Navigating between promises and realities of transdisciplinarity for environmental conservation

doi:10.21203/rs.3.rs-3263774/v1

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Navigating between promises and realities of transdisciplinarity for environmental conservation

https://doi.org/10.21203/rs.3.rs-3263774/v1

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Conservation approaches focused solely on technical aspects have proven insufficient in addressing the complexity of the current socioenvironmental crisis. Transdisciplinarity has emerged as a promising approach to combining technical perspectives with qualitative insights from the social sciences and non-academic stakeholders. However, transdisciplinary incorporation of diverse interests, knowledge, and worldviews requires acknowledging and addressing inherent inequities. This article presents a case study that applies transdisciplinary principles through two layers of reflection. The first layer involves a biologist/ecologist working in a transdisciplinary group, applying a quick participatory diagnosis, while the second layer comprises a social scientist studying the group itself. By analyzing the results obtained from these reflective layers, the article aims to explore the challenges and possibilities of navigating from transdisciplinary ideals to practical implementation. The findings highlight the importance of nurturing relationships built on care, reciprocity, and openness to address the power imbalances inherent in university-community participatory practices. Through this perspective, the article suggests that the community's autonomy and agency can be preserved while actively engaging its members in the transdisciplinary process. These suggestions contribute to alleviating power differences and fostering a collaborative and equitable transdisciplinary framework. Overall, this study emphasizes the significance of integrating participatory methods, critical reflexivity, and attention to power dynamics in realizing the potential of transdisciplinary approaches for addressing complex conservation challenges and fostering meaningful community engagement.

transdisciplinarity

co-creation

environmental conservation

participatory practices

power dynamics

In the face of intertwined socioenvironmental crises, conservation approaches merely focusing on technical aspects do not grasp the complexity of conservation issues for many reasons, including the neglect of insights from the social sciences and local communities (Albuquerque et al., 2021). Transdisciplinarity has become very popular in recent years (Margules et al., 2020) as an investigative approach that is promising for addressing this gap and extending the diversity of participants as well as the types of knowledge used in research, conservation practices, and decision-making processes.

Transdisciplinarity has been described as a “critical and self-reflexive research approach that relates societal with scientific problems; it produces new knowledge by integrating different scientific and extra-scientific insights; its aim is to contribute to both societal and scientific progress” (Jahn et al., 2012). We understand transdisciplinarity as a research approach that aims to bring together different types of academic and non-academic knowledge, ways of thinking, interests, and socio-cultural systems (Scholz & Steiner, 2015; Popa et al., 2015; Bammer et al., 2020), such that both their similarities and differences can be duly considered (Ludwig & El-Hani, 2020). Moreover, transdisciplinarity should aim at being a horizontal process, recognizing both scientific and non-scientific actors and knowledge(s) as equal collaborators. We see transdisciplinarity as a social as well as methodological process that can lead to mutual learning and eventually to knowledge co-production. But to properly engage with transdisciplinary processes, conceived in these terms, scholars need to take seriously the complexity of human relationships, which involve diverse values, interests, and tensions (Ludwig & El-Hani, 2020).

It has been increasingly recognized that attention needs to be paid to other kinds of knowledge involved in efforts for conservation, such as traditional, local, and Indigenous knowledge. For conservation approaches to succeed, it is also crucial to understand how social and ecological perspectives are inextricably linked (Fuerrero et al., 2018; Liu et al., 2018). Many studies have shown that there is a positive relation between Indigenous and local customs and the conservation of fauna and flora (Agrawal & Redford, 2009; Ferraro & Hanauer, 2011; Hirsch et al., 2011; Howe et al., 2014). This suggests that the exclusion of local communities in decision-making processes often leads to a decline in biodiversity.

However, the promise of transdisciplinarity faces a reality in which it remains common for policy-makers to exclude locals from conservation-based practices, thus disempowering them instead of developing ways to include different actors in decision-making and action (Agrawal & Gibson, 1999). This still happens even though it is already recognized that the inclusion of local practices, knowledge, and institutions (NGOs, social movements, etc.) help legitimize Indigenous and local communities, and increase the potential for feasible conservation plans (Dawson et al, 2021). Such inclusion is not only fundamental to mitigate biodiversity loss, but it is also an approach needed for scholars to decolonize our practices and perspectives (Chilisa, 2019).

To engage in transdisciplinary work that brings together different interests, knowledge, and worldviews, one needs to acknowledge the inequities inherent in such work. This includes having open dialogues about, e.g., the different backgrounds that are brought to the participatory process, the diverse motivations and interests in doing this kind of work, the different positions of privilege, and the varied power dynamics at play (Bacon et al., 2005). Acknowledging the positionalities of different actors (Haraway, 1988) can motivate more horizontal relationships (Bozalek, 2011). Addressing positionality and power differences in transdisciplinary practices, however, requires interpersonal skills to forge relationships of trust and reciprocity (Lang et al., 2012). As feminist researchers, we also highlight that affects and emotions need to be included in building genuine and reflexive relations between actors in different positions of power. Yet, the affective and critical demands of transdisciplinarity often clash with the reality of academic research and norms of detached objectivity. As a result, it is often the case that “transdisciplinary methodologies remain theoretical and therefore cannot be implemented to solve complex real-life problems” (Jacoby-Volk & Bar-Eli, 2021). Even though this theory-practice gap is addressed by some scholars (Pohl & Hadorn, 2008; Scholz & Steiner, 2015; Macnaghten, 2020; Pohl et al., 2021), the challenges of navigating positionality and power differences often remain insufficiently addressed in transdisciplinary practice. To help better translate transdisciplinarity from theory to the ground, including all the need for equity, participatory methods can be useful tools to horizontalize the process of integration and collaboration.

In this article, we explore these challenges through a community-based research project in an artisanal fishing community called Siribinha, located on the north shore of the state of Bahia, Brazil. This community holds rich local knowledge and practices, which have been discussed in a number of publications by the team we are part of, along eight years of engagement with it, dedicated to both educational and conservation issues (e.g., Tng et al., 2021; El-Hani & Almeida, 2022; El-Hani et al., 2022; Renck et al. 2022, 2023). In addressing community-based research in Siribinha, we had a unique opportunity to analyze transdisciplinary practices through two different layers of reflection. The first layer was conducted by a biologist/ecologist using quick participatory diagnosis (QPD) for environmental conservation (hereafter first researcher). The second layer was carried out by a social scientist who analyzed the QPD processes and wider transdisciplinary dynamics in the research group in Siribinha (hereafter second researcher).

The main goal of this article is to analyze the complexity of transdisciplinary practice through these two different layers of reflection, and, then, based on this analysis, to propose how to navigate between promises and realities of transdisciplinary research. We hope to bring insights into the challenges that arise when researchers engage with non-academic communities in conservation efforts and to recommend different approaches in their practice.

2.1 The field and research context

Siribinha (Fig. 1) has approximately 500 inhabitants and is located near the mouth of the Itapicuru River (Bahia, 2003). It is part of the municipality of Conde, located on the northern coast of the state of Bahia, Brazil, which had an estimated population of 23,651 people in 2022 (IBGE, 2022). Some villages in the municipality are of tourist interest because of their long coastline. This is the case of Siribinha, where the present study was carried out, even though tourists are mostly attracted to that place by beaches located in the Itapicuru River and Pirangi (its tributary), due to the fact that the sea is relatively dangerous there. We have chosen this fishing community for the investigation due to its deep ties with the Federal University of Bahia built through an educational and conservation project developed in the community since 2016. This inter- and transdisciplinary project was mostly motivated by the presence of a still preserved artisanal fishing culture there, as the project is based on a combination between ethnobiological/ethnoecological studies and educational action research in collaboration with local teachers. However, by the second year of the project, the biological diversity and conservation status of the Itapicuru estuary, and the socio-environmental impacts that have been threatening both environmental conservation and the viability of subsistence fishing there, made the project team become engaged in conservation studies too.

The first researcher started to work in this community in 2017 before the idea of her thesis project was developed. This provided an opportunity to build the project with the community from its inception. The topic to be studied came from a woman teacher from Siribinha, who asked us to work with the community to organize alternative paths to environmental conservation with them. This suggestion from inside the community started to be applied in 2018, when a transdisciplinary project came into being with the aim of ensuring that the artisanal fishing community would become part of the decision-making process for environmental conservation that had been initiated by the municipality.

The first step was carried out using snowball sampling (Bernard, 2011) to try to find the community’s leaders. However, we realized that there is no strong idea about who would be a legitimate leader among them and, accordingly, we decided to organize workshops open to the whole community. These workshops aimed to achieve two primary objectives: firstly, by organizing participatory workshops, we sought to gain a comprehensive understanding of the issues that were of particular interest to the community participants. Secondly, through informative workshops, we facilitated the exchange of knowledge among academic researchers, specialist technicians, and the community on specific topics that were requested by the participants. The way we found to invite the community was by chatting and trying to build a trustworthy relationship with them. Not all of the community was open to participating in the workshops. Differences in gender and the internal gender dynamics inside the community decreased the level of participation among men. The first researcher developed a closer relationship with some women in the community, which created important contributions and conversations, but at the same time made some other people avoid the workshops. Internal disagreements were a constant dynamic to deal with and ended up being also the main worry of the community when thinking of the future of Siribinha itself.

The second researcher got involved in 2019 as part of her master thesis research, through the collaboration of her supervisor with the leading professor of the project in Siribinha. Before starting her work in the community she got to know the research team from UFBA and further developed her research questions according to a common interest to achieve a better understanding of the outcomes of the inter- and transdisciplinary project in Siribinha as a whole. Therefore, she started to investigate the interactions between the community and the UFBA researchers, aiming to better understand the virtues and challenges of the participatory practices within parts of the bigger project, mostly those related to conservation. During her work in the community, an oil spill heavily polluted the beaches and mangroves in the Itapicuru River estuary, where Siribinha is located, and she actively supported collective actions by the community to clean the crude oil. These spontaneous actions initially had no link to her research project but turned out to bring opportunities for creating trust, closer interpersonal relationships, and reciprocity, which became all vital at later stages in her research process with the community.

The methodology presented in this study reflects our understanding of transdisciplinary studies as cyclical processes. We do not see transdisciplinarity as a linear process with a defined start and end, but rather as research that requires multiple layers of reflection, thoughts, and insights that remain in continuous interaction with each other. This approach is exemplified by the quilombola philosopher Antônio Bispo dos Santos (2023) who highlight the cyclical inquiry with the structure of “start, middle, start” ("início, meio, início") as an alternative to linear structures of “start, middle, end”.

2.2 The multi-layered method

2.2.1 Layer-one method

The goal of the workshops mentioned in the previous section was to support the community’s understanding and decision making regarding environmental conservation. To achieve this, the researchers chose to use QPD (Quick Participatory Diagnosis), which was carried out during the first Participatory Workshop. Chambers (1995) defines QPD as "A growing family of approaches and methods aimed at allowing the local population to share, increase and analyze their knowledge of reality, with the aim of planning actions and acting in that reality." This methodology was conceived by the International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED) as an approach that involves different stakeholders to ensure their full engagement in the evaluation process, interpretation, and validation of the results, and in developing ideas for action. The process is essential for transparency and ownership, ensuring the accuracy and credibility of the results, and creating support for taking action (Booker and Franks, 2019). In its application, visualization cards are used to help participants organize their thinking and participation (See figure S1). The goal is to enhance the identification of the problems faced by the community, their roots and causes, and to create concrete action plans, assign ownership for each action, dates for execution, and materials to be used.

We organized five participatory workshops in Siribinha between October 2018 and June 2019, with around 10 to 15 people in each of them (representing 2–3% of the community). After carrying out the QPD in the first meeting, we organized new workshops where the previously proposed action plans and their outcomes were analyzed, new actions suggested, and then collectively organized and carried out by the participants. Along the participatory process, the local inhabitants showed an increasing capacity for self-organization. To develop a pathway of reflection and action, we used the results of other scientific studies (e.g., fauna data collection, concepts about conservation) carried out by colleagues from the same research team, and also beyond the team, but at the same university, to inform our approaches to community-based planning. After verbal consent from all the participants, all workshops were audio-recorded to be analyzed.

Additionally, during the participatory work, we conducted 51 semi-structured interviews with the local inhabitants who participated in this work before, during, and after the workshops. The goal was to characterize the members in terms of their social commitment in previous experiences in similar interactions with academic researchers and technicians. We carefully selected this methodology to prospect the nuanced concepts surrounding topics of nature conservation throughout our journey. This approach allowed us to delve into the intricate details of the development of the participatory workshops and gain a comprehensive understanding of these subjects along this path.

We recorded and transcribed the audio from the semi-structured interviews. These transcriptions served as the basis for conducting qualitative content analysis, allowing us to evaluate the changes in engagement concerning participatory strategic planning (Câmara, 2013). Furthermore, we utilized the transcriptions to analyze the shifts in perception and reasoning among individual community members regarding the topic of environmental conservation.

This study employed categorical content analysis to pursue its goals, involving the systematic breakdown of text into units of analysis that require interpretation to extract the implicit content of the messages (Bardin, 2011). By coding the identified units, we built categories that intend to express such content. The first author of this paper identified recurring themes that emerged during the workshops, and within these overarching topics, more specific subcategories were established to delve deeper into the subject matter. The main focus of this analysis was to investigate the impact of these meetings on the content of the community members’ utterances, as expressed in the categories obtained in the analysis (Bardin, 2011; Câmara, 2013). By utilizing this approach, we were able to gain insights into the influence of the participatory strategic planning sessions on these identified categories and thus capture the perspectives of the community members involved in the study.

The first step was to carry out the pre-analysis of the data, in order to organize the subsequent procedures, making a fluctuating reading of the participants' speeches during the workshops and interviews, from which guiding indicators for the data interpretation were identified.

The second step was to explore the material, select, order, and classify the categories obtained from the previous step. In the categorical analysis, we combined an inductive process, through which we extracted categories from the analysis of the units, and a deductive process, in which we used pre-established categories based on the theoretical frameworks used in the study (Câmara, 2013; Saldaña, 2015).

The last step of the content analysis involved the interpretation of the results and the production of inferences (Bardin, 2011; Câmara, 2013; Saldaña, 2015). From the description of the categories and the inferences made, it was possible to examine the influence of the workshops on the perception of the community members about environmental conservation and on the participants’ decision-making process during the strategic planning and the implementation of the action plans. For a more comprehensive understanding of these steps, please see Table S1.

2.2.2 Layer-two method

During the research in Brazil, the second researcher accompanied a UFBA team composed of 9 researchers at the university in Salvador and during their fieldwork periods in Siribinha. She spent a week accompanying and participating in the QPD methods done by the first researcher and shared months of joint social and professional activities before and after this week of fieldwork. The researchers were at different stages in their academic careers. Additionally, research was conducted with the community of Siribinha separately as well, allowing participant observation, action research, and collaboration with both the researchers and different community members, involving both those who participated in the QPD method and others who did not participate or had any contact with the first researcher.

Storying was the method used to engage more informally with the different community members while creating connections between the researcher and the community. ‘Storying’, as San Pedro and Kinloch (2017) argue, happens in the space where you tell and listen and where you give and receive stories. This is done not merely to extract, but rather to further develop the stories and further build on each. This method allowed for creating caring relations: caring for each other and for each other's stories. Next to storying, ‘hanging out’ (Browne & McBride, 2015) was used while following the daily routines of the community. This entailed fishing together, cooking together, doing sports together, and partying together. Additionally, open-ended interviews were done with the community members and more structured interviews with the different researchers, including the first researcher. In terms of action and participation in the research, the first researcher’s work was accompanied, as well as her interviews and other informal interactions and communications with the community, including WhatsApp messaging exchanged with community members.

For the analysis, the audio recordings were listened to at least three times. Afterwards, summaries were made containing the features that seemed most relevant and the parts of the conversations containing them were transcribed, making sure to include emblematic quotes that well reflected and summarized that person's story, attitudes, and reflections.

By listening to the audio recordings repeatedly and writing the summaries, while some themes the researchers had already noticed during fieldwork were reaffirmed, other themes emerged, which were not previously envisioned but became evident in the interviews themselves.

Overall, the researcher started to organize and structure the data according to these themes and added the notes from her logbook, as well as other observations and reflections. Inductive as well as deductive analyses were used. From listening to the data the second researcher extracted the themes inductively, while also having some themes already envisioned due to the more in-depth familiarization with participatory action research (PAR), and feminist and decolonial methodologies. This interactive process, mingling inductive and deductive thinking, made it possible to revise theoretical concepts while examining the data and reflecting upon them.

3.1 Layer-one results

The workshops did not have the desired results of substantially improving the understanding of environmental conservation by the community. This lack of substantial improvement is reflected in the coding results of interviews before, during, and after the workshop (see Table S2). The coding used several categories associated with environmental conservation such as “cleaning”, “deforestation”, or “environmental education”. Contrary to the hope and expectations, the workshops did not have a substantial effect on the frequency these issues were mentioned and did therefore not indicate that the QPD method effectively contributed to environmental understanding by the community.

While the workshops did not substantially improve environmental understanding by the community members, they resulted in insights about limiting factors of actions for environmental conservation. The analysis of the interviews and workshops pointed towards three main limiting factors: (1) the participants identified the lack of unity in the community as the main root of the problems faced by Siribinha. To solve any other problem, such as the need for environmental conservation and the preservation of their way of living, as artisanal fishers, they considered that this issue needed to be tackled first. Because of this, some other topics came up often, such as (2) a lack of participation in community activities, and, in fact, in the workshops themselves, and (3) a lack of deep engagement with conservation issues by the community itself. The participants of the QPD meetings understood these issues as challenges, which needed to be addressed to solve the limited motivation by the community members to be part of conservation actions and political decision-making processes.

(1) Lack of unity

The impact of tourism on the unity of the community has been noticeable, as observed, in fact, by the community members themselves, and its effects have increased in recent years. On one hand, some of them who work directly or indirectly in the tourism sector appear to neglect caring about the impact it has on the environment and the village itself. On the other hand, some members are concerned about negative effects of tourism on the community such as environmental pollution and economic displacement of traditional fishing culture. We understood the identification of this lack of unity as the most important result of the QPD, both because it promoted among the community members a greater awareness of how central this problem is for the community itself and because it showed the different challenges that come to the surface when engaging in a transdisciplinary research project. The lack of unity seems to be the biggest challenge when trying to conduct a transdisciplinary project with regard to decision-making processes for dealing with environmental issues.

(2) Lack of participation

Despite the small number of participants in each workshop, the small group was very participative and made active decisions about the issues they collectively identified in earlier QPD meetings. During the first workshop, community members came up with an idea to do a clean-up day in the river, mangrove, and beaches surrounding the community. Besides the goal of cleaning, this activity also aimed to bring the community members closer to one another, building participation and a stronger sense of unity, as well as to engage them in the QPD workshops. It is important to take into account that this was a strategy chosen by the participants themselves to face the problem of a lack of unity and participation they identified as a major problem in the community.

Our analysis of the data from the QPD, interviews, and informal conversations with the community showed that the workshops could have been more attractive and motivational for them. In particular, the participatory methods could have been more appropriate for the community members’ ways of being, in the sense that we still relied on approaches that were more centered on talking to each other than on doing things together, and we later realized that the latter was much more productive in terms of community engagement and participation. We also found it to be essential to focus on communication with the community to enable their understanding of the goals of the meetings, such that through their own participation they might eventually regard the participation in the workshops more and more relevant to themselves.

(3) Lack of Deep Engagement With Conservation Issues

Both in interviews and during the workshops, conservation issues primarily appeared as narrowly defined activities such as garbage collection and cleaning the territory surrounding the community. There was little engagement with wider conservation issues related to creating sustainable relations between humans and environments or about their implications for policy. As a result, the community members who participated in the QPD meetings centered on questions such as littering and hardly altered their views about what environmental conservation means.

The workshops aimed to recognize the crucial role of community-based science in ensuring that policy decisions are guided by locally relevant environmental issues, including addressing compensations for anthropic impacts (Wallace, 2012) and taking into account the needs of the community. Recognizing the importance of community engagement and strategies of participatory planning have gained increasing traction in recent years (Booker & Franks, 2019; Llambí et al., 2005). Despite these ambitions, attempts to communicate about wider policy issues in the workshops did not resonate well with community participants and communication centered on relatively limited actions like garbage collection. As the layer-two results will show, these limitations largely turned out to be effects of insufficiently caring, open, and symmetrical communication processes.

3.2 Layer-two results

The results obtained by the second researcher, who conducted a more general analysis of the transdisciplinary project, can help better understand why some strategies of the QPD worked, while others did not. As mentioned above, she accompanied the work of the first researcher in September 2019 and became good friends with her.

Understanding and relevance

Motivating community members to join the participatory meetings and the activities the researchers proposed were one of the most visible hurdles of the QPD method. Why this has been so was illuminated by the interviews carried out by the second researcher with community members, in which she asked about the participatory meetings. It was striking to notice that most of the community did not truly understand what the project entailed or what the ambitions and goals of the researchers were. For example, when the second researcher observed the first researcher speaking with one of the older fishermen often present at the participatory meetings, she said “well as you know, Seu Luis, I work with conservation and collective action in the community…and I was wondering if I could ask you some questions if that would be okay, I could also come back another moment”. “No it's fine you can ask me”, he answered while sowing his fishnet. However, in later conversations with the second researcher it was shown that he still did not really know why and what the researcher was doing: “I really like what they are doing, I think it is good they are here”. When asked if he knew what the first researcher was doing, he answered: “well, something with the environment of this place”, and when asked about the goal of the research, he stated “that they didn’t tell me…I actually don’t know what is happening with that information, I answered many questions many times (…) but it is really nice when the researchers are here. But you know what, I would like to know what happens with all the information I give, because I don’t know at all”.

The fisherman was not only referring to the first researcher and her questions, but to all the different researchers of the transdisciplinary team who had interviewed him. In fact, the researchers always informed them of the goals of their studies, as part of the explanation given to obtain the informed consent for participation. Still, this shows how challenging it was for the researchers to communicate their goals while not being too repetitive and stodgy, as that could become very boring for the community members, and they could lose interest. As a result, the community members did not capture the goals and intentions of the researchers. When talking for a second or third time to a community member they were often reminded in a very broad way by the researcher stating: “since I work with environmental conservation…”. Overall, it became obvious that the communication strategy used by the team was leading to a great part of the community not being reached. One community member said, “but to be honest, I don’t know what they are doing in the field. I don't really know what their work is about”.

Additionally, due to the relatively low participation rates, not all interests of the community were represented at these meetings. As a result, the outcomes were often not perceived as relevant for community members (non-participants as well as participants), creating problems of representation. One community member addressed it painfully, getting to the heart of the matter: “the truth is that not so many [community members] participate in those workshops, if two or three agree it doesn’t mean the rest agree”. Another community member was more negative: “They only organize workshops where they do things that are not relevant for us (collectively cleaning rivers and beaches from plastic).” He told me he had been to those meetings at least twice but found they were really not relevant for him and he felt he would not benefit from them.

These quotes reflect some of the community attitudes toward the different researchers that were part of the transdisciplinary project as a whole. Often community members did not differentiate between one or another researcher, or between one project or the other. “University people” did stuff with “nature and animals”, that is how it was often framed. Similarly, researchers from other universities were mixed up with the transdisciplinary research team from UFBA. As a result, the approaches for contact of one researcher influenced the attitude of community members toward other researchers as well.

Therefore, to create active engagement in practice, only communicating about research is not enough either. The ways in which research is communicated must be appropriate for the kind of language spoken, the pedagogical local practices, and communication practices. Are research ideas and possible goals communicated in a way that is appealing to them? Is it brought in a way that can help them really grasp the meaning or relevance of the research project for the community? Unfortunately, even though the first researcher repeatedly told what her work consisted of, it was not done in a way that community members could understand.

The struggles to both make the research understandable and relevant for the community while also being academically relevant, and shift the power of its design and process to the community, show one of the first and toughest challenges in participatory processes for transdisciplinary projects. The limited amount in which the community members themselves influenced the direction of the project that dealt with conservation, and their lack of truly grasping the ambitions and motivations behind the project can partly explain the minimal amount of people participating in the QPD meetings and the resentment of some community members towards the researchers of the transdisciplinary project in general.

Autonomy versus positionality, an unnecessary contestation

Another aspect of the practical implementation of the participatory QPD method showed to obstruct actual participation. The QPD method puts a lot of focus on the autonomy of the community in framing the problems as well as the solution for conservation. It has been designed to assist the development of action driven by the community. According to the participating professor in the QPD process, using the methodology in a ‘good’ way ensures you do not induce anything during the process. She repeatedly acknowledged the importance of (a sense of) agency and autonomy over participatory actions. “It is important that the community themselves take power over the project”. She said determinately, “they have to decide what they should do, because only they will undertake those actions; we will not do it with them”. This aim very much resonates with critical social science perspectives that argue that community members should be owners of the action process. Together with the aforementioned challenge of shifting power to the community through the research design and process, this approach resonates with the current aims of more critical social theorists who communicate the urgency of translating more decolonial forms of research and methodologies into practice (Tuhiwai, 1999; Stanton, 2014; Morton & Pollock, 2017).

Yet, it is striking that this well-meant attitude had another unforeseen consequence, namely, that of creating (the appearance of) distance between the researcher and the research itself, on the one hand, and the other participants (the community members), on the other. The same participating professor explained she never gets personal or talks about herself. When the second researcher asked her why, she stated: “Well, I just don't see the use of it (...) Sometimes researchers really live at the place, for example, anthropologists. But we in political science don't need that, we are way more objective”. As a consequence, the different positionalities weaved in the transdisciplinary project and the power that seeps through the dynamics of such participatory processes were not part of the conversation with the community. It was not a topic to be scrutinized together with the community, nor was any life story, privilege, or even personal motivations part of the conversation during the QPD meetings.

The participating QPD professor seemed to value the idea of ‘objective knowledge’, that the research itself and the reaction of the community to it were something she would not interfere with. Besides ensuring that the community would not depend on the researchers for taking actions, this urge for ‘objective’ knowledge motivated keeping distance from the research subjects. “That is how I make sure my work is more objective, and the community takes control over their own actions”, she explained to the second researcher. As a result, the relationship between the professor engaged with the QPD and the community members remained formal and distant. Discussions about the risks of power inequities in such QPD engagements were simultaneously not part of the conversation during the meetings. In that respect, the ‘ice was not broken’ to start to talk about positionality, the background, and identities that create and inform a certain position within the participatory research processes like QPD.

This way of engaging with the community, in a more formal and mediating way, was also adopted by the first researcher. As a student, she was thought to interact with the community the same way as the professor engaged in the QPD process did. However, simultaneously, her lower academic position and accessibility as a Brazilian middle class student diminished the distance between her and the community members, leading to more informal talks with the community overall. Community members who repeatedly were in contact with her talked about her with affection in the interviews conducted by the second researcher. Still, a certain distance was upheld between the first researcher doing QPD and the community members participating in it. Not many personal details, personal gains and motivations or sociopolitical locations of the researcher were shared as part of these conversations. Contrastingly, personal questions, motivations and ambitions, and sensitive issues about conservation were asked from community members.

For example, during her stay in the community, the second researcher, who is connected to an European university, listened and shared stories with about 40 community members. Besides creating a better understanding of the community's attitude towards the researchers, the shared stories also helped to collectively reflect on the differences between her and the community members. Her privilege as an European citizen and researcher doing research abroad was discussed, as well as the different ways in which they understand the world, with its contrasts and similarities. Besides, these stories motivated collective reflection about the implications of the power dynamics among them. They also discussed how the socio-political location of the second researcher created uncomfortable situations, and a power dynamics that influenced the research. For example, the fact that she could use university funds to stay longer in the community.

Participatory action research (PAR) and related methods (such as Minkler, 2004; Buckles, 2013; Chevalier & Buckles, 2013; Stanton, 2014; Long et al., 2016; Schinke & Blodgett, 2016; Hall & Tandon, 2017) show that sharing knowledge and being transparent about motivations and aims are crucial for researchers placed in this space of encounters, as it creates openness and generates trust. Furthermore, equitable and respectful university-community interactions in transdisciplinary research projects can best evolve if this openness is given from the beginning of the research process, and not only at the end or after research goals are determined. In order to work on topics that are sensitive and that can create or reinforce conflicts in the community, such as conservation, open communication and trustworthy relationships are even more crucial.

This two-layered study shows that openness (with the community members and researchers) about ‘where you talk from’ and how this affects the data-gathering process (more specifically, that of data considered subjective) does not necessarily negatively influence the community's autonomy over the project. Goals of self-determination and autonomy of the community should not stimulate detaching oneself from the spaces of research, but rather explicitly positioning oneself within it.

Interestingly, community members who have (or had) close ties to the researchers did like the presence of the researchers, even when they saw no direct benefit for themselves or the community. Most of the community members with less contact had a negative perception about the presence of the UFBA researchers in the community. Most importantly, the common feature showed to be that those researchers with a closer, informal, and affective relationship with the community were seen most positively by community members regardless of the benefits that each individual community member would have (or would have not) obtained.

Besides, community members should not only know what the research is about, and see an interest in it, but they should be also able to direct and mold the research towards a kind of study that they know will be of use to them (Bacon et al., 2005; Schinke & Blodgett, 2016; Wallerstein et al., 2020). Engaging the community that way alone is not enough. As Reason and Bradbury (2006) argue, the interactions in these kinds of encounters inherit disbalances of power between universities and communities, and, therefore, control of the research process itself should be within the community as well. Only if the community has power over the design and process, it is likely that research will actually benefit the community.

Positionality reflects the possibility of mediating and wondering about our own implications for decisions, actions, attitudes, and approaches to research and methodology (Tuhiwai, 1999). Positionality concerns the paradigm you depart from and understand the world with, and where your eyes are positioned (Haraway, 1988). In the context of university-community interactions, Smith et al. (2010) explain how preconceptions, biases, and misgivings of university students, who often come from relatively privileged social backgrounds, can be brought to light by the kind of engaged reflection that conversations about positionality can produce. Reflecting on this reality can be very difficult, and yet extremely helpful for establishing a more collective reflexive process in, and of, research.

As PAR practitioners remind us, assumptions are best revealed and challenged in conversation with those from different sociopolitical locations (Minkler, 2004; Bacon et al., 2005; Muhammad et al., 2015; Long et al., 2016; Hall & Tandon, 2017). Talking about these sometimes sensitive topics can be hard. Yet, ignoring or denying those issues risks provoking conflictual and dominant processes of assimilation. Engaging with communities in this way tends to whitewash power relations regarding difference as neutral and value free, and that creates a unreal rosy world. Therefore, Bacon et al. (2005) argue that, in sharing one’s own experience, an understanding is fostered among everybody present, about how power, privilege, researcher identity, and academic research team composition, and their effects on partnering processes can create a disparity of outcomes. Because positionality is rather fluid than fixed, there is an everlasting need to be reflexive over these dynamics and how they change throughout a project.

The importance of personal relationships

By talking about personal gains, motivations and positionality more clearly, the community could relate to the second researcher, even if this meant understanding their differences. At the same time, it brought the possibility of knowing some of the community members closely, making our collaboration and relationships more resilient when inevitable conflicts and dilemmas arose. The mutual affection and trust between the second researcher and some community members drove them to go and settle some of the conflicts that had arisen due to her presence.

As one of our colleagues in the project said: “For real participation and collaboration to occur, people need to really speak out their thoughts on the project. You really have to break the ice”. The effect of this kind of relationship also explained part of the ambiguities around the actual aim of the participatory meetings and the personal driving forces for the researchers engaged in it.

From a feminist perspective, the search for value-free objectivity in the relationships that develop around such collaboration risks negatively impacting these relationships (Crasnow, 2013; Harding, 2015). One should dare to enter these subjective spaces and engage with them. The results show how important it is to have the willingness to get to know the other, and that this process comes with understanding and recognizing your own ways of researching and most importantly empathizing with other human beings. The risks of what that engagement might provoke are inherent in collaborations, but should be embraced and discussed among everybody engaging in research.

Reinforcing colonial structures is not merely constituted by the power inequities themselves, but also by avoiding acknowledging, exposing, and examining these inequities (Smith et al., 2010). It is precisely making relations between community and researchers more personal, more affective, more intense (McNamee, 2010), and full of care, rather than ‘staying out’ or being impartial, that foments more reciprocal relations. As argued by scholars and practitioners working towards more just transdisciplinary work, this caring attitude can develop affective and, thus, more horizontal relationships across the participatory process (Tuhiwai, 1999; Reason & Bradbury, 2006; Brayboy et al., 2012; Muhammad et al., 2015; Hall & Tandon, 2017; Gerlach, 2018; Wallerstein et al., 2020). That is, not by silencing the power dynamics that are weaved into these relations, but by exposing them and trying to relate in new and affective ways with the community.

Therefore, as Reason & Bradbury (2006) argue, it is the depth of the relationship, the different forms of knowing, the practical relevance, and the endurability of the research that measures the validity. Feminist scholars such as Elmhirst (2018) invites researchers to embrace the discomfort of having a subjective position, and work on making their positionalities more explicit. Situating knowledge in this way is not only able to bring about a critical (self-)reflection and analysis of the current context, but also contributes to research and practice that empower and promote social and ecological transformation.

It is difficult for those new to these approaches to engage with feminist research, because the presumed roles, procedures, and values they are used to at universities and research centers will not serve them well in this new endeavor (Smith et al., 2010; Hall & Tandon, 2017). Furthermore, they will likely struggle to do transdisciplinary research differently than the academic institution, with its procedures and requirements. Focusing on these issues rather than on the objectivity of the research is very much out of the comfort zone for academics who cling to their academic skills and academic ways of dealing with problems. The more a researchers’ life is embedded in advancing a career in academia, the more there is a responsibility to respond to academic demands, publish articles, searching for funding, and, therefore, the harder it is to prioritize these relational engagements over academic responsibilities. Moreover, without training to enhance their interpersonal skills, some researchers may feel somewhat powerless to significantly influence the processes and outcomes of transdisciplinary work.

Openness was expected from the community, but just in a one-direction. The aim of safeguarding the communities' autonomy in the participatory process had overruled other aspects of importance like building trustful and reciprocal relationships. We also found that the different ways in which the researchers are positioned and the approach they have to go about forging interpersonal relationships greatly impact the motivation of the community members to join participatory actions for conservation. Differences and commonalities regarding identities, privileges, sociopolitical location, life story, and pre-determined assumptions heavily impact the potential for fostering trustful relations, but were not openly discussed. Yet again, as is the case with power in the research process, it is instead the silence about these issues that showed to be most problematic, not the frictions themselves.

It is essential, as reflected in this work, that approaches to environmental conservation consider the relationships of human communities with ecosystems, including their knowledge and ways of being, for the development of effective actions (Diegues, 2000). Indigenous and local communities relate to ecosystems in complex ways that are expressed in nuanced knowledge and practices that are crucial for environmental conservation.

The promise of transdisciplinarity is to bring local and academic knowledge together for improving environmental conservation. In Siribinha, this promise has been reflected in the use of QPD for community participation and co-creation between local and academic actors. At the same time, the promises of transdisciplinarity often face a much more complex reality that requires navigation between divergent positionalities and power inequities. In the first layer of this study, these realities were on full display in the QPD outcomes that did not lead to the expected improvements of environmental understanding, but instead showed lack of unity, lack of participation, and lack of deep engagement with conservation issues as problems to be tackled in the community.

Fulfilling the promise of transdisciplinarity requires engagement with the complex reality of transdisciplinary practices. As the second layer of this study showed, it is not sufficient to keep distance in the service of detached scientific objectivity. Addressing the reality of transdisciplinary practice requires nurturing of relationships based on care, reciprocity, and openness. Taking the affective and interpersonal dimensions of collaboration seriously can make transdisciplinary projects more resilient in responding to the perspectives and needs of diverse actors. Transdisciplinary practice that incorporates these dimensions has the potential to foster processes of mutual learning and knowledge co-production for environmental conservation.

The discussions presented in this paper emphasize the importance of self-reflection throughout our transdisciplinary endeavors. As proposed by Bispo dos Santos (2023), viewing our research as a cyclical process - start, middle, start instead of start, middle, and end - enables us to adapt our knowledge and societal engagement continuously. By embracing this approach, we enhance our capacity to address complex challenges and foster collaborative solutions with diverse stakeholders. Embracing ongoing self-reflection throughout research as a cyclical process empowers us to contribute meaningfully to the advancement of transdisciplinary research and its potential for transformative change.

Ethical Approval

Informed consent for research and publication has been given by community members. Consent forms and research has been approved by the Social Science Ethics Committee (SEC) of Wageningen University and Research (WUR), and by the Committee for Ethics in Research from the Nursing School of the Federal University of Bahia under n. 2.937.348 (Certificate of Presentation of Ethical Appreciation - CAAE - n. 97380718.3.0000.5531) and also registered in the National System for the Management of Genetic Heritage and Associated Traditional Knowledge (SisGen) under n. A053F57.

Competing interests

Not applicable

Authors' contributions

GDLR developed the paper's idea, conducted the fieldwork, wrote the majority of the paper, created the figures, completed the supplementary section, and reviewed all portions.

EMM contributed to the paper's concept development, conducted fieldwork, wrote a significant portion of the paper, and conducted initial reviews.

CNE serves as the project coordinator in Brazil, assisted in data organization, and reviewed the paper.

DL, the project coordinator in The Netherlands, organized concepts, reviewed content and language usage.

Funding

Availability of data and materials

Data and materials are on the Supplementary Material.

Acknowledgements

This project was funded by ERC Starting Grant (851004 Local Knowledge) and a NWO Vidi Grant (V1.Vidi.195.026 Ethnoontologies). We are thankful to CNPq (grant number 465767/2014-1), CAPES (grant number 23038.000776/2017-54) and FAPESB (grant number INC 0006/2019) for their support to INCT IN-TREE, of which this study has been also part. Also, we are immensely grateful to the Siribinha Community, without whom it would be impossible to develop this research. We also would like to thank the LEFHBio lab and GEOS project, and nominally Maria Salete Souza de Amorim and Luana Poliseli for their supervision, and support during the fieldwork and previous processes.

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Navigating between promises and realities of transdisciplinarity for environmental conservation

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2.1 The field and research context

2.2 The multi-layered method

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2.2.2 Layer-two method

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