Collaboration between scientists and community and indigenous knowledge-keepers will be a vital part of the world’s response to climate distress. How should researchers approach the co-construction of knowledge?
During the COVID-19 pandemic, stories about community practices of herbal medicine preventing major sickness and death circulated in several countries. In northern Uganda, it was reported that elders in rural Acholi-speaking tribes were using herbs believed to boost immunity to protect against the disease. In June of 2024, I visited Gulu University, where the knowledge of these elders was being systematized with support from the pharmacology department of Gulu University.
These community ‘knowledge-keepers’ were not formally educated but were exceptionally knowledgeable about plants and processes that could prevent and treat locally prevalent ailments. Such herbal medicine practices are common in Uganda and many other countries, where rural communities cultivate and protect medicinal plants, primarily for their own use, based on the practical knowledge of village elders. But in urban communities, among formally educated people, these practices are rarely considered scientific.
In 2018, the pharmacology department of Gulu University developed a partnership with several nearby villages to document and systematize these practices. When rural women were not initially comfortable on campus, the university allotted open land for a rural cultural center half a kilometer away, where they shared with researchers their knowledge of medicinal plants and herbal formulations. Over time, the women became willing to continue to their work in university labs.
During the pandemic, this collaboration led to the development of an herbal remedy for Covid, Covilyce-1. The relationship between the community and the university also improved vaccination uptake (Monk et al., 2021).
During my visit, these women and village elders, who now see their medicines being bought by many in Uganda, told me they were proud to share their knowledge. By integrating community knowledge with modern “science,” researchers were able to advance an innovative health solution.
Why is this type of co-constructed knowledge important?
As humanity faces serious climate distress, existing science is unable to produce context-specific actionable knowledge on its own. As Anthony Baronsky, Paul Ehrlich, and Elizabeth Hadly argue, more important than “scientific and technological breakthroughs” will be fostering “effective collaboration of environmental and physical scientists with social scientists and those in the humanities, active exchange of information among practitioners in academics, politics, religion, and business and other stakeholders, and clear communication of relevant issues and solutions to the general public” (2016).
Additionally, we must learn from traditional knowledge systems, which have successfully addressed overconsumption through adaptive practices that have proven effective for centuries in their local contexts. Modern science can benefit from these insights and apply them on a broader scale, leading to holistic and sustainable solutions.
Calls for greater collaboration between scientists and community and indigenous knowledge-keepers and practitioners have been growing since the UNESCO Recommendations on Open Science were approved unanimously by all member countries in November 2021. These recommendations explicitly recognize the importance of acknowledging and working with multiple knowledge systems and cultures and note the relevance of participatory research and citizen science approaches and methodologies in enabling such a dialogue and co-construction.
In June of 2024, the Global Research Council, a consortium of global research funders, further acknowledged the need to integrate traditional knowledge systems into modern scientific knowledge.
Consider another example:
This past summer, traveling through Romnei Naga tribal villages in the hills of Manipur, the northeastern region of India, I was struck by their well-organized systems of land and water management. In these rural areas, Naga women and men utilize organic and natural processes in agriculture, horticulture, and pisciculture to secure most of their nutrition from their own lands and forests. They harvest water from small water bodies to prevent run-off from rainwater on the hills. Such water bodies, including rivers and rivulets, are also fished, providing both food and livelihoods.
To address the challenges of the uniquely hilly terrain of this region, the local community applies indigenous technical knowledge to farming practices, including the Zabo system, a holistic approach to farming that integrates forest management, agriculture, and animal husbandry, and terrace farming (Ranikhet). The use of locally available materials and organic sources of nutrients makes these systems sustainable, though economic constraints and biophysical limitations have kept these practices mainly at a subsistence level. Practices like these are common throughout northeast India, where many indigenous tribal communities continue to manage their land and water systems themselves.
When I asked villagers who taught them these practices, the widespread response was “ancestors.” Elders passed down these ecologically rejuvenating practices and principles, and when externally induced changes began to impact them, they adapted.
Indigenous and community knowledge—learned, stored, and utilized over generations—has worked for local communities not only among Naga tribes, but around the world. Relevant to local contexts and responding to the immediate needs of the communities, such knowledge has enabled the development and maintenance of environmentally sustainable solutions.
Researchers could learn a great deal from these practices. What, then, is an appropriate research methodology for such co-construction of knowledge?
The practice and theory of Participatory Research (PR) have evolved over the past five decades, as participatory researchers have produced context-specific and actionable knowledge solutions in partnership with affected communities. The theory of Participatory Research emphasizes:
The rise of modern science is less than four centuries old. But as I observed at Gulu and in the Naga tribal villages, communities around the world have been evolving knowledge for millennia, incorporating it into the rituals and ceremonies of their cultures and expressing it through their own languages, enabling them to live well in their habitats.
Such knowledge systems have eroded over the past decades due to multiple factors, most notably the rapid commercialization and economic shocks driven by the market economy. These pressures are further exacerbated by slow-moving environmental catastrophes like climate change, deforestation, and land degradation, which strain the resilience and adaptability of communities. But the practice of Indigenous science has continued to promote the well-being of societies. Modern science, in isolation from society, cannot produce the knowledge necessary to sustain societies.
The historical trend of disconnecting science from society is being reversed now, albeit slowly. If we are to enrich diversity and minimize the indiscriminate consumption of natural resources, we must build the capacity of researchers and scientists to understand the principles of Open Science and its democratization through respectful engagement with societal actors. By supporting and facilitating participatory research, librarians can help bridge gaps between different knowledge cultures, fostering collaboration and co-creating solutions to pressing societal issues.
Practical knowledge—especially around natural resource use and governance—is generated not only within academic institutions but also in the everyday experiences of diverse communities. Participatory research methodology can systematize such lived knowledge. It is only by bringing together different knowledge systems and cultures, and by co-producing new actionable knowledge through participatory research, that we can hope to meet our gravest challenges.
Monk, D., Aber, G. Lamwaka, A, Odoch, M, & Openjuru, G. (2021). “Chapter 8 Engaging in a Movement of Cognitive Justice at the Gulu University K4C Hub, Uganda.” Bridging Knowledge Cultures: Rebalancing Power in the Co-Construction of Knowledge. Koninklijke Bril. https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004687769_008
Barnosky, A., Ehrlich, P., & Hadly, E. (2016) “Avoiding collapse: Grand challenges for science and society to solve by 2050.” Elementa: Science of the Anthropocene. https://doi.org/10.12952/journal.elementa.000094
10.1146/katina-202409242
