Our Common Challenge: Moving Beyond Inaction and Irrelevance

Organiser: Philippe Forêt, University of Basel

Developed by our Code A program in collaboration with UNESCO BRIDGES and the environmental humanists of SAGUF (SCNAT), this workshop will present our agenda and methodology about a new geography in the production of knowledge.

Dominated by elite universities in Switzerland, Europe, and the United States, the current structure of knowledge production has led to monocultures of the mind. Some sixty years after decolonization, academics have started to consider including regionally grounded perspectives.

Our common objective is to contribute to a plurality of knowledge on collapse, resilience, innovation, and recovery, but how? We feel we have reached the limits of what can be achieved through sustained conversations between the Global South and the Global North. Our venues and platforms are located in institutions that are poorly equipped to recognize knowledge produced from a plurality of locations and standpoints.

At Code A, we work toward decolonized knowledge in practices and curricula, and apply participation, inclusion, co-design, empowerment, and embodiment principles. We go beyond the mapping of existing diversity, and do not seek to produce a standard global curriculum because each cultural context matters.

We have designed a unifying framework that is more diversified, inclusive, and relevant to 85% of human population. Based on the Decision Theater concept, and informed by ten years of practices in decision-making with partners from South and Central Asia, our processes will facilitate the transition from knowledge to action, and from innovation to sustainability.

Our program overcomes the North/South dichotomy by fostering epistemic plurality, and we consider the complexities of locations and locutions in the global landscape of knowledge production. We rectify "Helvetocentrism" through calls for “local”or ”indigenous” knowledge, and we learn from collective pedagogies that focus primarily on values and implementation by the communities we serve.