Les liaisons fructueuses - RUIG-GIAN

V – Eclairages | Témoignage
Our project grew out of an evolving collaboration
between partners at the World Conservation Union
in Gland (IUCN), the Graduate Institute of Development
Studies (IUED) and the University of
Lausanne. I had just finished co-authoring a publication
on ecosystems and natural disasters together
with IUCN’s ecosystem management programme,
where we made the case for integrating development,
environment and disaster risk reduction for
prevention and post-disaster situations. In searching
for expertise on the matter, I renewed my contact
with IUED where I had studied years ago. Professor
Ronald Jaubert, who worked on risk and natural
resources management, was interested and agreed to
participate in a project on risk reduction strategies
in landslide-prone regions 2 . One contact led to another
and soon we had garnered synergies from the
Global Resource Information Database (GRID),
Europe’s Division of Early Warning and Assessment
of the United Nations Environment Programme.
Pascal Peduzzi, a remote sensing expert at UNEP,
joined the team and Professor Michel Jaboyedoff,
from the University of Lausanne’s Institute of Geomatics
and Risk Assessment, added his expertise in
risk assessment and landslides. Having gathered this
dynamic team, the final impetus came from IUCN-
Pakistan where the interest in conducting a study
on land use factors and landslides was keen. After
the devastating Kashmir earthquake in 2005, a new
programme to work on sustainable development
was being developed in Azad and Jammu Kashmir
(AJK) and our study was welcomed as the first programme
activity there. The interdisciplinary nature of
the project came naturally as we were to study geological
features of landslides, natural and human induced
factors leading to the landslides and local knowledge,
perceptions and strategies for reducing risk due to landslides.
After managing to squeeze in our proposal before
the summer deadline for small grants in June 2006,
we were delighted to receive a “Small Grant” from
the GIAN for close to the full maximum amount of
SFr 50,000 for our project : Disaster Risk, Livelihoods
and Natural Barriers : Strengthening Decision-making
Tools for Disaster Risk Reduction - A Comparative
Case Study from Northern Pakistan. The funds were
quickly made available and soon I was off to Islamabad
to meet with the host organisation at IUCN-
Pakistan to assess information needs and meet with
stakeholders. After the initial enthusiasm at receiving
the grant, I was soon brought back to the harsh realities
of implementing a research project. I was told by
IUCN-Pakistan that the objectives seemed very ambitious
compared to the amount of money I was bringing
to the table, especially considering the GIAN directives
against funding any overhead. The message was to
pare down the objectives, find additional funding,
or both. The second message was against conducting
research, taking home the results and not returning
the findings locally where they can make an impact.
This piece of advice was based on too many Western
researchers using developing countries as laboratories
for their own career advancement without
returning the benefits of the research for practical
use. These two messages left a strong impression on
me : value the investment in time and resources of
the host organisation and ensure that the research
makes an impact in the host country.
However, my newly acquired lessons created some
friction during the GIAN project : my interim report
was viewed by the GIAN as being too locally specific
without sufficient international implications.
It could well be that the interim report was more
a reflection of the realities of field research than on
the more generalisable findings that I had outlined
in our proposal 3 . This criticism did help me write
a more effective final report, bringing out not only
the findings based on our locally-specific research,
but also how our findings could be used in other
disaster-prone mountainous areas. I was perhaps
more willing to accept this criticism than some of
the project partners who were offended by the idea
that their work was not “international” enough. Research
on connections between social systems and
environmental issues, such as our research, must
be locally specific. Ethically, I believe that research
should also bring benefits to local actors through the
sharing of findings, or technical training, especially
when a region is still recuperating from a humanitarian
disaster.
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2. See the GIAN-supported project Negotiating Conflicts of Interest Related to Water Management, coordinated by Ronald Jaubert.
3. Editor’s note : One of the GIAN’s criteria for selection of projects was that research results have an “international application”. Even in projects that were “local à l’étranger” the GIAN
required generalisable conclusions.