Abstract
The IDRC-funded project 'Empowering Indigenous Peoples and Knowledge Systems Related to Climate Change and Intellectual Property Rights' is part of the Open and Collaborative Science in Development Network (OCSDNet). The project “examiners processes of open and collaborative science related to indigenous peoples’ knowledge, climate change and intellectual property rights”. Natural Justice, the lead organisation has a strong ethical stance on the agency and control over knowledge being vested with the contributing project participants, communities of the Nama and Griqua peoples of the Western Cape of South Africa. The project focuses on questions of how climate change is affecting these communities, how do they produce and maintain knowledge relating to climate change, how that knowledge is characterised and shared (or not) with wider publics, and how legal frameworks promote or hinder the agenda of these indigenous communities and their choices to communicate and collaborate with wider publics. Indigenous Knowledge is an area where ethical issues of informed consent, historical injustice, non-compatible epistemologies and political, legal, and economic issues all collide in ways that challenge western and Anglo-American assumptions about data sharing. The group seeks to strongly model and internally critique their own ethical stance in the process of their research, through for instance, using community contracts and questioning institutional informed consent systems.
Highlights
Indigenous Knowledge is an area where ethical issues of informed consent, historical injustice, non-compatible epistemologies and political, legal, and economic issues all collide in ways that challenge western and Anglo-American assumptions about data sharing
When dealing with historically disadvantaged communities and in many cases where there are strong ethical and legal obligations in play, hard policy requirements can lead to deadlock and conflicts of interest for researchers and other stakeholders
Even where data is not shared, the process of data management planning can be valuable in providing a framework for surfacing and where possible, resolving issues
Summary
One set are logistical and management issues that arise where conflicting policy and compliance requirements are imposed on projects that already have many requirements in tension. Research with a strong commitment to retaining the connection between research outputs and the context in which they are found raise deep questions of what should be counted as data. This issue can be avoided within policy implementation via exceptions but directly engaging with these challenging issues may have real value for policy design, in a development research context. Concerns over control and access were paramount for the project and less attention had been paid initially to back up and management. The strong focus on care of the digital assets of the project and a responsibility to the contributing participants aligned well with the value of a coherent and well thought out management plan
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