Photo: Khanh Tran-Thanh
l FPIC and beyond: safeguards for power-equalising research that protects biodiversity, rights and culture 51
Potato Park, Pisaq, Peru. Elected representatives of the six communities that comprise the Association of
Communities of the Potato Park, which is responsible for managing the park. The group meets on a weekly basis to
discuss issues of agrobiodiversity, land and traditional resource rights, and local economic activities.
Photo: Khanh Tran-Thanh
Strengthening local organisations to build
countervailing knowledge and power
As part of the Potato Park's agrotourism project, local
residents conduct hiking tours of the agricultural area,
and the women's collective that manages and operates
the small restaurant provide cooking demonstrations
and meals to showcase traditional local ingredients
such as quinoa and amaranth.
Power-equalising research usually seeks to
enlist and strengthen local organisations of
indigenous peoples, farmers, pastoralists,
forest dwellers, fisherfolk and other citizens. Engaging local organisations and
communities in co-enquiry is important
because they play a key role in:
• sustaining the biodiversity and ecological
basis of systems that are essential for meeting human needs (e.g. food systems);
• coordinating human skills, knowledge
and labour to generate both use values and
exchange values in the local economy; and
• local governance, including decisions
about people’s access to food, biodiversity
and other natural resources.
However, many local community organisations can be elitist, dominated by a few
and discriminatory. The legitimacy, transparency and democracy of local
organisations will often need to be strengthened as part of a process of change and
co-enquiry (see Box 3). When this is done,