# 4. R\&D Journeys
*R\&D is not a linear path, but a dynamic journey shaped by local contexts, emerging opportunities and collective discoveries. In this chapter, we bring our approach to life through three real-world R\&D journeys from India, Kenya and Argentina. Each journey demonstrates how our modes flow and interact in practice, how different combinations of practices address unique development challenges, and which methods and technologies enable this work.*
Journey 1 (Kenya): Combining Local Knowledge and Data for Water Management
The first journey illustrates the story of community-driven data collection in Kenya’s Tana River County. It began when the Accelerator Lab team realized that herders and farmers possessed generations of knowledge about seasonal water patterns, underground sources and drought indicators. Despite this wealth of local expertise, the challenge was that this crucial information remained isolated within communities and invisible to decision makers.
By developing a collaborative platform that combines this local knowledge with satellite data and government datasets, communities gained a powerful tool to manage water resources and advocate for their needs during climate-related crises.
Journey 2 (India): Open Platform for Climate-Smart Agriculture
The second journey illustrates the story of building a global Digital Public Good in India. It started with a simple observation: farmers needed better access to localized data to make climate-smart decisions, but existing agricultural information was scattered across multiple sources and often inaccessible.
The UNDP India Accelerator Lab team envisioned DiCRA (Data in Climate-Resilient Agriculture) as an open platform where diverse contributors, from data scientists to citizen scientists, could collaboratively curate and validate geospatial datasets. What emerged was an interactive mapping tool that reveals patterns of positive deviance and climate resilience, helping policymakers and farmers identify what works, where and why.
Journey 3 (Argentina): Mobilizing Citizen Science for Policy
The third journey illustrates the story of expanding from a single air quality experiment to a national movement in Argentina. Our Argentine journey began during the 2020 pandemic lockdown, when the Accelerator Lab launched a pilot project equipping cyclists with air quality sensors to measure pollution in Buenos Aires. This initiative led to collaboration with the former Ministry of Science, Technology, and Innovation to map citizen science initiatives across the country. The team saw the broader potential of citizen science to inform public policy and worked to raise awareness and build partnerships.
Their efforts helped place citizen science on the national agenda, resulting in a National Citizen Science Program with funding for projects led by citizens—not just academics—who contribute to scientific knowledge through activities like water sampling, rainfall measurement and environmental monitoring.
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