Confronting ethical challenges in long-term research programs in the tropics

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Highlights

  • Long-term research programs in the tropics confront ethical challenges revolving around economic inequalities and cultural differences.

  • In 9 short essays, experienced researchers offer perspectives on ethical questions that arise during research activities.

  • Three principal responsibilities of researchers working in another country and culture are

    • to understand cultural differences and adapt to them as much as possible,

    • to be sure the research project brings added value to the local community,

    • to share the resulting information and knowledge with local people, students, the scientific community, and government agencies.

  • Locations range across the global tropics.

Abstract

Ecologists and conservation biologists conducting long-term research programs in the tropics must confront serious ethical challenges that revolve around economic inequalities, cultural differences, supporting the local communities as much as possible, and sharing the knowledge produced by the research. In this collective article, researchers share their experiences and perspectives in dealing with the ethical issues that arise during research activities and cannot be ignored.

Introduction

Normative attitudes toward field research in tropical regions have changed vastly over time, and continue to do so today. Field work is almost always time-limited and is generally marked by periodic crises, some anticipated and many others unexpected. Perhaps because such work often demands an intense and narrow focus, scientists may risk seeming oblivious to their impact on people and communities around them (Brittain et al., 2020). As researchers work to keep active research programs functional and productive over the years, conflicts and ethical dilemmas inevitably arise – many of which stem from acute global-scale inequities in funding, access and influence. These potential stumbling-blocks are rarely mentioned in conventional scientific accounts, but in practice, they are nearly unavoidable aspects of long-term research in the tropics. Having dealt with (and overcome) such challenges, experienced researchers can offer practical advice to students and colleagues just beginning tropical research (Riley and Bezanson, 2018; Chin et al., 2019). However, such advice is generally only communicated privately.

We solicited short contributions from the authors in this Special Issue, along with several other scientists, to document the variety of observations they've made and solutions they've explored in the course of resolving ethical challenges. Collectively, the contributors have logged centuries of person-years' experience in managing and participating in long-term research programs. Some of the authors are based in countries in the global North and are visitors to the tropics; others are based in-country and have hosted visitors. We asked authors to maintain an informal style and an anecdotal focus.

The first and primary responsibility of anyone visiting and working in another country and culture is to understand cultural differences and adapt to them as much as possible. Our first three contributions present contrasting viewpoints on this fundamental expectation. Goswami's contribution demonstrates how in a large, complex country like India, field scientists––even from within the country––may depend on meaningful partnerships and local adaptation to navigate ethno-cultural heterogeneity in remote or culturally distinct regions. Khaling and Devy report back as experienced hosts of visiting researchers—not all of whom, regrettably, have met minimum ethical standards in adapting to Indian cultural contexts. Corlett's wise advice to scientists visiting China can easily be extrapolated to other parts of the world.

A second basic ethical obligation is to be sure the research project brings added value to the local community, beyond simply paying for accommodation and support as would any other visitor (although that is important too!). As a pioneering Ugandan primatology student, Otali benefited from learning opportunities provided by the presence of a long-term research program, and is now enthusiastically extending those opportunities to another generation of students. The program described by Knott and her colleagues in Indonesia is a model of how integrating long-term research into the local and national cultural landscape can stabilize a program and strengthen its impact. Roth's experience in Thailand illustrates the unexpected ways in which sensitivity to cultural attitudes can yield dividends by facilitating the flow of important local information.

A third common responsibility among research programs is to share the resulting information and knowledge with local people, students, the scientific community, and government agencies. This, too, often requires extra time and effort, yet it is imperative from both ethical and utilitarian points of view. Connecting with hundreds of partners to integrate plot-scale observations into global-scale networks, Phillips and colleagues in ForestPlots.net have worked hard to unite data producers and users in a mutually beneficial research community, always with an eye to the long-term sustainability of forest monitoring itself. Primack and Wilson describe the patient and persistent development over years of what has become a veritable global network of knowledge production in the form of textbooks on conservation biology, each adapted to national contexts and translated into national languages.

Finally, Wrangham's contribution illustrates that for the people who live in the midst of it, “biodiversity” is not always an unalloyed good. Examples of this are not restricted to the tropics: wolves outside Yellowstone, elephants and tigers in South Asia, crop-raiding wild pigs all over the world… The local consequences of conservation efforts – including the successes – may involve increases in human-wildlife conflict, occasionally resulting in loss of livelihoods and sometimes even of life. This is not a reason to scale back conservation efforts, but it is surely a reason to be empathetic when there is push-back from local communities. It is also a reason to work very hard to help reduce and mitigate the risks. Many potential strategies to mitigate human-wildlife conflict, from effective fencing to electronic detection and warning technologies, are relatively expensive by local standards. Biodiversity conservation often involves ancillary financial costs that cannot, and should not, be borne by local communities.

We see welcome trends in diversity among tropical ecologists and conservationists today. In particular, there is increasing representation of women and of scientists hailing directly from all parts of the tropics, as well as a growing number of training options available to young ecologists in tropical regions. Nevertheless, the diversity of those leading research in tropical ecology and conservation remains far from representative. Several contributors here highlight the need and the opportunity to further involve local people in research programs and to ensure that students and young researchers have access to training and mentoring.

Our goal in organizing this paper on ethics for the Special Issue on Long-Term Ecological and Conservation Research in the Tropics is to consider the broader social issues of carrying out research in different countries and cultures. This is an issue frequently addressed by Prof. Kamal Bawa, who has worked hard and argued strongly for increased development of the scientific community in tropical countries. Our hope is that you enjoy the readings that follow, and that the insights provided might stimulate further discussion, appreciation and respect for different points of view.

Section snippets

Perspectives on working in community forests of tropical Northeast India

Varun R. Goswami

Megadiverse India is an exciting country to study basic and applied tropical ecology. Across much of India, if your research calls for fieldwork in forests, you will likely require access to protected areas (PAs) or other government-managed areas. State research permits need to precede such fieldwork, over and above the federal clearances that are a usual prerequisite for foreign researchers. Northeast India, a region that straddles two biodiversity hotspots, presents an

Learning to do fieldwork in western Uganda

Emily Otali

In 2001, when Makerere University chose to invest in the training of more primatologists, I was one of three beneficiaries. I was urged to study blue monkeys, but a chance meeting introduced me to a community of chimpanzee researchers in Uganda and drew my attention to the benefits tapping into their experience. The attraction of having mentors to support me in the pursuit of chimpanzees was too good to resist.

I studied the dynamics of social organization by fission and fusion in

Closing the loop: how should large-scale data users engage with originators of tropical ecological data?

Oliver L. Phillips, Tim R. Baker, Corneille Ewango, Euridice Honorio Coronado, Aurora Levesley, Simon L. Lewis, Beatriz S. Marimon, Lan Qie, Bonaventure Sonké

Tropical forest plots are long-term science infrastructure for tracking the biodiversity and ecological functions of the most complex ecosystems on Earth. They become more and more valuable the longer they are monitored for – but each one needs a large amount of human effort and skill to deliver! These data are in demand by scientists,

Conservation dangers in Uganda

Richard Wrangham

The biggest animals are especially appealing to the conservation-minded public. Unfortunately for their futures, however, they have low population densities, they need large living areas, and their meat, tusks, horns and infants make them attractive targets for poachers. To make matters worse, many large species are dangerous to humans. The risks they bring understandably undermine enthusiasm for conservation among local people.

We faced this problem in Uganda in the first decade

Discussion

In this article, ecologists and conservation biologists carrying out long-term tropical research have described ethical issues they have confronted. Direct conflict between humans and wildlife, as documented by Richard Wrangham, can be one of the harshest of ethical challenges associated with biodiversity conservation in densely populated regions of the tropics. However, it is only the extreme case in a system that too often still saddles local people with high incidental costs of protecting

Declaration of competing interest

The authors declare no conflict of interest.

References (17)

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