A set of principles and practical suggestions for equitable fieldwork in biology

Ramírez‐Castañeda, Valeria; Westeen, Erin P.; Frederick, Jeffrey H.; Amini, Sina; Wait, Daniel R.; Achmadi, Anang S.; Andayani, Noviar; Arida, Evy; Arifin, Umilaela; Bernal, Moisés A.; Bonaccorso, Elisa; Sanguila, Marites B.; Brown, Rafe M.; Che, Jing; Condori, F. Peter; Hartiningtias, Diny; Hiller, Anna E.; Iskandar, Djoko T.; Jiménez, Rosa Alicia; Khelifa, Rassim; Márquez, Roberto; Martínez‐Fonseca, José G.; Parra, Juan L.; Peñalba, Joshua V.; Pinto-García, Lina; Razafindratsima, Onja H.; Ron, Santiago R.; Souza, Sara; Supriatna, Jatna; Bowie, Rauri C. K.; Cicero, Carla; McGuire, Jimmy A.; Tarvin, Rebecca D.

doi:10.1073/pnas.2122667119

Cited by 43 publications

(17 citation statements)

References 71 publications

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“…Joseph Banks, Hans Sloane, Alexander von Humboldt, Charles Darwin) and numerous others were instrumental in using nascent sciences of biodiversity for the successful establishment or expansion of colonies in the Americas, Australia, New Zealand and many islands in the Pacific [48][49][50][51]. Centuries after this era of colonization, biodiversity research as a colonial practice continues to manifest today in the form of, for example, 'helicopter science' [52,53], bioprospecting for extractive industries [54], and research that ignores Indigenous knowledge, intellectual property, and the governance systems in which that knowledge is embedded [55].…”

Section: A Reckoning Of Values Underlying the Colonial History Of Bio...mentioning

confidence: 99%

Disrupting and diversifying the values, voices and governance principles that shape biodiversity science and management

Salomon,

Okamoto,

Wilson

et al. 2023

Phil. Trans. R. Soc. B

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With climate, biodiversity and inequity crises squarely upon us, never has there been a more pressing time to rethink how we conceptualize, understand and manage our relationship with Earth's biodiversity. Here, we describe governance principles of 17 Indigenous Nations from the Northwest Coast of North America used to understand and steward relationships among all components of nature, including humans. We then chart the colonial origins of biodiversity science and use the complex case of sea otter recovery to illuminate how ancestral governance principles can be mobilized to characterize, manage and restore biodiversity in more inclusive, integrative and equitable ways. To enhance environmental sustainability, resilience and social justice amid today's crises, we need to broaden who benefits from and participates in the sciences of biodiversity by expanding the values and methodologies that shape such initiatives. In practice, biodiversity conservation and natural resource management need to shift from centralized, siloed approaches to those that can accommodate plurality in values, objectives, governance systems, legal traditions and ways of knowing. In doing so, developing solutions to our planetary crises becomes a shared responsibility. This article is part of the theme issue ‘Detecting and attributing the causes of biodiversity change: needs, gaps and solutions’.

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Section: A Reckoning Of Values Underlying the Colonial History Of Bio...mentioning

confidence: 99%

Disrupting and diversifying the values, voices and governance principles that shape biodiversity science and management

Salomon,

Okamoto,

Wilson

et al. 2023

Phil. Trans. R. Soc. B

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Capacity building involves strengthening training programs and building or expanding infrastructure that allows for research to be carried out in or in collaboration with countries providing genetic resources. Capacity building is an example of benefit-sharing that may lead to longer-term positive impacts (Collins et al 2020; Engel et al 2021; Ramírez-Castañeda et al 2022). In-country archival, curation, access, and utilization of genetic resources in the Global South through expanded natural history biorepository capacities, including high-quality cryogenic (i.e., frozen tissue) facilities, associated informatics databases, and trained collections staff, would: (i) facilitate local and international access to genetic resources for noncommercial research; (ii) enable detailed record-keeping of resource origin/collection locality; (iii) allow for better tracing of resource use; and (iv) link physical genetic resources to derivative digital data, including but not limited to DSI (Edwards et al 2000; Colella et al 2021).…”

Section: Recommendations For Proactive Engagement With Nagoyamentioning

confidence: 99%

“…), officials regularly grant permission for both commercial and noncommercial uses in accordance with national regulations. Holistic collecting, which involves sampling multiple tissue types, skin, skeletal material, and parasites (Galbreath et al 2019) of an organism, regardless of the immediate intention of the project, is considered best practice for noncommercial biodiversity sampling (Bénichou et al 2018; Phillips et al 2019; Ramírez-Castañeda et al 2022). Subsequent archiving of biological materials with a natural history collection enables scientific replication and extension (Schindel and Cook 2018; Colella et al 2021).…”

Section: Recommendations For Proactive Engagement With Nagoyamentioning

confidence: 99%

Engaging with the Nagoya Protocol on Access and Benefit-Sharing: recommendations for noncommercial biodiversity researchers

Colella

Silvestri

Suzán

et al. 2023

Journal of Mammalogy

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The Convention on Biological Diversity and the Nagoya Protocol on Access and Benefit-Sharing provide an international legal framework that aims to prevent misappropriation of the genetic resources of a country and ensure the fair and equitable sharing of benefits arising from their use. The legislation was negotiated at the behest of lower-income, biodiverse countries to ensure that benefits derived from research and development of genetic resources from within their jurisdictions were equitably returned and could thereby incentivize conservation and sustainable use of biodiversity. Despite good intentions, however, rapid adoption of access and benefit-sharing measures at the national level, often without participatory strategic planning, has hampered noncommercial, international collaborative genetic research with counterproductive consequences for biodiversity conservation and sustainable use. We outline how current implementation of the Convention of Biological Diversity and the Nagoya Protocol affect noncommercial research, such as that conducted in many disciplines in biology, including mammalogy. We use a case study from Brazil, an early adopter, to illustrate some current challenges and highlight downstream consequences for emerging pathogen research and public health. Most emerging pathogens colonize or jump to humans from nonhuman mammals, but noncommercial research in zoonotic diseases is complicated by potential commercial applications. Last, we identify proactive ways for the mammalogical community to engage with the Convention on Biological Diversity and the Nagoya Protocol, through sharing of nonmonetary benefits and working with local natural history collections. Leveraging international scientific societies to collectively communicate the needs of biodiversity science to policy makers will be critical to ensuring that appropriate accommodations are negotiated for noncommercial research.

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“…A less visible inequity relates to the coverage of field workers by disability insurance in the event of an accident; an issue that was raised in other collaborative research contexts (e.g. Ramírez‐Castañeda et al, 2022). Visiting students and/or field technicians employed by ECCC and universities, most of them non‐Indigenous (a topic worthy of discussion but not within the scope of this paper), have insurance provided by their institution.…”

Section: Safety Issuesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Collaboration between local Indigenous and visiting non‐Indigenous researchers: Practical challenges and insights from a long‐term environmental monitoring program in the Canadian Arctic

Richard

Gilchrist

Hennin

et al. 2023

Ecol Sol and Evidence

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There is a growing appreciation for the value of collaborative research projects involving local Indigenous and visiting non‐Indigenous researchers. Examples of such partnerships are now numerous and diverse, and best practices and respectful approaches have been well presented, including the five priorities of the National Inuit Strategy on Research (NISR) defined by Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami in Canada. However, the application of best practices remains challenging, and examples of ‘on‐the‐ground’ implementation remain scarce in the literature. We present a practical case study in which scientists from the Federal Department of Environment and Climate Change Canada and Inuit have co‐delivered a multidecade‐long monitoring program of nesting common eider ducks Somateria mollissima in the Arctic. We review our experience as southern‐based government researchers in this collaboration. We reflect on successes and, more importantly, on the practical challenges that prevent the full implementation of best practices in our program. First, we highlight challenges to co‐designing a data collection protocol that combines both Indigenous and Western scientific methods. We show how combining the strengths of Inuit Knowledge and rigorous random sampling design has led to a more powerful approach to eider population monitoring. Second, we review how the federal government's administrative approaches are poorly suited for employing seasonal Indigenous workers living in remote communities, particularly in Canada. We argue that to deliver respectful employment and payment practices, the financial and hiring administration of collaborative projects must be based at the community level. Finally, we show how sociocultural factors have made it challenging to ensure the safety of all field workers consistently. To increase their perceived value and uptake, we suggest that safety guidelines must be co‐designed by visiting researchers and local partners for each project to ensure that they are appropriate to the local culture, field conditions, and the nature of the fieldwork. Based on our experience, we draw attention to gaps that still exist between the best practices of collaborative research and factors that hamper their practical implementation. We invite other research teams to do the same so that, collectively, we can improve collaborative approaches nationally and internationally.

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A set of principles and practical suggestions for equitable fieldwork in biology

Cited by 43 publications

References 71 publications

Disrupting and diversifying the values, voices and governance principles that shape biodiversity science and management

Disrupting and diversifying the values, voices and governance principles that shape biodiversity science and management

Engaging with the Nagoya Protocol on Access and Benefit-Sharing: recommendations for noncommercial biodiversity researchers

Collaboration between local Indigenous and visiting non‐Indigenous researchers: Practical challenges and insights from a long‐term environmental monitoring program in the Canadian Arctic

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