“We are living in a world that is coming to an end in the way that we have known it and now we have to come up with a new one,” says Dr Jacques Testart, president of Sciences Citoyennes (Science for Citizens). The problem, Testart explains, is that an expert knows a lot about very little and will “…polarise his findings in favour of what he knows and set aside what other people say.”
Testart is not sitting on a terrace outside a Paris café as he speaks: he is in rural Mali, talking to Dr. Michel Pimbert – Agroecology and Food Sovereignty team leader of the International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED). Testart has just been giving evidence in a session of a citizens’/farmers’ jury to discuss local expectations and needs from agricultural research. The process culminated in a three-day conference with a live link to London for the last two days, in February.
Even if Testart challenges Western notions of the value of expert knowledge, those taking part in the people’s jury had drafted and presented challenging research topics with insights that took Testart’s breath away. “They are used to tackling complex problems together,” he explains.
“Ten years ago I didn’t believe that ordinary people could have an opinion on technological matters that could be so relevant that it has to be taken into account.” The originality of the presentations that have been generated during the sessions Testart chaired impressed him.
“Then I see an ordinary citizen make an effort to inform himself, to acquire a body of knowledge and then to say to himself ‘no-one is going to take me for a fool.’ He expresses his opinion well, using words that even researchers wouldn’t find; he comes up with innovations that wouldn’t occur to some research laboratories. It’s fascinating,” exclaims Testart.
The video is one of a series of compelling social documents that IIED published with its report Democratising Agricultural Research for Food Sovereignty in West Africa. Many of the originals are recorded in French with English subtitles.
