l FPIC and beyond: safeguards for power-equalising research that protects biodiversity, rights and culture 45
Box 1: Disempowering mindsets,
attitudes and behaviours undermine
peoples’ knowledge and capacity for
co-enquiry
• According to Ibrahim Coulibaly, a farmer leader
and president of the Coordination Nationale des
Organisations Paysannes (CNOP) in Mali, many
urban-based intellectuals are ashamed of their rural
or peasant origins, and prefer not to mention them.
Many researchers and decision makers also believe
that small-scale family farmers, and women in
particular, are backwards and ignorant – and that
these farmers and food processors are a relic of the
past that should be dispensed with as fast as
possible.
• In Peru, Alejandro Argumedo gives many
examples of the enduring racist and prejudiced
attitudes which indigenous peoples and their
knowledge systems experience when discussing
issues of biodiversity, rights and culture with
‘educated’ decision makers and scientists of Spanish
descent.
• In Iran, nomadic pastoralists and their biodiversity
conserving practices continue to be marginalised by
powerful modernising forces in government and
research. Deep seated dehumanising attitudes and
a desire for purification of difference and disorder
often prevent genuine intercultural dialogue and coenquiry.
Source: author’s conversations with IIED partners
involved in the Sustaining Local Food Systems,
Biodiversity and Livelihoods initiative. See:
Pimbert (2012).
how to document research on biodiversity,
food and culture (see Box 2). This villagelevel process also allowed for an unhurried
emergence of FPIC.
Forming safe spaces for co-enquiry and
reversals from the normal
The spaces that bring community
members and outside researchers together
during the research process need to be
carefully thought out – they need to be
designed as safe spaces for communication
and action. This is an important safeguard
for participatory research as many spaces
are not welcoming of women or inclusive
of the weak and marginalised, nor free
from manipulation and co-option by more
powerful insiders and/or outsiders.
More generally, important differences
exist between two radically different types
Box 2: Research agreements with
women farmers in the drylands of
South India
Action-research on Sustaining Local Food Systems,
Biodiversity and Livelihoods worked with the
Deccan Development Society (DDS) and 80
sanghams (voluntary village-level associations)
made up of dalit women – the lowest group in the
Indian social hierarchy. From the start, it was vital
to ensure first that the sanghams and small-scale
farmers had an opportunity to assess, on their own
terms and in their own time, the desirability and
relevance of engaging in collaborative research
activities.
Through a process of locally-organised
presentations, discussions and debates lasting
almost three months, the women sangham leaders
and DDS staff gave their informed consent for the
project to go ahead and also clarified and agreed
on the terms of engagement with IIED. These
deliberations were the first step in this actionresearch and (a) ensured that the principle of FPIC
was upheld, and that (b) trust, long-term
commitment and ownership were built. All
participants also felt it necessary to adopt an
ethical code to guide the research. After discussing
possible options, they agreed to use the
International Society of Ethnobiology’s Code of
Ethics. This requires research partners to recognise,
support and prioritise the efforts of indigenous
peoples, traditional societies and local
communities to undertake and own their research,
collections, databases and publications. For
example, participants agreed on how to ensure
that the research findings were documented in a
way that would be accessible to the many nonliterate members of the community. Women
sangham members pointed out that the DDS had
trained villagers in the use of digital video
technology and they argued that locally-filmed
video should be used to document the research
and communicate its findings. All co-enquirers
agreed to this as the DDS’s experience had already
shown that being non-literate is no barrier to
learning to use video.
As a result, women farmers felt both respected
and empowered in the knowledge that they would
be working with and communicating about this
action-research through their communityproduced video films – in their own ways, at their
own pace, and with significant control over the
entire research process and ways of working. They
produced 12 video films documenting the actionresearch process and its outcomes.
For more information, see: Community Media
Trust et al. (2008).