Responsible research and innovation meets multispecies studies: why RRI needs to be a more-than-human exercise

Abstract

We offer an argument for why responsible research and innovation should be in conversation with multispecies studies. We suggest that RRI can learn from multispecies studies to expand definitions of stakeholders and responsibilities, thereby including other creatures in conversations and frameworks where they are currently missing. In addition, the RRI community might benefit from exploring conceptual overlaps between RRI and multispecies studies literatures. For example, concepts germane to RRInotably, care and relationalityhave been particularly well-developed with respect to how they oblige mutually responsive relationships. Consequently, connecting these two areas of theory and practice should nuance discussions about responsibility as an individual versus a collective endeavor and about the relationship between RRI and knowledge production.

Constructing legitimacy for technologies developed in response to environmental regulation: the case of ammonia emission-reducing technology for the Flemish intensive livestock industry

“…rural people, farmers, nature conservationists) but on a more radical and disruptive path can also include non-human actors (e.g. nature reserves, non-human animals including both wildlife and livestock) (Szymanski et al 2021;Tschersich and Kok 2022). These approaches are becoming more common in innovation studies, and fit with a broader call for multi-species justice in technology development (Tschersich and Kok 2022).…”

The European Commission’s Green Deal is an opportunity to rethink harmful practices of research and innovation policy

“…This recommendation builds on widespread attempts in research and innovation governance to integrate more diverse knowledge and experiences into the structures of research policy, processes, and practice (e.g., open innovation, open science, citizen science, multi-actor engagement, human-centered design, responsible innovation, etc.). In adopting a situated approach to DNSH, such impulses could be strengthened by extending to relations—species and ecosystems—burdened by prior and implicated by future harms (Szymanski et al 2021 ). Attend seriously to equalizing differences in political and economic power such that new voices be not only included but also heeded.…”

“…A situated approach to engaging with DNSH in research policy would focus on the relations from which harm emerges, taking as given that, relationally, some harm is inevitable . The salient questions here shift from ones of identifying and avoiding harm, to understanding and making visible what harms are done and to whom, while focusing on developing positive, constructive relations in spite of these harms (Szymanski et al 2021 ). Additionally, in the context of science and technology programs, harms and their distribution are likely to change over time.…”

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“…Corporate sustainability means that enterprises must place sustainability goals at the core, rather than enhancing their success “through additional social and environmental goals as a form of responsive corporate social responsibility” [ 68 ]. This requires enterprises to have the ability and knowledge to change their existing innovation mode, and at the same time, pioneering independent attempts and efforts are needed to adapt to the special and constantly changing external environment [ 69 ]. Enterprises with a high degree of flexible routine replication have low obstacles and resistance to the acquisition, generation, integration and replacement of new knowledge, which enables enterprises to have strong adaptability and fast organizational knowledge update, and focus on the long-term development of enterprises [ 66 ].…”