The role of transdisciplinarity in building a decolonial bridge between science, policy, and practice

Abstract

Research that focuses on changing problems of poverty, inequality, and food security may not always listen to what people who live in areas with sustainability problems need in order to make those changes. In our analysis of development research projects, we reflect on the challenges of participation faced by different actors in transdisciplinary science. For a decolonial turn, people need to be involved in making decisions about resources, research topics, and how to use knowledge.Transdisciplinary research is considered to offer contributions of science to sustainability transformations, partly because transdisciplinary approaches aim to increase the relevance, credibility, and legitimacy of scientific research by ensuring the active participation of non-academic actors in research. However, the possible impact of transdisciplinary research on decolonial sustainability science ‐ understood as actively undoing Euro-North American centricity, dispossession, racism, and ongoing power imbalances in inequitable social-ecological systems ‐ and simultaneous response to scientific rigor remain under debate. Thus, this article assesses the contributions of transdisciplinary research projects to decolonial sustainability science based on empirical information. To do so, we analyze a sample of 43 development research projects of the Swiss Programme for Research on Global Issues for Development (r4d programme) in Africa, Asia, and Latin America. We found that despite significant differences in approaches, Global-North-dominated sustainability science still has far to go to achieve the decolonial potential of transdisciplinarity, enabling different actors’ participation.

Transdisciplinary science and the importance of Indigenous knowledge

“…Transdisciplinary approaches call for a direct focus on ethics where attention to social participation, justice, and inequality are intrinsic to the research design, organization, and delivery (Apitz, 2021; Bunders et al, 2015; Ludwig & Boogaard, 2021; Manuel‐Navarrete et al, 2021; Pineo et al, 2021; Pohl et al, 2017; Reed et al, 2023; West & Schill, 2022; Zonta et al, 2023). The social sciences are not a mere extension of or “add on” (Canning et al, 2010; Fam et al, 2017) to the biophysical work, but rather a commitment made at the inception of the project that must be reflected in different organizational structures, processes, and the leadership of research.…”