Our activities

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Selected past, present, and future activities

Outlook:

Many activities of TEGA are ongoing or in the pipeline, including:

The co-creation of a Transformative Glossary of ABS with action research participants.
A workshop on Strengthening Equity, Reciprocity and Sustainability in Namibia's Devil's Claw Sector (Windhoek, November 2025).
TEGA's second Plenary Workshop, co-hosted with the Topnaar community, which will gather around 40 participants at Utuseb (Namibia) in November.
A video on the transformative potentials of ABS, co-produced as a science & art collaboration by TEGA, ABioSA, and the South African artist Sally Whines.

Stay tuned!

Credit: Sally Whines

Seeing with new eyes at the African Biotrade Festival:

As part of TEGA's partnership with the SECO-GIZ-DFFE project ABS-Compliant Biotrade in Southern Africa (ABioSA), Dr Matthew Wingfield and Dr Damien Krichewsky contributed a jointly organised Social Dialogue booth at the African Biotrade Festival on 18-20 September 2025 in Johannesburg.

Leaving economic forecasts aside for a moment, interactive dialogues tapped into land art, action research, and the diverse knowledge of all participants to revisit human-plant collaboration; foster cross-pollination between science and indigenous knowledge; decipher the politics and ethics of benefit-sharing; and address further fields where biotrade futures are being crafted and transformed.

Third joint field research

After attending the TC/ESG25 conference, Dr Damien Krichewsky stayed in South Africa and Namibia for three weeks to meet with various participants in TEGA's action research and conduct field research.

Part of this stay was dedicated to further engagement and interviews with stakeholders involved in the harvesting and trade of Devil's Claw in Bwabwata National Park. This completed the preparatory research for a transdisciplinary workshop on Devil's Claw that will be held under TEGA in November 2025 in Windhoek.

Prof Ahmad Cheikhyoussef and Dr Damien Krichewsky also conducted joint field research with the Topnaar community of the lower Kuiseb river basin. This research is part of a collaboration with the Topnaar to support pluriversal community development based on the !Nara desert melon. Besides, we worked at the planning of TEGA's second Plenary Workshop, which will be co-hosted with the Topnaar community in November 2025 at their community centre in Utuseb (Namibia).

TC/ESG25 Conference in Johannesburg:

Dr Damien Krichewsky and Dr Michael Shirungu were thrilled to contribute a Flexible Interactive Dialogue Session on the topic Transforming biodiversity governance through pluriversal action research at the TC/ESG25 Conference Navigating Sustainability Transformations Towards Justice and Equity (18-21 August 2025, Johannesburg).

Following a presentation of preliminary findings from TEGA, four distinguished pannel speakers discussed the significance of the pluriverse in their own context of action: thank you Inge Adelfang-Hodgson (GIZ), Rudolf Dausab (≠Aonin Community Association), Ulrich Feiter (Parceval; SABPA) and Captain Edmund Stuurman (Gamtouer House of Klaas and Dawid Stuurman) for your insightful contributions!

Second joint field research

Following several months of online meetings of TEGA's three Working Groups, our team spent most of May 2025 doing joint fieldwork in various parts of Namibia and South Africa. From the north-eastern Zambesi region in Namibia to South Africa's Western Cape region via Windhoek, Erongo, Pretoria, and the Tsitsikamma mountains, we met with members of TEGA's CoP and other ABS stakeholders to exchange and prepare the ground for collaborative change-making initiatives.

International Conference on the Science of Botanicals (Oxford, MS)

Dr Damien Krichewsky contributed a presentation on 'Engaging ABS as an opportunity for sustainability transformation' at the 23rd Annual International Conference on the Science of Botanicals (ICSB) on 7-10 April 2025 in Oxford MS (United States). This was a great opportunity to discuss why ABS matters with the American scientific and industrial community that works with natural products, in a context where the US government is taking decisions that might negatively impact the ability of scientific and commercial users of genetic resources to act in line with the principles and values underpinning ABS.

For a press report on this presentation, see here.

First Plenary Workshop of TEGA:

TEGA's first Plenary Workshop was held on 24-27 November 2024 in Malmesbury (South Africa). It gathered TEGA's team and 25 ABS stakeholders from Canada, Germany, Namibia and South Africa to

i) establish TEGA's Community of Purpose,

ii) start interweaving knowledge on ABS, and

iii) explore the needs and potentials for transformative change in ABS.

Departing from standard workshop formats, the event comprised various activities such as a Khoi ceremony, circle conversations, a collective mapping of the ABS field, self-inquiry in groups, an embodied exploration of the relations of participants to tenets of modern development (e.g., human exceptionalism, belief in linear progress), and a somatic exercise on transformative change that was facilitated by an experienced systems constellator.

Initial field research and stakeholder engagement:

Between August and October 2024, Prof Ahmad Cheikhyoussef, Prof William Ellis, Dr Damien Krichewsky and Dr Michael Shirungu conducted joint field research in various parts of South Africa (Pretoria; Johannesburg; the Eastern Cape; the Western Cape) and Namibia (Windhoek; Erongo region; Kavango East and Zambesi) as part of their preliminary research and the engagement of ABS stakeholders to build TEGA's Community of Purpose.

The four phases of TEGA

TEGA's action research is structured in four distinct phases:

Preparatory phase (July 2024 – February 2025): This phase of the action research was dedicated to team building, conducting preliminary conceptual and empirical research, engaging ABS stakeholders to form TEGA's Community of Purpose, designing and conducting a first Plenary Workshop in South Africa, presenting preliminary findings in a scientific report, planning the next phase, and embedding TEGA in various scientific networks.

Initiating transformation (March 2025 – February 2026): Building on TEGA's preliminary findings, participants in its Community of Purpose will collaborate within three Working Groups to identify and target desired problem-solving changes in the field of ABS, to develop strategies, and to use their combined agency to pursue change accordingly. TEGA’s scientific team will support this work by providing scientific input and facilitating collaboration. Participants will gather at a second Plenary Workshop in Namibia at the end of November 2025 to share their experiences, achievements, and lessons learned, and to plan the next phase of the action research.

Deepening transformation (March 2026 – February 2027): Problem-solving in biodiversity governance is an entry point for deep transformation, and the collective attempts of TEGA's three Working Groups to fix ABS-related problems will lead us to questions of deeper significance and greater transformative potential. Who has been defining problems and framing legitimate responses in the field of ABS, based on which epistemological premises, institutional logics, power positions, and interests? Which experiences, perspectives, interests and possibilities have been ignored, muted, or sidelined? More fundamentally, how are the terms of ABS - e.g., 'biological material', 'genetic resources', 'access', 'fairness and equity', 'benefits', 'community', 'indigenous knowledge', 'sustainability' - being framed at an ontological level? By addressing these deeper layers, TEGA's three Working Groups will uncover and activate transformative possibilities for strengthening reciprocity, equity, and ecological sustainability in bioprospecting and biotrade.

Disseminating findings (March 2027 – June 2027): TEGA's action research will be concluded with a third Plenary Workshop to be held in Germany, the completion of scientific publications, and a series of science communication activities that will disseminate our findings in relevant publics in the field of ABS and beyond.

TEGA's flight plan: