The Charles Darwin Foundation has confronted several economic and institutional crisis since its inception in 1959 (see Smith 1990). However, the history of the CDF itself suggest that the crisis that it is currently facing would not be resolved in the long-term simply creating a new strategic plan, acquiring external funding and hiring more senior scientists. All these strategies have been attempted several times in the past, and they have not been effective in building institutional resilience. Therefore, instead of preserving the status quo, the CDF crisis should be used as an opportunity for learning, adapting, and entering onto more sustainable pathways (Herrfahrdt-Pähle and Pahl-Wostl 2012). To this end, it is advisable to envision multiple alternative scenarios and actions that might attain or avoid particular outcomes; thus, it will be possible to identify and choose resilience-building policies before a threshold is exceeded (Folke et al. 2002). A scenario to consider is the transformation of the CDF into an interdisciplinary research center. This would address the fundamental point, as evidenced throughout this chapter, that most of CDF’s institutional weaknesses are related to its structure and functioning as an international NGO. This has had profound implications about how science is being conducted, advisement provided, and funding obtained. The transformation of the CDF would need to be accompanied by a broadening of support, within and beyond the limits of the CDF. In particular, significant additional resources from the national government, bilateral and multi-lateral organizations are required. The Ecuadorian government, as any other state in the world, must assume responsibility and leadership in the development of its science and technology. Fortunately, this has been recognized as a strategic goal within Ecuador’s national development plan 2013-2017 (SENPLADES 2013). This represents a window of opportunity that can be drawn upon to transform the CDF into an interdisciplinary research center, which should have at least the next fundamental features: 1. The center must be governmental in order to receive an adequate and steady income from the Ecuadorian government. This will require major changes in the legal structure, organization and administration of the CDF, as well as reforms in the Galapagos Special Law. 2. The center must be financially and administratively autonomous from governmental management institutions, particularly from the GNPS, in order to separate management from science. Otherwise, scientific work could be controlled by political or personal agendas, which could limit or censor science, outreach and critical thinking, as sometimes has happened in Galapagos (Castrejón and Reck, pers. obs.). As an example, the Canadian government has been recently accused of muzzling and censoring its scientists to the point that research cannot be published, even when there is collaboration with international researchers, unless it matches government policy (Lavoie 2013). 3. The structure and function of the Stockholm Resilience Center in Sweden (SRC 2009), and the research centers of the Mexican National Council for Science and Technology (CONACYT, Spanish acronym) could be good examples to follow. 4. Research priorities must be defined according to a Galapagos-specific science and technology plan that integrates the FMP into it, and is not reliant on external agendas, as suggested by Tapia et al. (2009). 5. An integrated conceptual framework for long-term social-ecological research should be adopted. For example the Press-Pulse Dynamics (PPD) framework developed by Collins et al. (2011) could lead to a more thorough understanding of Galapagos as a SES. 6. The center must create strong bridges with stakeholders and local institutions, particularly with GNPS, municipalities, universities and NGOs. Research efforts must be coordinated to create synergies and complementarity, while negative competition among institutions must be avoided. 7. Scientists within the center must focus on doing science and providing objective feedback to local institutions and stakeholders, while avoiding conservation advocacy. In this sense, “science advice must meet idealistic standards for objectivity, impartiality, and lack of bias. Acknowledging that science advisors are imperfect at meeting those standards, they nonetheless need to strive to produce sound, non-partisan advice, because of the privileged accountability given to science advice in decision-making. When science advisors cease to strive for those ideals and promote advocacy science, such advice loses the right to that privileged position.” (Rice 2011, p. 2007). 8. A solid interdisciplinary research group at a high academic level mostly from Ecuador must form the center (to the extent that the scientific capacity exists in the country). Furthermore, to ensure continuity in information and expertise, and avoid loss of institutional memory (Herrfahrdt-Pähle and Pahl-Wostl 2012), at least some CDF staff should remain. The center also must include a high-quality research school for post-graduate capacity building. 9. Finally, a strategic and long-term plan-based approach must be adopted to mitigate the high turnover rate persistently observed in the Galapagos’ scientific community. This is a key factor to increase the resilience of research programs. Other scenarios can be envisioned, such as the creation of a new interdisciplinary public research institution, with the CDF remaining as an international NGO. Nevertheless, whichever the scenario selected, the goal recommended is accomplishing six crucial objectives: (1) enhance the quality, relevance and applicability of science conducted in the archipelago; (2) encourage the leadership of Ecuador in the development of its own science and technology; (3) define research priorities, funding and scientific capacity required, based on a Galapagos-specific science and technology plan; (4) maintain the separation between management and science; (5) avoid the total loss of institutional memory and expertise developed by the CDF; (6) adopt a new institutional approach to enhance the resilience of research programs and meet, in a cost-effective way, the growing requirements of social-ecological research in fishery, marine, and terrestrial sciences in the Galapagos Islands.
Posted on: Tue, 05 Aug 2014 12:55:10 +0000
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