The Role of Research Networks
Research and professional networks are institutional mechanisms for intellectual collaboration as well as providing weight to scholarly opinion through establishing norms of transparency, codes of conduct, pooling of information, and communication with the broader stakeholder community. In a relatively new area of policy interest – such as sustainable development – reliance cannot be placed exclusively on traditional professional associations, which are organized around disciplinary lines rather than problem-solving goals.
A dedicated research network on sustainable development is the appropriate institution for engaging with and mobilizing the knowledge community; it is a means for bringing together the diversity of skills and backgrounds needed to rise to the challenge of sustainability: local knowledge as well as global expertise, multi-disciplinarity as well as technical competence, sensitivity to human concerns as well as awareness of natural and historical processes, and management as well as communicative skills. Such networks cannot be created spontaneously. They require concerted effort by dedicated support teams, which provide logistical support, mobilize human and financial resources as needed, undertake quality control, arrange access to policy platforms, and organize publication and dissemination of results.
Although the Mekong area has a large number of active networks, including several that are oriented towards sustainable development, they are predominantly activist networks rather than engaged in the production of independent knowledge.
Indeed, the optimal role for independent research bodies, such as the partners in this endeavour, is not only to produce good and reliable research, but also to serve the knowledge community by enabling it to act collectively on the basis of reliable information and analysis, produced through high quality research, oriented towards problems rather than disciplines, publicly available and accessible, and thus conducive to broad sharing, reasoned debate, and clarification of areas of agreement and disagreement. This can only be achieved through a deliberate decision to adopt a non-ideological and non-partisan approach. Second, it requires explicit attention to the building of a multi-disciplinary research network, a community of scholars who agree to work with each other, share their knowledge and experience, create a common pool of knowledge, interact with a broad range of stakeholders, especially those traditionally excluded from policy discussions, and enable them to access information and knowledge that they need to advocate policies and actions in support of sustainable development.
Naturally, this network must work within the existing decision-making process, regardless of whether they are top down or donor-driven. The countries in the Mekong region have often been criticized for their centralized decision-making structures, weakness of participatory processes, lack of political will to undertake reforms or transfer authority to stakeholders, lack of widespread access to information on environment and development, and poor accountability of decision-makers to affected stakeholders. Having said that, however, it is also important to recognize the growing shift in thinking and practice, reflected for example in the efforts towards local democratization in Yunnan and Vietnam , and ambitious decentralization reforms in Thailand and Cambodia. These overall trends are likely to continue and decision-makers will continue to look for ways of integrating alternative perspectives and experiences, and resolving conflicts. This is a particularly important period for the research community to provide empirically based and timely policy options to mediate conflicts and find common solutions.
