Leiden Biodiversity Network workshop: scaling up is an issue for transdisciplinary projects
In a five day workshop, the interdisciplinary Leiden Biodiversity Network, together with societal stakeholders, worked on a research agenda and drafted an action plan to improve human-biodiversity relationships. Researcher Kat Stewart co-organized the workshop and shares some results.
Hi Kat, can you tell a bit more about the setup of the workshop?
‘The workshop was held in February and was attended by 50 researchers and societal stakeholders. Our aim was to formulate a research agenda for the Leiden Biodiversity Network, come up with an action plan to improve human-biodiversity relations and to draft the outlines of an opinion paper. The paper is meant for researchers getting into transdisciplinary work on biodiversity. On the first day, researchers from different disciplines - such as Public Administration, Economics, Humanities, Citizen Science, Biology and Environmental Science - sat down to talk about frames of reference and terminology concerning biodiversity.'
'After day one, we set up breakout groups talking about ways to solve biodiversity issues related to spatial, temporal or administrative scales. And then we added individual stakeholders to those breakout groups to talk about how these scales might influence the government's approach to biodiversity loss, or the economics of international trade. Days three and four were reserved for drafting the research agenda and action plan based on the input of the previous days. Really interesting collaborative projects included creating a compendium of biodiversity stories across different cultures and values, highlighting potential solutions. Another involved creating a biodiversity-oriented game, while others looked more into cryptic diversity like microbial communities or how to view and govern evolving ecosystems in light on rapidly changing environments. The final day of our workshop specifically looked at creating an action plan for the Leiden Biodiversity Network in the coming years.’
What issues did the stakeholders identify?
‘The interesting thing was, they all identified the same issue when trying to solve biodiversity challenges: scaling up. We often work very locally either with ngo’s to work with local fisheries or local policy, or at the municipality or community level. But then, going national or even international, is really difficult. For instance due to financial or policy issues. At the same time, stakeholders don't think that doing the local approach makes the biggest impact. In the end, we agreed we need to be more pluralistic in how we try to come up with solutions for biodiversity loss. Rather than trying to translate local solutions into a general universal truth that solves all of our problems.’
What will the opinion paper be about?
‘Mainly about linking knowledge to action. So when researching biodiversity from different lenses like a social science lens or natural science, how do we actually see our knowledge facilitating change in the future? And if you're a person getting into transdisciplinary or interdisciplinary research, what kind of facets should you actually consider before getting into it? Also, we will be talking about the scaling issues that popped up during our workshop, and the importance of stakeholders being on board in the beginning of your project. We’d like to further address perceptional biases when forming interdisciplinary or transdisciplinary groups.’
From what I gather, you would recommend a workshop as a working form. Are there any other tools Leiden University needs to improve interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary work?
‘We were still discussing central topics even on the last day of this workshop. And so, because conversation and communication issues take a lot of time, I think we just need more opportunities to actually converse with one another. Of course, you can offer up little grants as seed funding. But we need to know from each other what are talking about to even come up with research projects. If I don't understand what concerns you have, then it's hard for me to get on board. The university could do with interdisciplinary platforms where we can talk about the research that we have or that we do.’
The LBN workshop was funded through the Lorentz Centre via the Sustainability Call and took place at the Lorentz Centre.