Ce second workshop portera sur les Indicateurs-Clés de Performance en lien avec les actions contre le changement climatique. Les six régions pilotes TeRRIFICA en Allemagne, Biélorussie, Espagne, France, Pologne et Serbie seront présentes autour de thématiques communes: air, agriculture, eau et température.

Ce workshop est organisé par le Center for the Promotion of Science dans le cadre du projet H2020, TeRRIFICA, dans lequel huit organisations européennes travaillent ensemble pour favoriser les actions d’atténuation et d’adaptation au changement climatique dans différentes régions européennes, avec un prisme par la Recherche et l’Innovation Responsable.

2nd July 2019

After a successful 1st TeRRIFICA Reflective Workshop, TeRRIFICA will hold the 2nd TeRRIFICA Reflective Workshop at theNational Assembly of the Republic of Serbia on July 10th and 11th.

This workshop is part of the ‘Science Meets Parliaments’ event organized for the first time in Serbia by the Center for the Promotion of Science in collaboration with the Ministry of Education, Science and Technological Development, and under the patronage of the Joint Research Centrе(JRC) of the European Committee.

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Ce second workshop portera sur les Indicateurs-Clés de Performance en lien avec les actions contre le changement climatique. Les six régions pilotes TeRRIFICA en Allemagne, Biélorussie, Espagne, France, Pologne et Serbie seront présentes autour de thématiques communes: air, agriculture, eau et température.

Ce workshop est organisé par le Center for the Promotion of Science dans le cadre du projet H2020, TeRRIFICA, dans lequel huit organisations européennes travaillent ensemble pour favoriser les actions d\’atténuation et d\’adaptation au changement climatique dans différentes régions européennes, avec un prisme par la Recherche et l\’Innovation Responsable.

2nd July 2019

After a successful 1st TeRRIFICA Reflective Workshop, TeRRIFICA will hold the 2nd TeRRIFICA Reflective Workshop at theNational Assembly of the Republic of Serbia on July 10th and 11th.

This workshop is part of the ‘Science Meets Parliaments’ event organized for the first time in Serbia by the Center for the Promotion of Science in collaboration with the Ministry of Education, Science and Technological Development, and under the patronage of the Joint Research Centrе(JRC) of the European Committee.

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“Climate change is the defining challenge of our time. Mitigating its impacts and adapting to changes already taking place or impossible to avoid will require fundamental changes to societies and behaviours all over the world – as well as scientific breakthroughs, both technological and social” (Climate Change Adaptation – Directorate-General for Research and Innovation, European Commission). It is in this context the TeRRIFICA project emerges and organizes its 1stTeRRIFICA Online Conference. How can people have an impact on climate adaptation and mitigation? How can co-creation and participatory methodologies be implemented into climate action? These and other questions will be discussed during the event.

The Conference will start with the expert talk on co-creation given by Dr. Angela Connelly (University of Manchester). Her work relates to climate change adaptation, particularly around the understanding climate risk and the opportunities and constraints offered by new technologies. She works in a co-creative manner with other disciplines and local and national policymakers. More recently, she has become interested in exploring transdisciplinary knowledge practices relating to environmental change through, for example, exploring arts-based sustainability approaches and how they can contribute to the creation of inclusive urban visions.

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• The first meeting of the European project TeRRIFICA was held in Bonn (Germany) on the 4th and 5th February 2019
• Eight European institutions start to work together to foster competence for climate change adaptation in different European regions with a specific focus on Responsible Research and Innovation
• The project embeds the United Nations 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and its Sustainable Development Goals, a landmark achievement that provides a shared global vision towards sustainable development.

13th February 2019

The TeRRIFICA kick-off meeting has connected for the first time the members of eight institutions across Europe, and has provided an extensive overview of the project’saims and objectives for the upcoming three years and a half. During the meeting, hosted by Wissenschaftsladen Bonn Monday and Tuesday 4th and 5th February, the different institutions have discussed the different phases of the project and sharpened thematic focuses, timelines, and strategies.

TeRRIFICA, standing for Territorial Responsible Research and Innovation fostering Innovative Climate Action, will foster competence for climate change adaptation in different European regions, specifically in Belarus, France, Germany, Poland, Serbia and Spain. The project will set up tailored roadmaps and key performance indicators for the implementation of the developed methodologies Members of the TeRRIFICA Consortium and climate change adaptation activities.

All participants have shared with their colleagues their role in the project, which included besides others thematic approaches, content definitions and implementation strategies, co-creation and stakeholder involvement, monitoring, validation and evaluation for the knowledge transfer and a communication and dissemination plan, amongst others.

TeRRIFICA embedding the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals

Still, after years of tackling urgent issues of climate change, the adaptation to its consequences and impacts is a less considered topic. This comes along as a serious context for Responsible Research and Innovation (RRI) tools reaching out to the issue of climate action. Climate change and RRI are a crosscutting issue, playing on the same ground as the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. TeRRIFICA will focus its territorial RRI approach on climate change adaptation, directly addressing specific Sustainable Development Goals, such as Quality Education, Clean Water and Sanitation, Affordable and Clean Energy, Sustainable Cities and Communities, Responsible Production and Consumption, Climate Action, Life on Land and Partnerships for the Goals.

The TeRRIFICA team met the following day to the kick-off meeting to celebrate the first reflective workshop, attended by 22 representatives of regional and national administration and policy, research institutes, companies, NGOs, universities and CSOs currently involved in climate change related topics in their countries.

This first workshop in Bonn addressed RRI and its meaning for climate action and adaptation. What are the drivers and barriers of implementation, risks, opportunities and challenges? How is the current situation on your country concerning climate adaptation actions? These and other issues were addressed to contribute to the identification of regional needs and priorities and the co-design of the climate change adaptation plans of TeRRIFICA.

One of the forthcoming activities organized by TeRRIFICA will be the 2nd TeRRIFICA Reflective Workshop, which will focus on indicators and will be hosted in July 2019 in Belgrade (Serbia).

Follow @TeRRIFICA_ on Twitter and get updates and more information about the project. The website and other means of communication will be launched in the coming months.

What is TeRRIFICA?

The EU funded project TeRRIFICA (Territorial Responsible Research and Innovation Fostering Innovative Climate Action) with its network partners in six regions of Europe will seek for best practice and identify the approaches that are already in place to adapt to climate change effects.

In a trans-disciplinary partnership, TeRRIFICA involves six European countries, bringing together three research institutions, three non-profit organisations, one public association of universities and one public institution for science promotion. TeRRIFICA is led by WILA Bonn (Bonn, Germany) and the TeRRIFICA consortium is composted by the Rhine-Waal University (Kleve, Germany), the Education for Sustainable Development Association (Minsk, Belarus), the Center for the Promotion of Science (Belgrade, Serbia), the University of Vechta (Germany), the Adam Mickiewicz University (Poznan, Poland), Sciences Citoyennes (Paris, France) and the Catalan Association of Public Universities (Barcelona, Spain). The project is funded by the Horizon2020 programme of the European Commission.

Pictures

• Photo album of the TeRRIFICA kick-off meeting
• Photo album of the 1st TeRRIFICA reflective workshop

Contact

• TeRRIFICA Project Coordinator: Norbert Steinhaus – norbert.steinhaus(@)wilabonn.de
• TeRRIFICA Communication and Dissemination Manager: Marta Cayetano – marta(@)acup.cat

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• ¹Laboratoire VEAC, Faculté des Sciences, Univ. Paris-Sud, Université Paris-Saclay, Orsay, France
• ²Pôle Risques MRSH-CNRS, Université de Caen, Caen, France
• ³CRIIGEN, Paris, France
• ⁴Fondation Sciences Citoyennes, Paris, France

In the current context of research and innovation that are increasingly driven by short-term industrial interests, science and technology require thorough social, political, ethical, and legal changes leading to better democratic control. A huge gap has opened between citizens and scientists, with the latter sometimes inspiring more mistrust than trust. Major health and environmental scandals of past years (for example, asbestos, Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy, PCBs, and nuclear disasters) may be related to this situation.

To restore the links between science, policy makers, and civil society is a difficult task with many challenges. This involves (a) substituting a research approach strictly entrusted to the scientific community, with approaches based on a willingness to access and respect various forms of knowledge; (b) taking into account, at a very early stage in public research policy, the societal challenges of science and the tools for its democratic orientation; (c) expanding access to scientific knowledge in society, allowing those that are often wrongly called “ignorant” to interact with researchers in a balanced dialog and a co-construction of knowledge. How is it conceivable, for instance, to develop an agricultural research project without a close exchange and collaboration with those people who invented agriculture – not the researchers, or even the agronomists, but farmers? Moreover, in a knowledge society, in which innovation does not necessarily mean “progress,” citizens may be especially willing to participate in choosing scientific and technological orientations.

Such a task implies in particular the setting up of systems enabling civil society to access opportunities to develop scientific knowledge, as well as for innovation and expertise (1). Participatory research, which is joint research work with equal partnerships between non-profit organizations from civil society or groups of citizens and academic researchers (from universities or major research organizations), is an integral part of this process of democratization of science. Several public programs successfully promote participatory research. Examples include the Canadian program of Community-University Research Alliances (ARUC)¹; several regional research programs in France, such as Partnerships between Institutions and Citizens for Research and Innovation (PICRI),² set up by the Region Ile-de-France under the leadership of the Fondation Sciences Citoyennes organization³; and the Social Appropriation of Sciences (ASOSC),⁴ developed by the Brittany Region.

A project resulting from collaboration between researchers and actors of civil society often addresses a societal issue. Thus, participatory research involves mainly applied research projects and projects that fall within the field of expertise (health, environmental, ethical, etc.). For basic research, i.e., research that is conducted solely for the sake of increasing human knowledge, such collaborations are more difficult to consider, since this research generally falls into skills that are specifically those of scientists. However, citizens can participate in some basic research projects, by collecting data on a large scale (for example, in the field of biodiversity). In this case, participants train themselves with the files and protocols that are given beforehand. Besides, citizens could be consulted about the fundamental questions that they are concerned with and that they would like to be addressed by scientists.

The requirement for openness of science to civil society is particularly striking in the area of technologies and the products of technology. The phenomenon of lucrative research driven by industrial interests that require rapid returns on investment leads to negative consequences in terms the quality and transparency of health and environmental assessment. The time required to conduct these assessments with proper rigor is not compatible with the urgency of patents and profits, and commercial confidentiality is used to justify the failure to communicate raw data from regulatory tests.

Many civil society organizations have emerged to oppose the possible assessment deficiencies of new products placed on the market. These organizations play an important role at the interface between the assessment authorities and civil society as a whole, not as mediators, but as shields designed to protect citizens from potential hazards resulting from inadequate assessments. Participatory research projects provide an opportunity for civil society organizations to intervene as interlocutors and collaborators with scientists who are engaged in research on assessment issues. These organizations are then able to relay the results to the general public and decision makers and develop arguments for possible revision of assessment regulations by public authorities.

An example of this was provided by the international conference on “Assessment and Regulation of Genetically Modified Organisms (GMOs) and Pesticides,”⁵ held in France at the Orsay Scientific Centre (University of Paris-Sud) on 12 and 13 November 2015.

The originality of this symposium was the fact that it was open to civil society (with French/English simultaneous translation), organized as part of a participatory research (PICRI project, funded by the Île-de-France Region), and managed collaboratively between University Paris-Sud and two associations: Générations Futures⁶ and the Committee for Research and Independent Information on Genetic Engineering (CRIIGEN).⁷ This project⁸ focuses on the study of the “substantial equivalence” principle (i.e., close nutritional and element similarity between two crop-derived foods), which has been used as the basis to allow the commercial approval of all agricultural GMOs cultivated across the world. This concept, adopted by the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) in 1993 and endorsed by the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and World Health Organization (WHO) in 1996, is registered in the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) regulation (Part IX: Foods derived from New Plant Varieties) and was used to claim that GM crops are as safe and nutritious as currently consumed plan-derived foods (2). Since this concept applies at the chain end (i.e., to the food from these plants), it should consider the context of the growing crops. Precisely, in the case of herbicide-tolerant GM crops, this context is not the same as for their conventional counterparts since the former are sprayed with the herbicide. Surprisingly, during substantial equivalence studies, either the tested plants are not sprayed with the recommended herbicide (3) or the herbicide residues are not measured anyway (4).

The international dimension of the conference was not only due to the panel of speakers but also to those who attended. Among the 140 participants, many came from different countries (not only in Europe but also in America and Africa).

According to the spirit of participatory research, this conference allowed the creation of a bridge between academic research and the “scientific third sector” (citizens, associations, NGOs, policy makers), with presentations of experimental scientific data, made accessible to the general public, as well as round tables bringing together civil society stakeholders. Both were followed by long interactions with the public. This spirit was also the reason why we chose to organize this conference at the Orsay Scientific Centre: because companies are allowed to sit on university boards of directors, it was important for my colleagues and myself, concerned about the democratization of science, to offer the opportunity for citizens to penetrate inside the walls of the university.

Together with results from Brazilian (5) and Norwegian (6) research groups, some of the results of the PICRI project (7) questioned the relevance of the substantial equivalence principle, especially when used to approve the commercialization of herbicide-tolerant GM crops. The second scientific session offered a state-of-the-art review of experimental data showing the insufficiencies of regulatory toxicity tests of GMOs and pesticides (8, 9). It was emphasized that the duration of feeding trials is insufficient to detect potential chronic (long-term) toxic effects and that contamination of laboratory rodent diets by toxic environmental pollutants is a confounding factor in regulatory tests. Some of the results presented at this conference showed that commercial formulations of pesticides are always more toxic than their so-called “active principles.” Yet, the latter are tested alone to calculate safety thresholds, even though they are never used in isolation, but always mixed with toxic adjuvants. Last but not least, it was explained that regulatory tests are unable to detect endocrine disrupting effects, a common toxic mechanism shared by many pesticides. During the third scientific session, the panel of speakers showed the detrimental effects of pesticides and GMOs on soil ecosystems, for example, on rhizosphere microflora and earthworms (10), and on food microorganisms (11).

Round tables allowed exchanges on various models of participatory research and highlighted the need to involve civil society in research programs and in the choice of major research directions. The regulation of pesticides and GMOs (including those resulting from the use of new genetic engineering technologies other than transgenesis) at national and European levels was also widely discussed. There was a particular emphasis on the questions of data transparency, conflicts of interests in assessment committees, and the responsibility of experts and policy makers. Finally, a farmer, an agronomist, a physician, and a company manager producing flour and animal feed explained and exchanged their views on the question of agricultural sustainability and food choices in the future.

These 2 days of exchanges, where multiple participants from different backgrounds contributed to a unified collective intelligence, were particularly rich and intense. They confirmed the need to open up science to the public, not only to share results but also to build on each other’s knowledge.

To this end, and in line with proposals made by Fondation Sciences Citoyennes,⁹ the following arrangements must be implemented:

(a) integrating participatory research programs in all public research policies;

(b) taking into consideration the value of the participation of civil society (non-profit) to research;

(c) setting up evaluation criteria for researchers involved in participatory research projects;

(d) supporting the mobility of researchers toward civil society organizations;

(e) expanding communication on participatory research to researchers, students, and civil society.

There are professional scientists – the researchers – and professional politicians, including elected officials. But the scientific approach, like political action, belongs to everyone. It is time to move toward a new science, considering the “substantial equivalence” between professional scientists and citizens.

Author Contributions

CV is the scientific coordinator of the international conference and of the participatory research project reported in this article.

Conflict of Interest Statement

The opinions and conclusions in this commentary are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the official position of the institutions with which he is affiliated: University Paris-Sud, Pôle Risques, MRSH, CNRS, and University of Caen.

Acknowledgments

This project (including international conference) was supported by the non-governmental organization “Générations Futures” and the Committee for Independent Research and Information on Genetic Engineering (CRIIGEN), in the framework of a participatory research project. It received funding from the Regional Council Ile-de-France and the University Paris-Sud. The author thanks Claire Robinson for correcting the English.

Footnotes

1. ^http://www.sshrc-crsh.gc.ca/funding-financement/programs-programmes/cura-aruc-fra.aspx
2. ^http://www.iledefrance.fr/competence/picri
3. ^http://sciencescitoyennes.org
4. ^http://xnet1.region-bretagne.fr/Recherche
5. ^http://picriogm.weebly.com/colloque.html
6. ^http://www.generations-futures.fr
7. ^http://www.criigen.org
8. ^http://www.picri-ogm.fr
9. ^https://sciencescitoyennes.org/rubrique/tiers-secteur-de-la-connaissance/recherche-participative/

References

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Keywords: co-construction of knowledge, participatory research, risk assessment, GMOs, pesticides, civil society

Citation: Vélot C (2016) Scientists and Civil Society Must Move Together toward a New Science. Front. Public Health 4:96. doi: 10.3389/fpubh.2016.00096

Received: 11 January 2016; Accepted: 28 April 2016;
Published: 11 May 2016

Edited by:

Efstratios Vogiannis, Evangeliki Model School of Smyrna-Athens, Greece

Reviewed by:

Dionysios Koulougliotis, Technological Educational Institute (TEI) of Ionian Islands, Greece

Copyright: © 2016 Vélot. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

*Correspondence: Christian Vélot, christian.velot@u-psud.fr

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Science in Society was Framework 7’s funding programme dedicated to reflection and debate on science and technology in our society. It had a budget of €330 million for 2007-13, but the programme has been axed in the proposal for Horizon 2020, the follow-up to Framework 7 for 2014-20. Fondation Sciences Citoyennes, a French not-for-profit association, is among those who are fighting to reverse the programme’s removal. The organisation, founded in Paris in 2002 by a group of researchers, has urged the European Commission to create a comparable funding stream for Horizon 2020 with a €1-billion budget, or 1.25 per cent of the proposed €80bn total budget.

This article is available here: Collective Wisdom, Research Europe, June 21st, 2012.

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Science in Society was Framework 7’s funding programme dedicated to reflection and debate on science and technology in our society. It had a budget of €330 million for 2007-13, but the programme has been axed in the proposal for Horizon 2020, the follow-up to Framework 7 for 2014-20. Fondation Sciences Citoyennes, a French not-for-profit association, is among those who are fighting to reverse the programme’s removal. The organisation, founded in Paris in 2002 by a group of researchers, has urged the European Commission to create a comparable funding stream for Horizon 2020 with a €1-billion budget, or 1.25 per cent of the proposed €80bn total budget.

This article is available here: Collective Wisdom, Research Europe, June 21st, 2012.

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This conference will provide an opportunity for policy makers, academics and civil society organisations to consider current practice and future opportunities in the field of research partnerships.

The 5th Living Knowledge Conference will set its focus on different themes to get more insight in processes, and develop specific policy recommendations that resonate with public concerns and articulated research needs and built on the experience and know-how of the previous LK conferences in Leuven, Seville, Paris and Belfast. It will be an opportunity to bring together some of the key thinkers and practitioners in the area of community based research, university/community partnerships and Science Shops and aims at providing options and opportunities for collaborations and ensuring that this area of work is prioritised on policy agendas both nationally and internationally.

The conference will also be a platform to exchange and discuss findings and results of the first half of the PERARES project. PERARES (Public Engagement with Research and Research Engagement with Society) is a project which has been awarded financial support by the European Commission as coordination action in the 7th Framework Programme for broarder engagement on science-related questions and structuring public engagement in research.

Living Knowledge Network

Building out of national experiences, an open network, named Living Knowledge, was called into being. The demand-driven approach of science shops contributes to this objective and offers citizens a tool to contribute in the science and society debate. Sharing the expertise of existing science shops and support for the development of new science shops by improving the networking of science shops will advance citizens’ participation in the dialogue between science and society. An international science shop network will be an instrument to link or initiate local or regional initiatives. In this way it will advance the outreach, size and impact of the contribution of science shops to citizens access to scientific information, knowledge and expertise.

Conference at a glance

More information

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The project focused on experiences of participatory research in agriculture, or participatory plant breeding, initiated since 2000 in France, on bread wheat, durum wheat, fodder, cabbages, cardoon, sunflower, and maize. In these projects, farmers, scientists from the National Institute for Agronomic Research, technical staff, but also consumers, food-processors retailers or NGOs, worked together to develop and evaluate new seed varieties. The goal of the project was to show the relevance and importance of partners from associations in research through the example of participatory plant breeding, which is linking sustainable agriculture, food and environment. One of the goals was also to define concretely a real participation of field members all along the process: definition and co-guidance of the project, research making and dissemination. The project was implemented between november 2010 and august 2011.

Through several events (two workshops and a regional forum), interviews with all the actors, and the follow-up of an on-going participatory plant-breeding project on bread wheat, it was about assessing at a first stage these participatory researches, identify constraints and success conditions and establish appropriate recommendations. A book on peasant visions on research in the context of participatory plant breeding was published. The dynamism of participatory research project is strong and generates changes. It is nonetheless difficult to reach and mobilize scientists. The support of such projects must continue.

1/ Preliminary conditions for a real participation of fields actors in the process of participatory plant breeding projects:

• Sharing of knowledge and mutual respect

Many bridges have been established around plants between the world of scientist knowledge and the world of farmer/popular knowledge. The importance of the respect of all these knowledge (link to the plant, intuitive or intellectual approach, part of mystery, etc.) appeared as an essential condition for the implementation of projects.

• Interdisciplinarity

Participatory plant experiences take place in interdisciplinarity through the different scientific knowledge they are composed of: genetic, ethnology, agronomy, nutrition, sociology and philosophy. Participation of consumers, food-retailers and interested citizens must not be neglected.

• The scientific acknowledgement

Making credit to participatory research means necessary scientific acknowledgement to scientists, by their peers, of the work accomplished. For the peasants, allowing scientific acknowledgment of the innovative element of their work (varietal creation and methodology of selection), thanks to the partnership with scientists, is also very important.

• Implication of all the actors, from formulation of new question of research to explanation and validation of working methods and discussion of results and dissemination.

The success of such a research project involves the implication of all the actors from the beginning. Participation of peasants to a project involves a co-construction and not only participation to a project written by scientists.

• Coordination of a participatory project

The coordinator, between scientists and peasants, is a key actor in the success of a partnership. He is close to the peasants, but has also often the same background than the scientists. For this he is linking the two worlds. Meanwhile ensuring mediation between actors, at the formulation or the process stage, he contributes to the success of the project and keeps away misunderstandings. He also ensures the functioning of the collective structure: collect of grants, dissemination of information, meetings organization.

2/ Major success factors are liable to a participatory research project:

• The human factor and the social network

The tools of a partnership between peasants and scientists are often very fragile. Their resistance is linked to the personality of the actors, who learnt to know and trust each others: if one goes, the whole project could collapse. The success of a participatory plant-breeding project, as in general the success of partnerships between associations, scientists and citizens, comes from the human factor. Each project is the result of a very specific construction that must be respected.

• The method/the process

The co-construction process, rather than the product in itself (the developed variety), is the key element for the success of a project of co-construction of knowledge. The writing of a contract of the partnership is an excellent methodological tool.

• The project set-up and grants allocated

A long-term funding, on several stages : it is necessary to give time to the research programs and to plan several stages : one two-years construction stage, one seven years experimental stage, and one two-three-years dissemination stage. These stages are linked but involve a funding support on the whole process. The support to the associations have thus to be formulated on several years.

A funding allowing the participation of all the partners, with a minimum of permanent actors on the project. This is important to build and maintain trust. The involvement of non-institutional partnerships goes through a compensation, for a real co-construction and not a simple « participation ».

A funding allowing partnership from the beginning until the end of a project: a budget for translation allows all the actors of a program to understand and discuss the results of a project they participate to. Peasants participating to research programs need a translation for the results to be understood by everyone.

3 / Recommendations:

During the second project call in the program REPERE, FSC, RSP and INRA wished to go on their collaboration. The necessary establishment of the partnership with the agreement of the scientific direction of INRA complicated a lot the drafting of the project, following the needs and wishes of scientists and practitioners. These constraints significantly reduced the opportunity to be innovative and to stimulate the rising-up of a research question. It is a contradiction to decide to involve citizens in research while letting scientific directions of institutions to decide of the future of a project.
FSC faced the problem of 50% of the total amount for the project credited at the end of the project. This gap is a huge constraint for the functioning of a small association because of the expenditures (salaries, travels and events organization). This meant to ask the Ministry to receive the final 25% before the reception of the last reports. Better would be to have 30 % of the whole amount at mid-term, when receiving mid-term reports, and then to receive 20% of the credit when receiving final reports. The payment of the first 50% of credit, at the beginning of the project, when signing the convention, stays an inevitable preliminary.

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The pamphlet

CitizensScientists_Pamphlet

Preface: Fieldwork

Consider the cauliflower. The cauliflowers we eat now tend to be big, white and fluffy. They have been bred this way over the last 30 years, taking the place of the various Italian varieties that were once bred on farms. Europe has largely forgotten the other possible shapes, colours – green, yellow, pink and purple – and flavours of cauliflowers. In the fields and village markets of Brittany, a group of farmers, activists and scientists are trying to help us remember.

Veronique Chable is a scientist who wants to resurrect the biodiversity of cauliflowers before it is too late. She is well aware that, with the excitement of technological progress, we can ignore what is getting lost or forgotten. As scientific knowledge expands, the local knowledge of people like farmers is often downgraded. In agriculture, vast increases in productivity have meant that we get more food than ever. But, for some, the homogenisation of knowledge is reflected in the homogenisation of the food we eat.

Chable is a Citizen Scientist. She can’t draw a line between her professional activities as a scientist and her responsibilities towards society as a citizen. She not only engages vigorously with the social and ethical context of her work, but has changed the way she conducts her research. She is part of a recent but rapidly-growing movement towards « participatory plant breeding » – involving small farmers and scientists. As a geneticist, she is interested in what she can offer to those small farmers who want to breed crops for their flavour rather their yield or their longevity. She helps cauliflower farmers work back through their crops’ genetic heritage to rediscover varieties that were forgotten with the move to industrial agriculture in the second half of the 20^th century. But as her interest in organic agriculture and biodiversity has grown, her colleagues have changed. Now, she says, « the best colleague for me is the farmer. » Based at INRA (the national institute for agronomic research) in Rennes, she does the genetics while her colleagues do the breeding, the sowing, the harvesting and the eating.

The way Veronique Chable does science has evolved. She explains how most of her colleagues think “from the DNA to the plant.” She now works in the opposite direction, starting with the plants. Her lab extends way beyond the university, into the fields and her own village market. She finds it impossible to work alone. She works with NGOs like Reseau Semences Paysannes.  Reseau Semences Paysannes – (the Peasants’ Seeds Network) represent those French farmers who are interested in the science of farming. The NGO connects Chable to the farmers breeding new (and often old) varieties of wheat, cauliflowers and other crops. But it has not been easy. For her to do a new sort of science, she has had to break free of other people’s expectations about how scientists should behave and the sorts of research they should do. This pamphlet is an analysis of, and an argument in support of, scientists like Veronique Chable – Citizen Scientists.

About the project STACS

STACS: Science, technology and civil society – Civil Society Organisations, actors in the European system of research and innovation

 The STACS project was selected under the Science and Society call: Bringing research closer to society: Promoting science and scientific culture, FP6-2005-Science-and-society-19, with special emphasis on section 4.3.1.4. « Increasing the societal relevance of research ». Giving support to the active participation of civil society organisations in research projects was the core issue addressed in the call.

STACS linked concrete experiences of workshops and seminars bringing together scientists and civil society representatives with a theoretical reflection on and an analysis of existing experiences and policies, and policy recommendations for the further development of academia – civil society research partnerships. Our project attempted, in an exploratory way, to give input and impulses to the following questions:.

• How do we prepare CSOs to participate in research projects?

• How do we make scientists interested in research projects with CSOs?

• How do we raise awareness of policy makers and scientists that the implication of CSOs in research will create a win-win situation for research, development and innovation?

• How do we ensure that scientists and CSOs can build common projects, for instance under Framework programme 7?

• How do we strengthen the role of CSOs as mediators between citizens and researchers (e.g. bridging the gap between populations and the scientific community)?

Our project aimed at exploring the feasibility of academia – civil society partnerships in different research areas and how to optimize the interaction between science dynamics and the needs and concerns of society. The project intended to impact on the strengthening of CSOs participation in the elaboration of research protocols and to bring new arguments and issues into the public and political debate around scientific-technical problems with wide societal consequences.

All the reports from STACS are under: https://sciencescitoyennes.org/?s=stacs&x=0&y=0

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