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| Participants at the Contracting Justice Workshop (Photo credit: Cath Traynor/Natural Justice) |
On the 13th and 14th
March Natural Justice hosted a workshop centred on community-research contracts
ensuring socially just research processes. This workshop aimed to gain valuable
insights from indigenous communities through exploring the development of a ‘community-researcher
contract’ between communities and researchers within the context of researching
indigenous knowledge related to climate change.
The objectives of the workshop
included legally empowering participants on issues related to laws and policies
on indigenous knowledge systems, intellectual property rights and research
ethics, and exploring the concept of contracts as a tool, and also critically
reflecting upon the trail implementation of ‘community-researcher contract’
between two indigenous communities and three institutions conducting research with
them.
The first day focused on legal
empowerment and internal community discussions with representatives from the
Nama, Griqua and Khomani San communities and a legal adviser. The following day wider stakeholders were
invited, including representatives from the University of Cape Town, Indiana University (USA), legal experts, civil society organisations including the Heinrich Boell Stiftung Southern Africa, the Open Society Initiative for Southern Africa, and the
Open and Collaborative Science in Development Network (OCSDNet). These varied
interests and opinions contributed to a productive discussion regards where the
tensions lie between the respective parties regards how research with
indigenous peoples, both in terms of the frameworks that guide research processes
and how in practice research with indigenous communities is conducted. Areas of
tensions were identified and the role that community-researcher contracts could
play to resolve these discussed.
Important aspects concerning
policies alongside ethical and legal approaches were raised and considered in
detail throughout the session. Issues were voiced surrounding the importance of
consent processes, openness of research – but also some of the dangers of
making indigenous knowledge open, particularly regards intellectual property
issues, and that research process should benefit communities.
A particular notable and
worthwhile moment of the workshop was hearing the opinions and viewpoints of
the indigenous community’s youth representatives who stressed the importance of
transparency, participatory action, capacity for further legal empowerment of
the community members and beneficiation. Their involvement in this session was especially
valuable for other participants in order to better understand from the community
perspective, where and what the key issues were regards the development and
implementation of research projects with communities or in their traditional
lands.
Looking forward, these
discussions will feed into the final analysis of the potential role of ‘community-researcher
contracts’ as a tool to protect communities rights and to enable communities to
negotiate mutually-beneficial research processes with research institutions.
This analysis is being conducted by Natural Justice’s Climate Change Program
together with research partners Dr. Laura Foster (Indiana University) and Dr.
Tobias Schonwetter (Intellectual Property Unit, University of Cape Town), the
Nama community in Khuboes, and the Griqua community in Vredendal.
