Pluriversal action research

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Key principles of action research

Environmental governance frameworks such as ABS are usually dominated by a linear model of scientific expertise and ‘evidence-based’ policy making. According to this model, scientists produce and publish knowledge more or less autonomously from societal demands, and once experts have adapted and repackaged up-to-date scientific knowledge in practice-relevant expertise, decision-makers use this expertise to guide and legitimise their action.

The action research method underpinning TEGA does not follow this linear model. Instead, it articulates the science and action of biodiversity politics along a circular model that is more conducive to transformative change:

Collaboration in a circle: Action research brings together researchers and stakeholders concerned with a particular problem in a group where they can address this problem by collaborating across institutional boundaries. This method allows participants to enrich their respective understanding of the problems at hand by interweaving science and other bodies of knowledge (co-learning). It also facilitates the elaboration and implementation of innovative responses that are meaningful to the different actors involved, including those whose voices and interests are often marginalised (co-creation). Finally, this approach can strengthen the problem-solving capacities of participants - including the researchers - by exposing them to different perspectives, rationalities and interests (building transformative capacities).

A cyclical process: Once a general plan has been conceived, action research unfolds through a spiral of cycles of planning, action and evaluation. This cyclical functioning strengthens participation, as the beginning of each cycle allows all actors involved to intervene in the steering and planning of the next steps of the collective change process. Moreover, the spiral of cycles supports transformative change by allowing the participants to learn from previous cycles and revise their assumptions, intentions and plans as the transformative change process unfolds.

Why 'pluriversal' action research?

The method of pluriversal action research developed by TEGA builds on a stream of social science literature that points to the plurality of worlds beyond the 'one-world world' of modern development.

Because of its hegemony, the modern world tends to take its reality as being universally valid. It evaluates knowledge in the light of the dominant epistemological, theoretical and methodological canons of modern science, and overlooks or disregards elements of indigenous knowledge that do not fit within these canons. It associates politics with the international system of nation-states, and marginalises alternative ways of organising life in more-than-human collectives that are living places and territories. The modern world also conceives of the economy as a monetised system of transactions that coordinates production and exchange between individual agents seeking to maximise their utility. In doing so, it dismisses more communal and convivial ways of coordinating activities of production and exchange that involve not only human actors, but also non-human actors such as animals and plants. Similarly, the modern world tends to consider spiritual practices of knowing and relating to the world as either exotic indigenous heritage or esoteric superstition that is irrational and irrelevant to the secular organisation of public life.

Theories of the pluriverse, drawing on anthropological research and critical theories of development, challenge these premises of modernity and highlight the relevance of alternatives in addressing contemporary challenges, including postcolonial injustice and ecological destruction. In a context where the science and politics of biodiversity governance increasingly recognise the limitations of mainstream responses to these challenges, and call for a transformation of society's relationship with biodiversity, action research offers a timely method for bringing these pluriversal theories to fruition in socio-ecological transformation.

Given the thematic scope and political goals of ABS, pluriversal approaches are particularly relevant to this area of biodivesity governance. Guided by this insight, TEGA's action research mobilises pluriversal perspectives to broaden the range of epistemic, political and economic possibilities in ABS, with a particular attention to the inclusion of indigenous worldviews, values and biocultural practices that have been historically marginalised.