Transdisciplinary approaches as a key to stunting reduction

Stuart Gillespie

International Food Policy Research Institute

Geneva, 14 October 2013

Contents

• What are transdisciplinary approaches?

• Why are they needed?

• Challenges

• Enabling transdisciplinary research and action

– Knowledge and evidence

– Politics and governance

– Capacity and resources

• What’s needed to accelerate progress?

1. Disciplinarity

• Disciplinarity involves the pursuit of cognitive and

practical goals within a clearly defined scientific school

and related institutional framework.

• Embraces specialized fields of knowledge related to a

single discipline that evolves in isolation from other

disciplines.

• Uses standard and accepted methods and techniques,

with centralizing theories and dogmas that maintain

boundaries between other such pursuits.

Adapted from Basuno et al (2013) EcoHealth Leadership Initiative

2. Multidisciplinarity

• Multidisciplinarity involves different disciplines

undertaking research or action from different

perspectives.

• Involves a combination of several scientific disciplines,

without implying that continual interaction and

negotiation between these disciplines is necessary.

• Each discipline carries out its analyses separately,

applying the approaches and methods inherent to their

individual disciplines.

Adapted from Basuno et al (2013) EcoHealth Leadership Initiative

3. Interdisciplinarity

• Interdisciplinarity involves collaboration between two or

more scientific disciplines with the goal of advancing the

understanding of complex problems.

• Involves the development of a common conceptual or

theoretical framework and a methodology that connects

the methods of the participating disciplines.

Adapted from Basuno et al (2013) EcoHealth Leadership Initiative

4. Transdisciplinarity

Transdisciplinarity involves the integration of the social

and natural sciences in a common approach

(interdisciplinarity), while simultaneously including non-

academic knowledge systems in order to understand and

solve socially relevant problems.

A collaboration in which exchanging information, altering discipline-specific approaches, sharing resources and integrating disciplines achieves a common goal (Rosenberg 1992).

Transdisciplinarity coordinates four critical questions (Max-Neef 2005):

1. what exists? (the disciplines)

2. what are we capable of doing? (multidisciplines)

3. what is it we want to do? (interdisciplines),

4. how to do what we want to do?

Trandisciplinarity is less about addressing the priorities of all and more about

establishing an acceptable process for discussion and negotiation among actors

who are in joint pursuit of a new understanding of a given problem or

situation Charron 2012

Source: Harris and Drimie 2012

Why do we need transdisciplinary approaches?

• Malnutrition is multicausal in nature, requiring action from many

actors and organizations in different sectors at different levels

(including public and private sector)

• Economic growth is not enough

• Technical solutions are not enough

• Separate pro-nutrition actions from different sectors important,

but likely to be major synergies from integration in many cases.

• Creating and sustaining enabling policy and political

environments for nutrition-relevant action requires

trandisciplinary action.

Herweg et al. 2010, adapted from Hurni et al. 2004

But…..there are major challenges

• Silo-ed orientation of funding, budget control, planning, monitoring, and accountability in different sectors;

• Differences in goals, paradigms, worldviews, mindsets, and professional language;

• Differing notions of validity of knowledge and evidence, framings and narratives (stories of change)

• Different priorities, incentives, and decisionmaking tools and processes;

• Lack of horizontal and vertical coherence

• Few (if any) spaces/platforms for multisectoral debate and engagement (pre-SUN!)

• Capacity constraints (individual, organizational, systemic), including lack of knowledge about, training in, and professional disincentives for undertaking interdisciplinary or transdisciplinary work.

Creating and sustainingmomentum for undernutrition

reduction

Converting momentum to impact on nutrition status

Framing, generating and communicating knowledge and evidence

• Framing and narratives • What works?• How well do nutrition interventions work

relative to other interventions?• Evidence/data on outcomes and benefits• Advocacy to increase priority (civil society)• Evidence on coverage and scale

• Implementation research (what works,why

and how)

• Monitoring coverage

• Programme evaluation (impact pathways)

• Generating demand for evidence of impact

• Learning during crisis

Political economy of actors, ideas and interests

• Incentivising and delivering horizontal coherence (multisectoral coordination)

• Building up accountability to citizens• Civil society: galvanizing commitment• Enabling and incentivizing positive

contributions from the private sector

• Delivering horizontal and vertical coherence

• The role of civil society in delivery & impact• The role of private sector

Capacity (individual, organizational, systemic) and financial resources

• Leadership/championing• Systemic capacity to sustain commitment• Understanding financing and making the

case for additional resource mobilisation

• Prioritisation and sequencing of nutrition action

• Capacity for Implementation and scaling up• New forms of resource mobilisation

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1 Knowledge and Evidence

• Undernutrition is multisectoral and open to multiple interpretations by different

stakeholders; each context requires its own enabling narrative or framing

• Multisectorality challenges nutrition programme implementation and evaluation

• Societal benefits will not be captured within short term political cycles. Challenge

in incentivizing politicians to act.

• Nutrition trend and program impact data often out of date or virtually absent,

allowing unsubstantiated political narratives to be sustained in an evidence

vacuum

• Monodisciplinarity leads to gaps, disconnects and inertia (e.g. India)

Case study:Tackling the Agriculture-Nutrition Disconnect in India (TANDI)

After two decades of economic and agricultural

growth in India, why do child undernutrition rates

remain so high?

16

Sustained GDP growth rate

Trends in undernutrition among children 0-3 years of age, all India

0

10

20

30

40

50

60

70

80

90

100

Stunting Wasting Underweight

Percentage

NFHS I

(1992-93)

NFHS II

(1998-99)

NFHS III

(2005-06)

Source: Author's estimates (P Menon) based on data from

NFHS I (1992-93), NFHS II (1998-99) and NFHS III (2005-06)

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Research disconnect

• Systematic TANDI search of 15 databases

– Only 71 articles of varying scale, scope,

methodology and rigour attempted to address

the issue of agriculture-nutrition links

– Not one measured nutrition status

– A stark empirical and conceptual disconnect

in the literature

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Data disconnect

Survey

details

Nutrition

outcomes

Access to

health

services

Access to

water &

sanitation

Feeding &

health

practices

Gender,

caste,

ethnicity

Expenditure,

consumption,

incl. food

Agriculture

production,

inputs, etc.

Income

(farm,

nonfarm)

NHFS-III Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes No No No

LSMS No No No No Yes Yes Yes Yes

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GAP! “Nutrition” surveys

have major gaps from the

economist’s standpoint

GAP! “Economic” surveys

have major gaps from the

nutritionist’s standpoint

Policy/governance disconnect

Accountability

the ability of citizens, civil society and private sector

to hold leaders government and public

organizations to account

State capability

the ability and authority ofleaders, government andpublic organizations to getthings done

Responsiveness

how leaders, government and public organizations

actually behave in responding to the needs

and rights of citizens

Good governance

Source: DFID 200721

2 Politics and Governance

• Many actors and agencies, each with different and frequently competing agendas (esp. in decentralized systems of governance), need to work together.

• Undernutrition largely invisible, and thus open to neglect, so even well-meaning governments may underinvest in nutrition.

• Policy and political environments may be more or less enabling or disabling (drivers/incentives, pathways of influence and change, challenges, constraints, roadblocks, political windows of opportunity)

• Roles and responsibilities, authority, leadership, power, people

Politics and governanceVertical coordination

high

Good cross-sectoralcoordination

&Good cooperation

between centre and local levels

low

low high

Horizontal coordination

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3 Capacity and Resources

• Human and organizational capacity beyond the nutrition “tool box”. Skills are needed to operate across boundaries and disciplines (e.g. alliance building and networking, communicating the case for collaboration, leveraging resources and being able to speak truth to those in power)

• Strategic and operational capacities of different actors at several levels.

• Additional financial resources and much better budget data and better tracking required if undernutrition efforts are to be scaled up. Innovation needed from governments, donors to maximize investment.

New ways of learning

Transdisciplinarity requires social learning at three levels:

• Individual level: sharing knowledge and information, developing social, emotional, and learning competencies (openness, taking others’ points of view), improving communication, adapting prevailing ways of thinking, and personal attitudes, intentions, and behaviour

• Organizational level: individuals often work in organizational setups that do not allow them to change; therefore, organizational and institutional norms, values, and rules need to be adapted simultaneously

• Systemic level: most complex adjustments have to be made at the social, economic and political levels where different organizations and institutions interact, representing different parts of society or nations.

Adapted from Basuno et al (2013)

Capacities required for transdisciplinarity

Communication among scientific disciplines on the one hand, and between science and society on the other, are key challenges in trying to achieve societal learning. Requires a shift from individual to collective learning.

Transdisciplinarity requires social, ethical, and communication skills such as:

• A reflective and critical attitude towards one’s own discipline, knowing its potentials but also its limitations

• An open, tolerant, and respectful attitude towards colleagues from other scientific disciplines, as well as towards non-academic actors

• The ability to manage conflicts of interests

• Learning the language of the other

• Develop reciprocity; being prepared to give time to the agendas of other people

• Clarity when communicating

Systemic capacity strengthening: a hierarchy of needs

enable….. require…..

Tools

Skills

Staff and Infrastructure

Structures, Systems and Roles

Brough and Potter (2004)

27

Gillespie

(2001)

Gillespie

(2001)

Gillespie

(2001)

Capacity assessment and strengthening

• INDIVIDUAL: tools, skills– performance capacity

– personal capacity

• ORGANIZATIONAL: staff and infrastructure– Staff workload, supervision

– Facilities, services, horizontal and vertical links

• SYSTEMIC: structures, systems, roles– Decision-making forums and processes

– Systems of information, financing, communication, problem-solving, M&E etc

– Authority, responsibility, power, leadership

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What do we need to make progress?

• More experiential learning – stories of change, build library of

country experience, monitor influences, pathways and dynamics of

change (as well as tracking quantitative change in outcomes).

• Understand how different issue framing, narratives and evidence yield attention to nutrition in different contexts

• What strategies and incentives are most effective at enabling

multisectoral coordination and strategic coherence for

nutrition?

– Can real time monitoring of nutrition outcomes and coverage lead to more responsive nutrition actions and improved nutrition outcomes?

– What are the best ways to promote accountability for nutrition?

– What types of roles can (and should) the private sector and civil society play in supporting service delivery and scaling up?

• What types of institutional investments and capacity strengthening activities yield the best systemic and strategic

capacity at national and subnational levels?

• What resource mobilization models work best for nutrition?