Division researcher Katarina Larsen has published a new article together with her co-authors Hampus Berg Mårtensson and Mattias Höjer, both from the Department of Sustainable Development, Environmental Science and Engineering (SEED) at KTH Royal Institute of Technology. The text with the title “Investigating potential effects of mobility and accessibility services using the avoid-shift-improve framework” is published in Sustainable Cities and Society, Volume 96. It is already available online, and will be published in a physical format in September this year.
Mobility services and accessibility services could contribute to reduced car-dependency and a more sustainable transport system. However, uncertainty remains regarding what the effects will be and further research is needed.
In this paper we examine potential effects on passenger car-travel in an urban context. To do so, we actuate the Avoid-Shift-Improve (ASI) framework using a System Dynamics approach and develop thematic Causal Loop Diagrams. We draw on the findings from a literature study and workshops engaging actors involved in creating visions and planning for the future of mobility and accessibility services in Stockholm, Sweden. The effects discovered are categorized as direct, enabling and structural/systemic, using a retrofitted version of the Three-Levels Model.
Contributions include the mapping of mechanisms through which the services can have positive and negative effects in relation to ASI, demonstrating a high degree of interconnectedness. This includes potential synergetic and competitive relations between the services. In addition, the approach gives insight to potential cumulative impact of the services, relatable to Mobility as a Service, including ‘user near’ effects regarding, e.g., commuting and leisure travel, as well as systemic and structural level effects. A discussion is conducted on the implications for actors and policy-makers.
Keywords
Mobility service; Accessibility service; Mobility as a service; Sustainable urban mobility; Avoid-shift-improve; Car travel; Climate change; Environmental sustainability; System dynamics; Three-levels model of effects
Division professor in history of technology Nina Wormbs has written the very interesting essay “I Still Do a Lot of Good” for the Rachel Carson Center Review on 23 May 2023.
In this piece, Nina discusses the frequently occurring instances of cognitive dissonance that emerge once one does critically engage with the climate crisis we are in right now. How do we justify the things we do and which we know will further harm the environment? How do we relate towards flying in academia? How large is the influence of economic thought in our own evaluations of these instances?
Location: Big seminar room, Teknikringen 74D (floor 5), Division of History of Science
Language: English
Siegfried Evens in front of the Three Mile Island Nuclear Power Plant in the USA.
Teaser
That is why this dissertation will focus on exactly that: the water that runs through our nuclearpower plants. Water is so important and obvious to thesafetyof so many power plants–not onlynuclear ones–that it barely goes unnoticed. Indeed, the history of nuclear power contains a strikingparadox. Water is the key to a normal functioning nuclear power plant and to preventing nuclearaccidents. Yet, up until now, the history of water is largely absent from the history of nuclear power,and especially nuclear risk.Incontrast, there is a long–standing scholarly tradition of studyingnuclear fission and radioactivity.
Butthis dissertation is about more than just water. By focussing on water streams for the analysisof nuclear safety, other relevant elements open up aswell. While water streams are essential, thereis no nuclear power plant in the world that generates electricity because of it. Electricity is generatedbecause of the steam caused by the boiling of that water. The generation of steam is coupled to thescience and engineering practice of thermal–hydraulics–a field with a long and important history,dating back to the early days of industrialisation and mechanical engineering.
As I will show, muchengineering and political effort–in the nuclear sector and outside of it–hasbeen devoted tothemanagement of pressure and temperature in steam equipment, such as boilers and pipes. All ofthis was essential to prevent the pressure from mounting too high, causing catastrophic explosions.In turn, the management of all this water and steam is also very reliant on the material that thisequipment is made of. And that material is steel. A very robust material, steel is well–equipped to withstand the tremendous pressures and temperatures necessary to generate power. However, as withalmost any material, it can decay,crack,brittle, and break. A major theme in this dissertationwill therefore be the continued effort to improve and regulate steel–and the work of metallurgistsand material engineers in doing so. Streams, steams, and steels; that is in many ways the essence of this dissertation.
Excerpt from Siegfried’s final seminar text, pp. 12-13.
A pressure vessel at Shippingport Nuclear Power Station in the USA.
On 30 May, 1.15-2.45 pm, Alicia Gutting will have her final seminar with the title “The Nuclear Rhine” in her doctoral education. It will take place at the division, in the big seminar room. Alicia’s discussant is Timothy Moss, Senior Researcher at the Integrative Research Institute on Transformations of Human-Environment Systems (IRI THESys), based at the Humboldt University in Berlin, Germany.
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On 02 June Ulrika Bjare will have her defence with the title “The autonomy of science – governance, organization, and enactment of university research”. It will take place at 10 am at KTH in Room B2, Brinellvägen 23 in Stockholm. Her Opponent is Charlotte Silander from Linnéuniversitetet. The defence will take place in Swedish.
A “gummy squirrel” sea cucumber, Psychropotes longicauda, living at a depth of 5,000 meters. Image courtesy of the DeepCCZ expedition/NOAA
Tirza Meyer is a contemporary historian and a postdoctoral researcher at the Department of Philosophy and History, who has come to devote her work to the ocean. After studying how the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea was negotiated, she is now dedicating her time to the question of how we have discovered, and continue to discover, life in the ocean, a very contemporary development.
To an historian, the contemporary period begins at the end of the second world war and – at least for Tirza Meyer – stretches some distance into the future. In her own academic history, the law of the sea has played an important role. It started when her supervisor at NTNU in Trondheim, Norway invited her to work on a project about deep-sea mining. That led to a dissertation about the role of Elisabeth Mann Borgese in making the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea,UNCLOS, a reality and creating regulations for using the resources of the sea.
Tirza Meyer
“After the war there existed an international community with the United Nations, the human rights, and ideas of internationalism. By giving resources for everyone to share the idea was that the world could become more just.”
Last year, Tirza Meyers published a book about Elisabeth Mann Borgese’s years-long work with UNCLOS. Her own work has also resulted in her being a member of a reference group for the Norwegian delegation to the International Seabed Authority, ISA, an autonomous international organization, through which states parties to UNCLOS organize and control all mineral-resources-related activities in the Area for the benefit of humankind as a whole.
”Based on my knowledge of the development of the convention on the law of the sea, I can comment on what may happen in the future. In my field, my colleagues and Istudy the past to understand how things are developing and how they may continue to develop in the future.”
Marine protected areas and mining that threatens biodiversity
As recent as in March 2023 negotiations were concluded on the Treaty of the High Seas to protect the ocean, tackle environmental degradation, fight climate change, and prevent biodiversity loss, an addendum to UNCLOS in an area that wasn’t well known during the 1970s and 1980s when the convention was negotiated. When ratified by at least 60 states the addendum will enter into force, enabling large marine protected areas on the high seas and require assessing the impact of economic activities on high seas biodiversity.
Tirza Meyer (in white and green) with colleges at the Institute for Marine and Antarctic Studies, University of Tasmania. Photo: Hanne Nielsen
This year the ISA wants to reach a contract for the exploitation of minerals from the seabed. So far deep-sea mining has only been done as small-scale trials but the new contract can lead to large-scale seabed mining, something that is problematic in many ways and that is portrayed as a necessity since there will be a large future demand for minerals, not least for the green transition.
“I believe many biologists who work with the deep sea agree that we first need to gather information before mining, that risks devastating large areas, should take place. It is a very inflammatory issue, as a historian I can only comment on how we ended up where we are today.”
Costly research at enormous depths
Tirza Meyer has turned her eyes to the contemporary history of deep-sea research and she focuses on the abyssal and hadal zones, the part of the ocean – most of it – that is deeper than 4 000 meters and that has been named after the Greek word for bottomless and the Greek mythological underworld. She recently returned from a research trip to Australia.
“The research institute in Perth that I visited had been able to have access to a research vessel and a submersible thanks to funding from a wealthy individual. That is both interesting and problematic. One can speculate about how their research had been affected if he had decided to use his money on something else. A lot of the research is also funded by companies that want to mine minerals and that need knowledge about the seabed.”
In Tasmania, she met researchers working with under-ice observation. They work in inaccessible areas since it isn’t possible to drill through the polar ice and the instruments you send down under the ice tend to disappear. But there are great opportunities for discoveries. In 2021 researchers discovered the largest colony of fish nests in the world under the polar ice, with approximately 60 million fishes of the species Jonah’s icefish (Neopagetopsis ionah) over an area of 240 square kilometres.
”They discovered the area with a remotely operated underwater vehicle or ROV. I spoke with one of the people who made the discovery at a conference in London ”The Challenger Society Conference”. It’s a special world where you talk about how many species you have under your belt, that is how many new species you have discovered.”
New knowledge changes our view of the deep sea
The development has been fast and new species are discovered every time you send an instrument into the deep. Our idea of what the deep sea is has changed as we have gotten access to new technology that has changed our view of an area that we didn’t use to have access to.
Diver and remotely operated underwater vehicle. Illustration: Reviel Meyer
”Earlier a kind of dredge was used to collect fish from the deep sea. Then you didn’t know from exactly what depth the fishes came and they were also harmed when they were raised the the deep. One example of this is the fish barreleyes (Macropinna microstoma) which has a transparent head filled with liquid. The first description and drawing of the fish are from 1939 and they show a fish with a head that has collapsed in the lower surface pressure. It wasn’t until the early 2000s that a camera on an ROV revealed what it looked like in its natural habitat.”
Another example that shows how we are in the middle of an era of discoveries and new knowledge is that the first map of the Mid-Atlantic ridge was done as late as 1953 and that it’s not until the present day that we can map the seabed and measure the depth of the sea, using satellites and modern bathymetry. In the 1970s we also discovered hydrothermal vents, openings in the seabed with hot water mixed with minerals, and bacteria feeding on minerals through chemosynthesis, an alternative to photosynthesis, that was unknown until then.
”Apart from deep-sea research being very expensive and much remaining to be discovered, it’s also an international endeavour. I hope that we can learn more about the ocean together, without devastating it.”
This is the 41st article in the School of Architecture and the Built Environment’s series of articles on selected research, education or collaboration initiatives from each department. You can find the previous articles here:Archive
Please be warmly welcome to attend Klara Müller’s mid-seminar in doctoral education, here at KTH Campus on Monday April 24.
The Qualitization of the Humanities: Changing Articulations of Research Quality
“Placed at the intersection between research policy, STS and the history of humanities, the project aims to analyze quality articulations on both the micro-level and the macro-level of the humanities since the 1980s. This is done through a combination of various methodological approaches such as archival research, oral history and bibliometrics.”
Doctoral student: Klara Müller, Division of History of Science, Technology and Environment, KTH
Supervisor: Sverker Sörlin, KTH & Linus Salö, Stockholm University
Opponent: Vera Schwach, Doctor and Research Professor at NIFU, Nordisk Institutt for Studier av Innovasjon, Forskning og Utdanning
Time: Mon 2023-04-24 13.15 – 14.45 Location: the seminar room at the Division (Teknikringen 74 D, level 5) Language: English
It has been a few months since I came back from my stay in the U.S. And I have to say, I miss it sometimes. But being back in Sweden, I can reflect on the things I have learned and experienced.
I arrived in Washington, D.C. in August 2022, Typical for the summer there, the temperatures were tropical, the humidity excruciating, and the mosquitos everywhere. That is how I learned D.C. is actually a part of “The South.”
I stayed at Virginia Tech, a technical university with a campus in the suburbs of the D.C. area. Although small and often compared to a prison or asylum, the campus had a certain charm. There were also many events for graduate students, with free food and ping-pong! It was a great way to meet other graduate students, of which most worked in engineering and computer science.
For four months, I was part of the STS Department of Virginia Tech as a guest Ph.D. student, hosted by professor Sonja Schmid. My aim was to get to know STS more and to learn from Sonja Schmid, who has worked extensively on nuclear safety and contributes actively to nuclear policy in the U.S.
One of the aims of my stay was to take part in a project-based STS graduate course. This year, the theme was ‘Nuclear Facilities in Armed Conflict.’ Together with six other American STS students, with varying backgrounds ranging from nuclear engineering to law, we wrote a policy report with recommendations on how to prevent situations like the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant in Ukraine. We also presented our work in a public session for policy-makers, government officials, and industry experts. We are working on a policy publication right now.
Washington, D.C. has many archives that are relevant for nuclear historians like me. Although they are not always easy to get into, I came back with thousands of scans from the Library of Congress, the National Academy of Sciences, the National Archives, and – most importantly – the NRC Public Documentation Room. At the NRC, I was helped a lot by the NRC historian, professor Thomas Wellock.
Staying in D.C. was a great opportunity to travel around. I attended the Society of History of Technology (SHOT) conference in the stunning city of New Orleans. I presented my work in the college town of Blacksburg, where the main campus is located, and received great feedback from the STS scholars there. And in an act of ‘dark tourism’, I drove up to the Three Mile Island nuclear plant, which is only a two-hour drive away from D.C.
But after each trip, I was also happy to be back in D.C. It is a marvelous place to live. Paradoxically, the capital of the U.S. has a very European feel: wide sidewalks, beautiful architecture, good public transport, lush parks, and so many great pubs and restaurants. I lived in Columbia Heights, a beautiful historic area with small row houses built after the Civil War to house new civil servants.
Yet, at the same time, the abundance of museums, monuments, and sports stadiums – but at the same time also the stark racial and social inequalities in the city – remind you of American history and culture every day. American politics is never far away either: when you talk to people, see politicians or “staffers” in the streets, or when walk on the National Mall and cannot get the intro tune of House of Cards out of your head.
Nuna Marques, postdoctor at the Division and the KTH Centre EHL, attended a eco poetry reading during the Ecopoetry Workshop at the #APHELEIA 2023 seminar on Adaptation and Transformation: Community-based Practices in Mação, Portugal. Read his full performance below.
Author: Nuno Marques, postdoctoral researcher at the Division
at an ecopoetry workshop I was invited to say something about this poem as ecopoem. Here is what I said:[1]
this poem is a composition about/with killing and eating animals and the violence inherent to human and family relationships. It is also about tenderness.
It deals with the killing of pigs in Portugal done in traditional ways, not in slaughterhouses where animals that are industrially raised – the actual term is produced– are killed.
I based it on my experiences during childhood and adolescence with taking part in killing pigs and cutting them; preparing sausages, and in all the processes that happen after the animal is dead.
I used some specific vocabulary of the Center region of Portugal, where I am from, for names of tools, body parts of pigs, gestures, plants, food. This is the area of Portugal where almost all the meat that is eaten in the country is produced – pig, chicken, turkey and others.
Lack of regulation on waste waters has turned the river Lis that crosses the region in one of the most polluted rivers of Portugal from wastewater coming from animal production but also from leather and grain production units.[2]
This is a long poem created by several sections that can be read separately but that work better in relation. I mostly use verbs. Sometimes verbs as adjectives and verbs as nouns. This I learned, as translator and researcher, from North American poets as Brenda Hillman; Evelyn Reilly; Allison Cobb; John Cage; Gary Snyder; Michael McClure; Charles Olson; Susan Howe.[3]
Vegan ecofeminism is important as well – Carol J. Adams’ The Sexual Politics of Meat – for the distinction between corpse/cadaver and meat – which is a cultural construction operated by separation and differentiation:
to cut bodies into meat to cut the word
verb as action
I also wanted to work with rhythm and sound, so I use repetitions. Hopefully these create, through interrelations within the poem, sets of frequencies that distribute the action of cutting in long time frames: from childhood till today.
The title Dia do Não [Day of No] refers to the day before the killing in which the pig has no water and no food:
a time and space of negativity
The poem is accompanied by images by the Portuguese artist André Alves. Images and words follow different directions:
the text starts from the whole body and ends with the cut pieces; from concrete to abstract; the image from abstract parts to the whole body. I have Rita Barreira to thank for this idea as well as for suggesting working with André.
I consider this an ecopoem because by engaging the cultural constructions of animals as non-others in the Center region it brings forth the environmental history of animal production in this area. The poem entangles culture and nature; flesh meat tendons muscles smiles love cross between pigs and humans, knifes separate, as Evelyn Reilly asks in Echolocation: “And why should our bodies end at our skin?”
Drawings by André Alves
Dia do Não was published as a full-length book in Portugal by Douda Correria in 2018. Some sections have been published at: Revista Inefável15 (online). Other sections are forthcoming in the Ibero-American anthology Futuros Multiespecie edited by Azucena Castro for Bartlebooth (in press); and the Brazilian, African, and
Portuguese ecopoetry anthology O Livro do Verso Vivo (in press), edited by Thássio Ferreira and Maurício Vieira.
[1] The reading took place during the Ecopoetry Workshop at the #APHELEIA 2023 seminar on Adaptation and Transformation: Community-based Practices in Mação, Portugal. It was organized by BRIDGES UNESCO Sustainability Science Coalition. Poets attending: Esthela Calderon (Nicaragua), Juan Carlos Galeano (Colombia & USA), Nuno Marques (Portugal), José Manuel Marrero Henríquez (Canary Islands), Bernard Quetchenbach (USA) and Catarina Santiago Costa (Portugal).
Mid-Seminar: Universities and innovation in Africa: Contemporary histories of innovation policy and practice in a selection of African universities
Doctoral student: Domingos Langa Supervisors: Sverker Sörlin,KTH;Urban Lundberg,Dalarna University College;Erik Arnold, Technopolis;Teboho Moja, New YorkUniversity Opponent:Charles Edquist, researcher and Holder of the Ruben Rausing Chair in Innovation Research at CIRCLE, Lund University, Sweden
Join and let’s discuss Domingos’ work!
Time: Mon 2023-04-03 13.15 – 14.45
Location: the seminar room at the Division (Teknikringen 74 D, level 5)
Language: English
Brief introduction of the Kappa and its structure
The primary goal of this study is to understand how university innovation policies and practices have evolved in three African countries:
Mozambique, Kenya, and Uganda. In this thesis, I present a review of the literature on higher education and innovation in Africa, as well as the study objectives and research questions, key concepts, methods, and sources for the first two papers related to the Mozambican case study, a summary of the first two papers, and the full papers.
This text was first published on the WaterBlog@KTH on 10 March 2023.
The sun setting on our right in beautiful orange hues, water flowing calmly and gentle breeze on our faces. This was the tranquil atmosphere on Río Guapi on a Saturday evening in early October 2022, as we were travelling down the river in a traditional fishing boat of the Guapiñeros. In the next moment, loud cheering and clapping echoed through the mangroves and houses lining the river. The sail prototype had been unfolded and successfully set up on the boat. The next twenty minutes had everyone brimming with excitement as the fishermen expertly navigated the boat towards the barrio of Puerto Cali, using the sail that the team had built together just hours before, utilising the ancestral knowledge of the fishing community.
Econavipesca team sailing down Río Guapi (Photo by Jose Miguel Vecino)
Local and ancestral knowledge as a strategy to reach sustainability goals
The use of local knowledge is considered key to achieving the climate strategies and plans, as outlined by Intergovernmental Panel for Climate Change (IPCC) in a recent report (IPCC, 2022). Both the IPCC and the Intergovernmental Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) emphasise the importance of local and indigenous knowledge in understanding and creating solutions for sustainable futures (Tengö et al., 2021a-b). Moving towards more sustainable futures, in practice, requires a thorough understanding of the local traditions and how concepts of change are used in the local context. The preservation of fishing traditions, sailing and sailmaking are interesting examples. On the one hand, recognizing the value of preserving local ancestral knowledge (related to fishing and sail making), but also recognizing that the older generation wants their children to take steps to improve their future, embarking on studies etc. Thereby wanting a better future, with less hard work that fishing entails, for the next generation. This is one example that we discussed with fishermen in Guapi showing that the involvement of local communities is necessary for getting a better understanding of how local knowledge and cultural traditions are key for understanding how change can come about. In addition to this, also recognizing that the local and global level is interrelated (Larsen et al. 2011) when implementing policy to achieve climate objectives and UN’s sustainable development goals (SDGs). Improving the possibilities to improve (local communities) life situation and increased involvement in economic development is central to the strategy for the regional development of Latin America (Sida 2021, page 9) relating to several SDGs, including SDG12, sustainable production and consumption.
Local knowledge, culture and values are important to be included together with scientific knowledge in the co-production of new solutions and for input to advising policies. This aspect of co-creation in a transdisciplinary team to take advantage of both the traditional knowledge of local communities and scientific knowledge of academics from several different disciplines (including anthropology, environmental history, technology, engineering, and design etc.) is an important methodology of the Pacífico Econavipesca project.
Fishing and boats in the community in Guapi, Colombia
The objective of the project is to develop a sustainable artisanal fishing model that reduces the environmental, social, and economic impacts on the ecosystem in the municipality of Guapi, Cauca, in Colombia. A major challenge is to reduce dependence on fossil fuels for fishing boats and engage in dialogues with the local community about ways to create social entrepreneurship to make fishing activities more sustainable long term. The project involves universities in Colombia with strong commitment and previous experiences with the communities in Guapi. The focus of fieldwork activities is to create room for dialogues and mutual learning rather than importing or imposing certain technology or ways of thinking on any local community. The fieldwork activities where KTH has been involved have been carried out in collaboration with the research teams in Colombia to ensure these aspects and safeguard continued dialogues on how future solutions may look.
Guapi is a municipality on the pacific coast of Colombia. The town and villages here are all situated along Río Guapi, Río Guaji and Río Napi. The rivers are a source of life for these communities as they provide food, water, transportation, etc. In fact, their relationship with water is beyond material provisions. It is their deep connection with the diverse natural environment in the territory, a rich food culture, music and dance that follows the rhythm of the river, and their ancestors that have passed down a great wealth of knowledge. Artisanal fishing is one such knowledge that has been passed down through generations in Guapi. Currently, traditional fishing boats that run on gasoline motors are used to fish out at sea. However, gasoline is very expensive in the region and causes them a great economic burden. This is worsened by increased uncertainty of catching fish with reduced fish populations due to pollution and climate change, causing them to return with little to no fish on many days. Local environmental pollution of the river is also caused by leakages of gasoline. Hence, one of the main objectives is to create more sustainable fishing boats with reduced reliance on gasoline.
Municipality of Guapi located along Río Guapi (Photo by Gauri Salunkhe)Traditional fishing boat with gasoline motor used for fishing (Photo by Gauri Salunkhe)Mural in Guapi that depicts their dependence on the river and fishing activities (Photo by Gauri Salunkhe)
In the initial stages of the project Econavipesca, it became clear that the previous generation of fishermen would sail out to sea with homemade sails. However, with the introduction of modern technology like gasoline motors, this traditional knowledge of sail-making and sailing was forgotten. This was one of the early stages of co-creation, where local knowledge was re-discovered in dialogue with the community. The team then decided to examine possibilities to incorporate these traditional sailing techniques in present-day boats to reduce reliance on gasoline motors.
Co-creation in the focus of KTH fieldwork
In October 2022, the KTH project team embarked on their first field trip, including Gauri Salunkhe, a master’s student in Sustainable Technology at KTH. Gauri would spend three months on a field study in Colombia. This field study focused on understanding community engagement, co-creation strategies and actor interactions to identify challenges and opportunities for the sustainability of the project. She engaged in dialogue with different stakeholders such as academics and community team members to gather data for her field study, using methodologies such as observational studies, interviews, actor-network mapping, co-creative activities, reflective workshops, etc.
Video 1: Interview with Gauri Salunkhe about her field study experience in Colombia (Interview by Sebastián Serna)
This KTH field study began with a deep dive into the community, as Gauri, together with Katarina Larsen, a researcher at KTH, Division of History of Science, Technology and Environment, and Magnus Lindqvist, Senior advisor at the KTH International Relations Office, embarked on the fieldwork in Guapi (30 Sep 2022 – 04 Oct 2022) together with the project team in Colombia. Ask any member of the team about a key moment during this fieldwork, and the moment that would resonate in all the responses would be – “the sailing activity”. This brings us back to the scene at the beginning, on Río Guapi.
The sailing activity is an essential example of co-creation in the Pacífico Econavipesca project. Local knowledge of sail-making and sailing was incorporated with academic knowledge to design and build the sail prototypes. Instead of fieldwork activities solely organised by the academic team, with the community members only as participants, in this case, the community members’ representatives were key to planning and organising the activity. They gathered local resources, people and materials, specified fabrics needed for sails, and identified suitable locations, to build the sail prototypes. Since the traditional sail-making knowledge is only held by some elderly members of the community now, they were also an essential part of designing and building the sail.
Academic and community team members of Econavipesca Project building the sail prototype together (Photo by Gauri Salunkhe)
Sailing on the river
A key moment for one member of the academic team was while building the sails together with the local community. “At the beginning, they were very protective with some information due to the (historical) projects culture in this part of the country … as they don’t know what people would do with the information”. However, the activity could give space to having an open conversation where everyone felt comfortable sharing their experiences with sailing. Many of them learnt it when they were children but lost touch over the years. Furthermore, it was the fishermen that had the local knowledge about the material, type of knots required, etc., not the academic team, so the fishermen’s active involvement, knowledge and skills were essential for this activity of re-introducing sail-making and testing the sails on the river.
Guapi fishermen sharing their sailing experiences with the academic team (Photo by Jose Miguel Vecino)
Initially, when we started the fieldwork in Guapi in October, we expected to build the sail prototypes, but not necessarily test them on the river. However, the community members were so enthusiastic to also test the sails on the river! As expressed by one (academic) team member who was organising the activity, “They were so interested in testing the sail, who am I to stop them? Just go for it!”. This experience highlights the importance of not imposing our own views and expectations on the project fieldwork activities but being flexible to carry it out according to the community’s wishes. The organiser of the activity described the smile on a fisherman’s face when navigating the boat like he was a little child again while looking at the sail. It is moments like this that inspire the team to continue working hard to implement new useful ways for co-creation in this project.
The Econavipesca team is all smiles as the sail prototype is successfully used to navigate down the river (Photo by Sebastián Serna)
Co-creation experiences from dialogues during fieldwork
Engaging in co-creative dialogues about future ways of more sustainable living in a fishing community like Guapi goes beyond dialogues with fishing associations. It also means involving different types of members of the community (that are not out on the fishing boats), such as the women (often involved in preparations before and after fishing trips) and younger generations in fishing communities. The young adults will determine the future of how fishing activities will develop in Guapi. It is important to improve the quality of life for fishermen, increase economic gains from fishing and dignify the work of fishermen to retain the artisanal fishing practices among young people in the future. Women are also an important part of the fishing journey who may be invisible at the moment. For example, they carry out preparations for the fishing journey, and process and sell the fish post-fishing. It is important to recognise this and involve them in co-creating solutions.
Some other lessons about transdisciplinary co-creation from this project are the importance of establishing dialogues for discussing terminology used, expectations by community and academic teams, and being open to learning from each other. This is important both within the academic team and across the academic and local community teams. Since participants bring different experiences and perspectives to co-creative learning processes, it is essential to create dialogues that give room for reflection on activities and to also align everyone to work towards a common goal.
Activities with students in Guapi about artisanal fishing during previous fieldwork (Photo by Jose Miguel Vecino)Dialogues with women leaders in Guapi (Photo by Katarina Larsen)Women in Guapi processing fish to be sold (Photo by Jose Miguel Vecino)
Experiences from the fieldwork in this project highlight that transdisciplinary co-creation is at the core of finding solutions for sustainable development. It has provided concrete examples of the importance of a dialogue-based approach to gathering different types of knowledge, and methods of catalysing participatory action and creating dialogues on future options by involving the community. It is when the community is actively involved and takes initiative, that they would be able to create and maintain solutions for themselves, which is required for long-term sustainability for the communities along the Guapi river.
Participants in the Pacífico Econavipesca project include the fishing associations of Guapi, Colombia, local and regional authorities, and the following academic partners: Universidad Nacional de Colombia (Colombia), Universidad del Cauca (Colombia), KTH Royal Institute of Technology (Sweden), and Lund University (Sweden). The project is funded by the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (Sida). We wish to thank all participants in the project for their genuine commitment to the project work and, in particular, the local fishing community representatives for sharing their knowledge, stories and unforgettable experiences on the river of Guapi.
Academic and community team of Econavipesca with the completed sail prototype (Photo by Julian Hernández)
Gauri Salunkhe, MSc-student in Sustainable Technology at KTH
Katarina Larsen, researcher at Div. History of Science, Technology and Environment, KTH
For more information on the project Econavipesca and interviews with KTH participants, follow the links below.
Agusdinata, D. B. 2022. The role of universities in SDGs solution co-creation and implementation: a human-centered design and shared-action learning process. Sustainability science. [Online] 17 (4), 1589–1604.
IPCC 2022. Climate Change 2022: Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability. Contribution of Working Group II to the Sixth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change [H.-O. Pörtner, D.C. Roberts, M. Tignor, E.S. Poloczanska, K. Mintenbeck, A. Alegría, M. Craig, S. Langsdorf, S. Löschke, V. Möller, A. Okem, B. Rama (eds.)]. Cambridge University Press. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK and New York, NY, USA, 3056 pp., doi:10.1017/9781009325844.
Larsen, K., Gunnarsson-Östling, U. and Westholm, E. 2011. Environmental scenarios and local-global level of community engagement : Environmental justice, jams, institutions and innovation,” Futures: The journal of policy, planning and futures studies, vol. 43, no. 4, s. 413-423.
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Sida 2021. Strategiplan för Sveriges regionala utvecklingssamarbete med Latinamerika 2022-2024, Datum: 21-12-13, Environment, climate and sustainable use of natural resources (Stödområde 2: Miljö, klimat och hållbart utnyttjande av naturresurser, page 9) ”Hållbar produktion och konsumtion (SDG12), men även SDG 3,5, 8 och 16, är viktiga för omställningen till grön/cirkulär ekonomi, som också måste ge fattiga och utsatta människor bättre möjligheter att förbättra sin livssituation och en ökad delaktighet i den ekonomiska utvecklingen.”
Doctoral student: Domingos Langa
