Equity and responsibility in environmental research: rethinking how we produce, share and steward knowledge (Sandra Klemet-N'Guessan, University of Waterloo)

Abstract: Over the past decade, environmental sciences have undergone important shifts in how we understand and practice equity, engage with diverse knowledge systems, steward research data, and consider research impact. Together, these shifts raise fundamental questions: who produces knowledge, how is it produced, whose knowledge is recognized, and who has access to it? More broadly, they challenge us to transform the policies, practices, and systems that shape environmental research and its impacts on society. Guided by these questions, my research has examined how researchers and institutions can rethink the ways scientific knowledge is generated, governed, shared, and transmitted. This work has also led me to increasingly interdisciplinary research, bringing together ecology with epistemological approaches from the social sciences and Indigenous science. Drawing on examples from my research and other professional initiatives, I will reflect on both the opportunities and challenges of transforming environmental research. In particular, I will consider what it means to move from principles to practice: how researchers can develop more equitable and accessible approaches to scientific education and communication, build capacity for more responsible data stewardship, and navigate institutional systems that shape whose knowledge is valued and how research creates impact. I argue that equity and responsibility are not peripheral considerations, but fundamental dimensions of how environmental research is carried out and how its value is understood. Embedding them within our research practices can foster a more inclusive, accountable, and purposeful scientific enterprise—one better equipped to respond to the complex environmental and societal challenges ahead.