"Pursuing research impact through novel partnerships" by Dr. Georgina Cundill Kemp
Dr. Kemp is a Senior Program Officer with the International Development Research Centre (IDRC). She works mainly on the Collaborative Adaptation Research Initiative in Africa and Asia (CARIAA), a partnership between Canada’s IDRC and the UK’s Department for International Development. Prior to this, she was a senior lecturer at Rhodes University’s Department of Environmental Science. She has also worked as a lead researcher in social ecology at the Centro de Estudios Avanzados en Zonas Aridas (CEAZA), Chile.
Dr. Kemp’s presentation focused on the importance and challenges of engaging with external partners to ensure that sustainability research is both impactful and embraced by communities it aims to assist. She began with the assertion that sustainability researchers seek positive change in the world, but sometimes, this task can feel like “staring into a vast abyss – with hope”. Her talk fostered this hope with a series of ‘Stories of Change’ from her work in the field, and the lessons learned for policy, research and practice. She presented examples from diverse countries and contexts (including Nepal, Ghana, Botswana, and others) of typical sustainability challenges around food and water, where “the drivers are external, the impacts are local/regional, and the solution lies in changing social systems”. The last point is key: because solutions ultimately come from people, even “the right research at the right time” will not necessarily generate the impact required to create change. Instead, effective partnerships are required to reach stakeholders at multiple levels. These examples show that although not without challenges, partnerships between academic institutions and international NGOs can be extremely effective. NGO’s can benefit from the information and credibility academic institutions provide, and academics can see this work put into action by NGOs have the capacity and networks to distribute information (training, tools, etc.) and generate impact. Collaborations like these - across sectors and disciplines - will only become more important to meet the sustainability challenges of tomorrow.
