Photo: Peter Reason
l FPIC and beyond: safeguards for power-equalising research that protects biodiversity, rights and culture 47
Non-literate film maker from the Community Media Trust, India.
Participation throughout the research and
development cycle
Key moments or stages when participation
can occur throughout the research and
development (R&D) cycle include:
• evaluations of results and impacts of
research, as well as risk assessments;
• scientific and technological research – the
production and validation of knowledge,
including the FPIC stage and the initial
design planning of the research;
• the choice of upstream strategic priorities
for R&D and allocation of funds; and
• the framing of policies for environment
and development, including biodiversity
conservation and its sustainable use.
Power-equalising research seeks to
embrace and intervene in all these different
moments in the R&D cycle. Appropriate
participatory methodologies and deliberative processes are used at each stage to
engage citizens in direct and meaningful
ways in shaping the political economy of
knowledge as well as in the actual produc6
For more information see Pimbert (2011).
tion and validation of new knowledge,
technologies and institutional innovations
(Pimbert, 2009). A focus on the entire
R&D cycle allows for a shift from narrow
concepts of participatory research that
confine non-researchers to ‘end of the pipe’
technology development (e.g. participatory
plant breeding) to a more inclusive
approach in which farmers and other citizens can define the upstream strategic
priorities of research and governance
regimes for environment and development.
This more systemic understanding also
allows one to situate discussions on the
pros and cons of a particular innovation
(e.g. an ABS regime) in the wider policy
context and actor networks that have
shaped the R&D process which generated
that specific innovation.6
Cognitive justice – recognising different
knowledge systems and their right to exist
Power-equalising research is all about
ensuring greater cognitive justice between