How can new or under-utilized healthcare practices be expanded and institutionalized to achieve audacious and diverse global health outcomes, ranging from eliminating polio to reversing the rise in non-communicable diseases? How can complex adaptive systems with diverse components and actors interacting in multiple ways with each other and the external environment best be dealt with? What makes for an effective scale-up effort?
Four in-depth case studies of scale-up efforts were used to explore if there were different pathways to positively change a complex adaptive system.
How can science truly support sustainability transformations?
In our research projects we often find that the very process of co-producing knowledge with stakeholders has transformative impacts. This requires careful design and implementation. Knowledge co-production in transdisciplinary and other research leads to social learning and can make a difference in the lives of those involved.
Can we help the next generation of policy makers, business leaders and citizens to become creative, critical and independent thinkers? Can we make them aware of the nature of the problems they will be confronted with? Can we strengthen their capacity to foster and lead stakeholder processes to address these problems?
Yes.
We build on our experience as field researchers on environmental issues. We develop models that link ecological, social and economic processes, based on real study cases. We transform these models into role-playing games, both cooperative and competitive. And we use them to let students – the next generation of policy makers, business leaders and citizens – explore the complexities of natural resources management. They discover the roles of trust, knowledge, communication and conflict in a friendly environment. As games unfold, players observe, experience, experiment, and devise rules to resolve the tensions between competing demands.
It seems simple enough to say that community values and aspirations should be central to informing government decisions that affect them. But simple things can turn out to be complex.
In particular, when research to inform land and water policy was guided by what the community valued and aspired to rather than solely technical considerations, a much broader array of desirable outcomes was considered and the limitations of what science can measure and predict were usefully exposed.
How can non-indigenous researchers work with indigenous communities to tackle complex socio-ecological issues in a way that is culturally appropriate and does not contribute to the marginalisation of indigenous interests and values?
These questions have long been considered by participatory action researchers, and are of growing relevance to mainstream science organisations, which are increasingly utilising cross-cultural research practices in recognition of the need to move beyond identifying ‘problems’ to finding ‘solutions’.
As an example, I borrow heavily from work with colleagues in a partnership involving the Institute of Environmental Science and Research (a government science institute), Hokianga Health Enterprise Trust (a local community owned health service) and the Hokianga community.
Storytelling ethnography is a valuable tool if your research traverses several disciplines and aims for insights that transcend all of them. Stories not only integrate knowledge from diverse disciplines, but can also “change the way people act, the way they use available knowledge” (Griffiths 2007).
The special qualities of transdisciplinarity are:
its potential for integrative inquiry and emergent solutions,
its engagement with community and other non-academic knowledges, and
the breadth of its outcomes for researchers, participants and the wider community.
These are also qualities of what I call storytelling ethnography.
When we talk about co-creation, co-production, and co-design as exciting and productive alternative ways of approaching collaboration, it often doesn’t take too long for the conversation to turn to the challenges. Barriers, roadblocks, and disincentives appear and are lamented, or perhaps we celebrate that they have been overcome in a research-practice equivalent of the triumph of good over evil.
For every project the triumph may look a bit different – from the support an innovative funding agency, to a policy-maker or practitioner who understood the value of research, to the dedication, energy and sheer persistence of people who enjoy working together – the solutions are many and multi-faceted. These achievements should indeed be celebrated, and the lessons from them should be harvested.
What can art contribute to participatory modelling? Over the past decade, participatory visual and narrative arts have been more frequently and effectively incorporated into scenario planning and visioning workshops.
We use arts-based techniques in three ways:
incorporating arts language into the process of visioning
delineating eco-aesthetic values of the visual and aural landscape in communities
engaging art to articulate challenges and solutions within local communities.
The arts based approaches we use include collage, drawing, visual note taking, map making, storyboarding, photo documentation through shared cameras, mobile story telling, performance in the landscape, drawing as a recording device, and collective mural creation.
Como conseguir que um grupo multidisciplinar integrado por economistas, climatologistas, geógrafos, antropólogos, biólogos, sociólogos, jornalistas, engenheiros químicos, engenheiros ambientais e advogados trabalhe de maneira mais interdisciplinar?
Esse foi o desafio encarado por um projeto de pesquisa sobre as percepções de agricultores familiares de quatro biomas brasileiros (a Amazônia, o Cerrado, o Pantanal e o Semiárido) sobre os impactos que as mudanças climáticas estão tendo nos seus modos de vida. Esse pequenos produtores, com baixa disponibilidade de capital, estão expostos a riscos naturais e socioeconômicos, e são extremadamente vulneráveis aos eventos climáticos extremos.
Um fator chave foi a demarcação do marco teórico do projeto, que incluiu a hipótese de que o sucesso das politicas de adaptação aumenta consideravelmente quando essas políticas se baseiam em um conhecimento de primeira mão das realidades cotidianas e das percepções das populações envolvidas.
O desenho da pesquisa foi guiado por três elementos básicos:
