in a country where there is scientific equality:
Opportunities for science education in Sri Lanka is very equal between men and women. If anything, in recent years more women have wanted to continue to postgraduate studies and tend to get more of the scientific job opportunities.
She ended up doing two master’s degrees. For the first, in Sri Lanka, she focused on microbiology and molecular biology. After that, she received a scholarship from the Netherlands Fellowship Programme, which allowed her to study plant sciences at Wageningen University.
Having returned to Sri Lanka for a few years for her PhD, Shirani once again had the desire to have an international experience. She successfully applied for a Faculty for the Future Fellowship from the Schlumberger Foundation, which aims to support women in STEM. This opened the opportunity to study plant virology at the University of Queensland, Australia.
Shirani describes her time at the University of Queensland as having a particularly positive impact:
In my laboratory, there were students, researchers and supervisors from a broad mix of countries. The working environment was very friendly. It was very good to share experiences with people from different parts of the world.
Finding critical areas of focus
Although Shirani’s PhD work focused on plant virology, some of the realities of conducting scientific work in a developing country have informed her research work in Sri Lanka. She explains:
Working with viruses, especially plant viruses, requires some sophisticated laboratory facilities, which we lacked at that time. I thought I should focus on other fields as well, such as other microorganisms.
After looking into key research priorities across the country, Shirani deduced that clean water was a critical area. Sri Lanka has vast areas of freshwater, which are being affected in a multitude of ways. Some of these are common challenges affecting many parts of the world — such as pollution caused by agricultural runoff. But Shirani also discovered some less studied issues.
“The formation of cyanobacterial blooms which is generally referred to as — algal blooms — is a big problem in Sri Lanka,” she explains. “This is the green-colored scum that appears on the surface of water. These blooms are formed by cyanobacteria bacteria that produce toxins that are very harmful to humans and animals. The climate here is warm all year round and our water bodies are nutrient-rich, these conditions promote the growth of algal blooms. We don’t have much research on these in Sri Lanka for controlling, so I thought that was where I should focus.”
The challenge of bringing an alert system to the public
Having a system in place that could predict bloom formations was one huge step forward. But that still left Shirani and the team with another challenge: Key to the alert system working is the ability for it to be quickly communicated to relevant communities.
Because of the trust and positive perception of science in Sri Lanka, Shirani describes her interactions with local communities as very positive:
“During our research, we held several public awareness sessions and contacted different groups of people using those water bodies. We were able to share the message about what we wanted to do in simple language. They were very happy that we are doing research in their area and water bodies. They liked the fact that scientists were involved, and they understood that the findings would be to their benefit. They were helpful and supportive of our work.”
“We held several public awareness sessions for different groups of people using those water bodies. ... They liked the fact that scientists were involved, and they were helpful and supportive of our work.”
The more difficult stakeholder group for the team to convince has been the authorities with responsibility for the water bodies:
“Researchers cannot directly come to the public in Sri Lanka with their findings, such as the models we developed. We need to contact whichever relevant authority controls water bodies and convince them that our models could be used as an alarm system for algal blooms. This is the part we are still working on.”
Supporting the future of science
Shirani describes feeling very happy to have contributed to research findings through her work. Her team’s research findings on cyanobacterial blooms have been published in several journals and presented as conference papers.
She is now working on another critical project in the field of water pollution, looking at biological herbicides that can replace extremely harmful chemical versions.
But what also gives a great sense of pride is her mentorship of other scientists:
“So far, I have supported six female postgraduate students. One now has completed her PhD, and the others have master’s degrees. Some have already embarked on careers, and others are starting their PhDs. In that sense, I'm very happy that I could support them to become women scientists.”
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