Changing the way we undertake research
By Prof Barend Erasmus
The previous year saw us spending a lot of time on strategic planning for the GCI, and part of this process forced us to think carefully about why we exist, what we want to achieve, and how to get there. Global change – and here we refer to all the changes happening on the earth’s surface due to climate and human endeavours – is a really complex challenge, and the GCI was established to respond to it.
Its complexity lies in the fact that the changes we observe, has its origins in many different traditional disciplines, and the driving factors interact with each other in surprising ways. For example, the February flash floods in the eastern parts of Johannesburg were linked to a lot of rain falling in a short period of time. Roads and drainage systems are designed to deal with flash floods. But there are a number of confounding factors that makes this a complex problem. Was this particular rainfall event outside the usual design parameters? Are these design parameters relevant in a world where climate change already changes weather patterns? Is the design adequate? Or is it a case of adequate design, but poor maintenance and blocked drains? If it was related to maintenance, did the maintenance crews have the right equipment? Was there a maintenance schedule, with oversight for implementation? Perhaps the flood barriers were used as shelter by homeless people? Did we get the weather prediction wrong, or was the prediction accurate, but the response too slow? We can also look at problems with an international footprint where higher level governance and trade issue come into play, and then it becomes really challenging. Of course I’m speculating on specific drivers and how they interact, but the idea is to show how “wicked” these types of complex problems can be.
Traditional, disciplinary science is not well suited to respond to problems like this. There is an important role for such science to build the knowledge base in each of the separate sectors that I mention above, but such approaches are not well suited to deal with the interactions among disciplines, nor the interactions among people to make sense of the knowledge in the different disciplines. Also, if the engagement is only among traditional scientists, there is a real chance that a key piece of knowledge that comes from, say, a manager’s experience, is not on the table for discussion.
Luckily, there are more and more researchers looking for ways to work across disciplinary boundaries. This change is reflected in the large number of international and national science initiatives that have explicit objectives for interdisciplinary science.
So how do we do it? There is no one silver bullet, and the nature of each problem needs consideration. I think science, certainly at Wits, has developed to the point where interdisciplinary research is quite common: research groups that deal with “wicked” challenges, such as migration, public health, inequality, food security and conservation are active, and impactful. A number of disciplinary experts, work together, read each other’s work and develop a shared understanding of the problem, with different pieces of the answer puzzle coming from different disciplines.
The real challenge lies in the fact that the solutions to such wicked challenges are seldom only to be found in the scientific domain. For such solutions to have legitimacy and credibility (vital for implementation), there needs to be agreement on the nature of the problem itself. Such agreement comes from a social process that needs to be integrated from the beginning in discussions that would otherwise take place among disciplinary specialists only.
This is what transdisciplinary research (TDR) is about: ensuring that society and industry contribute as equals to agree on the problem, and what the solutions might look like.This is not an easy process, and one that we at GCI are continually learning about. Such engagements typically take disciplinary specialists out of their comfort zone, and frequently requires a mind shift to consider other sources of knowledge as a legitimate part of the process. From my personal experience, a key component for success in these engagements is humility.
But once you are operating on a TDR model, what then? How to bring about change? We have to remember why we are on this journey: the nature of the challenges that we are trying to address, is not suited to traditional science. Our business unusual approach is there for a reason, and that is about bringing about change.
By linking people with different knowledge, we create opportunities to learn from each other. Such learning leads to a shared understanding, and devising solutions based on this shared understanding, enables change, change towards a sustainable future. Link – Learn – Enable – Change, the new tagline for GCI.