[This story is part of our collection on transforming research collaboration. It highlights efforts and challenges in reimagining partnerships for greater equity, with a focus on strengthening Southern-led approaches to research.]

I want to share two stories from my work in Papua New Guinea (PNG) and Timor-Leste. The first story from PNG highlights development work supported by the local government in New Ireland Province. While most reporting from PNG focuses on corruption, conflicts, land rights struggles, and violence against women and children, there are many positive stories under the surface. The work on the Malagan Declaration is one example. 

I learned about this initiative in 2014 during a visit to New Ireland. It aimed to provide practical support to improve the lives of people in the province based on the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The late Dr Bruce Harris, Chief Adviser to the New Ireland Government, and a small team of local staff, were responsible for designing and reporting on the impact of various programmes implemented in support of the Declaration. The PNG Development Partners Group’ (comprising central government officials, ambassadors, and Heads of Cooperation) also visited New Ireland to assess the progress. I found it fascinating and inspiring to see how the Global Development Goals were locally adapted to suit the needs of the province. However, despite these awareness-raising efforts, the implementation of the Malagan Declaration was rarely publicised in the country or beyond. 

The second example is from Timor-Leste and focuses on the country’s adoption of the ‘Principles of Human Fraternity’, led by President Jose Ramos Horta in 2021-2022. Timor-Leste is the world’s first nation to adopt these principles, which seek to promote interfaith tolerance, understanding and peace in the country (and beyond) through dialogue and action. I felt it was a really positive initiative with the potential to support peace and development in other countries and regions. Surprisingly, once again, I found that neither the national government nor development partners have significantly publicised this initiative. 

These examples from Papua New Guinea and Timor-Leste provide a rich seam of materials reflecting small but significant ‘Southern initiatives’ that are making or have the potential to make a positive difference in people’s lives. Yet, many remain relatively unreported and less well-researched, in part due to where these experiences take place – regions that are less well-covered and may be deemed of less interest by the mainstream development community. In addition, local researchers in least-developed countries (LDCs) and lower-middle-income countries (LMICs) often lack the resources and incentives to explore, publicise, and spread awareness about these local initiatives. 

Why aren’t these examples more widely publicised by development professionals? Why do official aid agencies appear to rarely support such localised initiatives?  

Dr Robert Chambers, in his book Whose Reality Counts?: Putting the First Last (1997), notes that “in many countries, urban and rural people alike have shown an astonishing ability to express and analyse their local, complex and diverse realities which are often at odds with the top-down realities imposed by professionals”. Let us explore this further by focusing on three aspects that the above examples help illuminate.

First, in federated states such as PNG, many initiatives supported by provincial governments that contribute to people’s well-being often remain less well-known in national development discussions. Provincial authorities often lack the means or incentives to publicise small, people-centred, local development initiatives. Unsurprisingly, mainstream national media also often fail to highlight such examples, leading to official narratives that gloss over such positive initiatives or treat them as aberrations in terms of wider societal progress.

Second, in conflict-affected fragile states and many LDCs, the absence of a national research council or similar body responsible for coordinating and supporting social research, along with a lack of structured and organised higher education and research institutions, contributes to the lack of awareness of positive local initiatives. In many LDCs, more research and documented knowledge about a country or area is often available outside of that country rather than within it. This was the case in PNG, which led to the establishment of the PNG National Research Institute. 

Third, and perhaps most importantly, Southern-based researchers are, to some extent, discouraged (or arguably not incentivised) to research local community-based initiatives, and are instead encouraged to focus on more significant national, regional and global development efforts. In many places, they struggle to secure funding for research on local development initiatives. 

Interestingly, figures from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) show that it is challenging to pinpoint an exact amount spent on research capacity-building through official aid to LDCs over the past decade due to the variety of funding streams. Despite an overall consistent trend of about $50 billion annually in official development assistance (ODA) to LDCs over the past decade, which encompasses the commitment of major aid donors to support research in LDCs, only a portion has actually been earmarked for research capacity building of southern institutions.

Several major funding organisations have increasingly prioritised research in LDCs over the past decade. For example, the Wellcome Trust and the Gates Foundation have invested hundreds of millions of United States dollars, specifically in health and agricultural research programmes. Yet only a portion of this funding directly aims at strengthening local research institutions. In many cases, these programmes involve collaborative research on global priorities with Southern-based researchers and institutions, which may result in strengthening some local capacities and helping to generate additional funding for Southern-based institutions. But as Dr Peter Taylor and Dr Hilary Standing note in their article “Whose Knowledge Counts? Development Studies Institutions and Power Relations in a Globalised World”: “If research agendas in the South are set by funders in the North who tend to privilege Northern institutions and scholars, and thus perpetuate asymmetrical power relations, a disconnection between ‘donors’ and ‘beneficiaries’ is almost guaranteed.”

Despite increased funding for research in LDCs, power imbalances mean that Southern researchers are often unable to make the case for using those funds to research important issues within their own contexts. This also hinders their ability to support further learning from locally-led knowledge through wider publication and awareness raising. As a result, Southern researchers are caught in an ongoing vicious circle: they lack the agency to prioritise research agendas and the ability to bring locally generated evidence to wider audiences, making it difficult to have their experiences recognised on global agendas.

In my experience, it is rare for research funding to be directed towards understanding and assessing the value and potential of locally-driven initiatives, such as the Malagan Declaration, in other country contexts. This is surprising given the recent emphasis by many official aid donors, such as the Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT), the United Kingdom’s Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO), and the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), on supporting locally-led development. Government and aid officials are often reluctant to leave their urban-based offices to visit remote communities, which may partly explain why some positive examples of local development initiatives are not better known. 

Supporting research on local development initiatives undertaken by researchers from within the same context seems essential. We need to ensure that local researchers have the flexibility to identify topics that are important to local contexts, and the support and resources to ensure that the findings are shared more widely. This may be vital for better development outcomes in the future.

[Explore other stories from our collection on transforming research collaboration and engage with ideas envisioning a more equitable future for research. ]

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