Theme 1: Interdisciplinary Approaches, Co-production & Integrating Indigenous Knowledge

Anthropogenic climate change is considered a wicked problem and, therefore, it has been proposed that understanding its derived health impacts on diverse populations and proposing potential solutions demand multiple perspectives and strong intersectoral and interdisciplinary collaboration, including co-production. However, these approaches are not exempt from ethical and practical challenges, including the right inclusion of disciplines, power imbalances in decision-making, and accountability. Additionally, the just inclusion of diverse voices, traditions, and knowledges in these approaches also face several challenges derived from rigid and, sometimes, discriminatory social structures. To progress knowledge generation on health and climate change, ethical issues should be analysed and addressed throughout the entire research process.  

This session aims to foster dialogue on ethical issues arising from case studies that have used interdisciplinary and co-production research methods and included indigenous knowledge. GFBR participants are encouraged to propose not only issues, but also approaches to address the issues.  

This panel discusses two cases to analyse the ethical issues arising when researchers generate evidence using interdisciplinary and co-production approaches, as well as when integrating potential vulnerable population and indigenous knowledge.  

Admire Nyamwanza develops three ethical challenges from a project that aimed “to evaluate the positive and negative nutritional and psychosocial health outcomes of 3 major climate change adaptation actions in the mid-Zambezi Valley”. Here, Admire discusses participatory research methods for the selection of climate adaptation actions, grounding them to epistemic justice; interdisciplinary research and the ethical dilemmas when working with a diversity of disciplines and power imbalances; and the ethical responsibilities that researchers have to the research participants.  

Anh Vu discusses three challenges arising from researching the climate change-related health risks and adaptive capacities of informal outdoor workers in major urban cities in Vietnam. Anh highlights that a co-creation approach might rise concerns among workers about inadequacies of existing policies, which might put them in a difficult situation and even risking sanctions. Also, Anh discusses the issue that health risks associated with climate change cannot be analysed in silo, instead, the researcher should take a holistic perspective of multiple social vulnerabilities these workers face. Finally, several challenges in translating research into policy are described. 

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