Transformative Science With Society: Putting the Power Structure of Science and Conservation in Service of Communities

1. Transformative Science With Society: Putting the Power Structure of Science and Conservation in Service of CommunitiesCCC Fellows Reunion 13 September 2019Fort Collins, Colorado

2. Where We are Going Today • Our revolution: translational to transdisciplinary to transformational • Principles of TD work • How did we get here? • Then how does TD become transformational?

3. How Do We Evolve Science from: Translational TransdisciplinaryTransformational? • Discuss stakeholder problems & incorporate them in research • Communicate research results to stakeholders • Communicate research results to the wider public Honor & incorporate different knowledges Drive research questions from stakeholder needs / perspectives Adopt an adaptive learning cycle with stakeholders Decolonize methodologies Focus on the goal of transformational process, outcomes & impacts Develop methods & processes to catalyze system transformation Reid this talk

4. First, Some Key Principles of TD Work, then Transformation

5. What is TD work? Transdisciplinary work brings together members of society with scholars to discover, learn about and solve complex problems. 5 main elements of TD work Exploration of different knowledges Innate interdisciplinarity Science and practice together Knowledge co-production process and Outcomes: Useful in the real world and supported by rigorous scholarship Reid this talk, Knapp et al in press

6. How Do We Create an Inclusive and Enriched Picture of an Issue? Creating new knowledge together One knowledge source not dominant over the other = parallel knowledge sources. Each knowledge source has internal rules for validation. Sharing existing knowledge Adapted from Tengo et al 2014

7. The ’How’ of the Transdisciplinary Co-Production Process (a Western Scientist View) Understand the context (people, culture, history, politics) Form respectful & equal partnership Create rich picture of priority issues based on multiple knowledges Co-develop next collaborative effort The Co-production Learning Cycle Co-communicate & community implements actions Co-design research and action goals Co-investigate, co-interpret, co-learn Mountain Sentinels Network 2015; modified by Reid 2018 & this talk

8. What really happens when you do this: The Collaborative Adaptive Rangeland Management experiment (CARM), Colorado Fernandez-Gimenez et al 2019

9. Partnership Principles: What Worked Well? (Alaska, Kenya, Mongolia) • Full-time facilitators from the community to work directly to span the boundaries between communities and researchers. Helps if facilitators are also educated in the western research world • Community partners driven to better their communities with a clear problem to research • Funding for both community partners and outside researchers • Respectful, equal and frequent communication between researchers and community • Significant time spent in the community by researchers and at the university/research institute by community members • Face-to-face workshops with multiple communities together to share stories and wisdom Reid this talk

10. What did our partnership structure look like? Policy and management organizations interested in these projects: Traditional and Tribal Councils of 5 villages Tanana Chiefs Conference Council of Athabaskan Tribal Governments Alaska Dept of Fish and Game Student 3, NGO employee Community Partners 1 & 2 Faculty 1 Community Partner 3 CPSR Project Coordinator Student 1 Researcher from Community Faculty 4 & 5 Community Partner 2 Students 4 & 5 Student 2

11. Transformational of TD Outcomes and Impacts • Kenya / Tanzania: • New & confident leaders now lead national non-profits and government departments • Biodiversity payments doubled incomes in poor households = more girls at school • New leaders led explosive expansion of community-based conservancies • Team leaders co-design new Wildlife and Land Acts to include community needs • Mongolia: • National land law influenced by TD research • Mongolian team members now rising leaders and decision makers • Alaska • Hunting regulations likely to change • Indigenous and non-indigenous students change their careers Reid et al 2014, Reid this talk

12. How Did We Get Here? The Long View

13. Deep Roots: Year of First Publication and Major Contributing Fields to TD Approaches Transdisciplinary science (TDS) Knapp et al in review

14. What is the Next Evolution of our Science and Conservation?

15. How Do We Evolve Science from: Translational TransdisciplinaryTransformational? • Discuss stakeholder problems & incorporate them in research • Communicate research results to stakeholders • Communicate research results to the wider public Honor & incorporate different knowledges Drive research questions from stakeholder needs / perspectives Adopt an adaptive learning cycle with stakeholders Decolonize methodologies Focus on the goal of transformational process, outcomes & impacts Develop methods & processes to catalyze system transformation Reid this talk

16. What is Transformation? • Transformation creates a fundamentally new system when ecological, economic, or social / political conditions make the existing system untenable • Transformation moves beyond adaptation, which accommodates change, to shifting of the underlying structure that led to the need for adaptation • A window of opportunity is a critical moment in time that occurs between phases in the adaptive cycle that often triggers a transformation of the system Knapp 2017, Walker et al 2004, Olsson et al 2006

17. How Systems Transform (the adaptive cycle) Figure from Biggs et al 2012, based on Holling et al 2002, Olsson et al 2006

18. How do We Make our Work Transformative? 3 Major Principles

19. 1. Transformational Philosophy & Process: Taking a Leaf from the 5 R’s of Feminist Research • Respect • Relationship • Reciprocity • Reflexivity • disRuption Fernandez-Gimenez 2018

20. 2. Decolonizing Collaborative Conservation and Science Fernandez-Gimenez 2018

21. 3. Can We Link TD Research to Transformations Thinking and Transformative Community Action? Transformative Community Action: What are the Windows of Opportunity for Systemic Change? Transformations Thinking: What Catalyzes and Promotes Social Change? Community-Driven, Collaborative TD Research on Priority Issues, Co-Produced Reid this talk

22. An Unexploited Opportunity: Integrating Transformations Ideas and Practice into TD Work Social entrepreneurship (Biggs et al 2012) Social innovation (Feola 2015, Westley et al 2011) Social movements (Dorado et al 2015) Deliberate transformation (O’Brien 2012) Participatory & Action Research (Lewin 1948, Freire 1970) Citizen Science (Dillon et al 2016, Bonney et al 2009) Public Particip in Sci Research (Shirk et al 2009) Translational Research (Woolf 2008) Transformations Thinking and Practice Reid this talk

23. The Next Evolution of Science Itself: Transformative Science with Society • Trans- (& Inter-) Disciplinary Science • What is it? • Discipline integration • Knowledges integration • Knowledge with action • Knowledge co-production • Boundary organizations bridging science & action • Its power • Disruptive • Bridging knowledges, connecting with action • Often hypothesis-driven • Transformations (Thinking & Action) • What is it? • Social movements • Social innovation • Transformative learning • Social, institutional entrepreneurship • Resilience & transformations thinking • Its power • Disruptive • Major system change, social and ecological • Scaling out, up and deep • Community-Focused • Research • What is it? • Indigenous / Native Science • Citizen science • Community science • Participatory action research • Action research • Collaborative science • Civic science • Its power • Disruptive • Often community-driven, participatory • Sometimes large data collection and open access Bonney et al 2009, 2014; Buizer et al 2010; Shirk et al 2012; Moore et al 2014; O’Brien et al 2013; Knapp & Trainor 2013; Cornell et al 2013; Dillon et al 2016 ; Jordan et al 2016; Westley et al 2011; Westley et al 2013

24. Questions to push ourselves to true transformation • When will ‘western science’ truly welcome other ways of knowing as equal partners rather than lesser ways of knowing? • When will western scientists truly understand the power of their expertise and share it? • When will western scientists understand that their type of science is a construct of culture, imbued with sexism, racism, colonial settler-ism, and do something about this? • As Robin Kimmerer asks: “How is the effectiveness of our science constrained by the colonized, western worldview in which it was formed and continues to operate? What opportunities arise with de-colonizing and re-indigenizing our relations with the natural world?” Reid this talk