Translation urgency in our climate-challenged times: co-producing geographical knowledge on El Niño in Peru

ABSTRACT

This paper makes a case for revisiting the understandings of translation to enhance the co-production of geographical knowledge on climate change. Specifically, it offers insights about the potential role that schoolteachers and students can have as knowledge producers in relation to climate change by drawing on a case study of collaborative research on El Niño in Sechura, northern Peru. We call for researchers to pay greater attention to how co-production can be achieved through the integration of research agendas and practice with curricula development and innovation in school education. We contribute to work on how a generational shift in understanding about climate adaptation can be achieved through exploring communities’ knowledge of the lesser-known opportunities of the El Niño phenomenon in northern desert regions. We conclude by arguing that revisiting how geography engages in and with translation is an urgent priority in climate-challenged times.

KEYWORDS:

• Co-production of knowledge
• Peru
• El Niño phenomenon
• climate change
• geographical education
• translation

Acknowledgements

We are grateful to the staff, students and parents in Daniel Alcides Carrión School, Mala Vida, Sechura who brought the experience of El Niño in the Sechura desert to life through their enthusiastic engagement, testimonies, artwork and videos. We owe a special thanks to Nancy Icanaqué and Juan Carlos Chávez Castillo whose pioneering work as education innovators formed the basis of the curriculum engagement we discuss and to the school directors, Roberto Pascual Sojo Ancajima and Santiago Rufino Suárez Chávez for their unstinting support of their staff and students in this research collaboration. We are also grateful to the anonymous peer reviewers for their helpful feedback. The paper is dedicated to the memory and work of Dr Janet Townsend, a pioneer in participative methodologies whose practice and politics of knowledge production created a lasting legacy in a Geography that seeks to make a difference (McEwan, 2023).

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1 AHRC 2019–2022 ‘Fishing and farming in the desert’? A platform for understanding El Niño food system opportunities in the context of climate change in Sechura, Peru’ - AH/T004444/1AH.

2021-2022: El Niño a phenomenon with opportunities: learning history and valuing community assets for an empowering digital curriculum in northern Peru AH/V012215/1. For more details see: https://elninophenomenon.wp.st-andrews.ac.uk

2 Sechura is located on the north coast of Peru, in the region of Piura and is deeply linked to the El Niño phenomenon - its main economic activities are fishing, farming and lately phosphate mining.

3 St Andrews is located in Fife.

4 These were peppered through with concerns about stranded researchers and the growing numbers of Peruvian colleagues, friends and project collaborators who became sick and lost their lives as the pandemic continued to gain a hold in Peru.

5 The word ‘feminist appears once in a cited reference (England K (1994). Getting personal: Reflexivity, positionality, and feminist research. The Professional Geographer 46: 80–89.) in the first review ‘Qualitative methods I: On current conventions in interview research’ (Hitchings & Latham, 2019).

6 In a first pilot phase of the project, conducted under full lockdown, 10 students drawn from first and second year of secondary school participated. In the second phase, the programme was extended to 32 third year students and a further 36 in second year.

7 Alongside participating in oral history interviews, parents also took part in a series of parent-teacher association sessions that explained the research project and curriculum activities and at a later date their outcomes.

8 Action learning sets are one approach that can be used to foster learning in the workplace. They have been used by a number of organisations in the NGO sector in recent years. The emphasis is on learning from experience and then acting on that learning (Bond, 2004).

9 Educational Innovation Projects National Competition, Fondo Nacional de Desarrollo de la Educación Peruana (FONDEP), Ministerio de Educación, Peru. One of 625 winners from among 1666 applicants nationally 10/5/22 https://fondep.gob.pe/red/storage/app/media/concursos/cnpie2022/CNPIE2022-lista-de-proyectos-ganadores.pdf (Page 32).

2020 National Contest of Educational Innovation Projects National Competition, Fondo Nacional de Desarrollo de la Educación Peruana, (FONDEP), Ministerio de Educación, Peru. One of 84 winners from among 1332 applicants nationally 16/12/20 https://www.fondep.gob.pe/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/151220_CNPIE-2020-LISTA-GANADORES-SEPARADO.pdf (Page 5).

10 2021-2022: El Niño a phenomenon with opportunities: learning history and valuing community assets for an empowering digital curriculum in northern Peru AH/V012215/1.

11 Peruvian national ‘Cuidadanos al Dia’ (Today’s Citizen’s) awards for best practice in public policy. One of 188 winners across 21 categories from 3659 private and public institution applicants, and one of the 3 finalists in the category of promoting culture and identity. 10/8/22. https://premiobpg.pe/wp-content/uploads/PUBLICACION-PREMIOS-2022-PDF-interactivo-VF.pdf (page 26).

12 https://www.rgs.org/schools/resources-for-schools/el-nino-phenomenon-of-opportunities.

13 Red de investigadores de las nuevas especies en pesca y cultivos del desierto de Sechura (RENDINEPC) (Network of those investigating the new species of fish and crops in the Sechura Desert). https://sites.google.com/ugelsechura.edu.pe/proyectodeinnovacinredinepc/inicio.

Additional information

Funding

This paper was developed as part of the Leverhulme award MRF-2022-065. Fieldwork was supported by AHRC grants (AH/T004444/1AH, AH/V012215/1) and exchange activities (2023) by the Scottish Alliance for Geoscience, Environment and Society (SAGES).