Freshwater Watch Parma

Active

from 10/01/2025 until 31/05/2027

This Citizen Science project, funded under the 2024 "Sustainable Communities" call by Fondazione Cariparma, aims to engage citizens, institutions, businesses, and farmers in monitoring and protecting the surface waters of the Municipality of Parma. The project involves the development of a monthly water monitoring plan at approximately 30 sites, 100 measurements based on citizen reports, two water blitz events, conferences, photography exhibitions, and documentary screenings.  FWW directly engages various citizen and local stakeholders through its diverse network of project partners: over 16 associations and informal groups, the University of Parma, an international advisor (EarthWatch Europe), the CIRF (Italian National Institute for Research on Water), and ISPRA (Italian National Institute for Environmental Protection).

Aim

Parma boasts an incredible wealth of water and aquatic ecosystems. Just think of the Parma River, which so strongly characterizes our city, the areas of springs and fountains, and the dense network of irrigation canals that are essential to our agriculture and biodiversity.

This wealth, however, is subject to significant negative anthropogenic impacts. It is therefore urgent to implement actions to address these critical issues in order to preserve the benefits this water resource provides to the area, halt the loss of biodiversity, and mitigate the impacts of climate change and extreme events. We believed a project was necessary that would involve citizens, institutions, businesses, and farmers in understanding the critical issues and the

valuable elements, so that together we could identify targeted solutions to reduce pollution and protect and enhance aquatic ecosystems.

The project aim also includes educational activities for schools, developed within the context of the BenEssere in Natura project, with specific topics dedicated to water.

Participation & Audience

Target group: 17 local partners in the partnership led by Parma Sostenibile, the Association of Environmental Women, Walks between Land and Water, the Parma Solidarity Economy District, the Parma BioValley District, FabLab/Officine ON/OF, FIAB Bicinsieme Parma, the Campus Garden student group, GELA Ecological Guards, the Parma Rubbish Collectors, Family Laboratories, Legambiente Parma, Molino delle Asse, Parchi del Ducato, Parma Society of Natural Sciences, TuttiMondi, and WWF Parma Also schools are welcome and and at the moment there are 3 secondary schools that have done training. The involvement was more consistent when the first waterblitz was carried out in October 2025 in which 300 citizens participated in the municipality of Parma alone.

Number of participants: about 30 during monthly sampling and 300 during waterblitz

Duration of involvement: some are engaged for all project period other just for 4 days waterblitz

How to participate

Anyone wishing to participate in the monitoring as a citizen scientist or school teachers interested in launching educational programs on the topic can write to Parma Sostenibile at: fwwparma@parmasostenibile.it 

Impact
Community impact: the need to make the authorities more involved and force criticality mitigation measures
Community impact types: Awareness-raising
Insights and Highlights
Achievements:
The project involves over 40 citizens at 42 sites each month, and involved over 300 citizens in the October Water Blitz. The over 400 samples collected from dozens of water bodies during the first six months highlight how, even in Parma, there are critical situations of excess nutrients that need to be adequately addressed.
Challenges:
keep going with monitoring and scaling up the involvement of local authorities like local environmental agency etc
Outreach methods:
The project takes place within the territory of a single municipality, as large as Parma is, and the coordinator, Parma sostenibile, already has a vast network of relationships with numerous local entities, so social media, a few press conferences and word of mouth were sufficient.
Interesting highlights:
high interest and involvement of citizens and the high number of monitored stations
Go to Project
Water type
Surface water Groundwater
Keywords
E. Coli Riparian Vegetation Water Quality
Science Topics
Water Education Biodiversity
Tags
Teaching materials available
Difficulty Level
Medium
Participation tasks
Annotation Data Entry Geolocation Identification Learning Measurement Observation Photography Sample analysis Site selection and/or description
Location
City
Contact
E-mail
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Created Dec. 5, 2025, 11:19 a.m.
Updated Dec. 5, 2025, 11:22 a.m.

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