Interdisciplinary Science Without Boundaries
Sonia Delphin-Pérez is a doctoral candidate in the School of Natural Resources and the Environment at the University of Arizona. Before joining her doctoral program, Sonia worked for World Wildlife Fund (WWF) in her native country of Paraguay for 8 years. She was involved in designing and implementing nature conservation projects to tackle some of the challenges facing the country. These challenges include deforestation, habitat fragmentation, and lack of livelihoods for local communities, among others. During her first year of PhD, Sonia was a University Fellow working on interdisciplinary projects with other peers from the University of Arizona. Her research aims to identify the feasibility of integrating ecosystem services with land-use planning to meet environmental, economic, and social goals in developing countries. This will include the engagement of multiple stakeholders and decision-makers from the region. Her research site is in the second largest forest of South America, the Gran Chaco. Below are her reflections on the SW CASC Natural Resources Workforce Development (NRWD) Fellowship.
How many times have we heard that everything in the world is connected? We may not have realized it until we had to face one of the worst pandemics in history: COVID-19. Last year, we were able to witness how something that started in one part of the world could spread so quickly across the entire globe. This pandemic has caused a global crisis that we will always remember. Many people have lost loved ones, their jobs, and for many their lives will no longer be the same. On the other hand, we also witnessed the impact of lockdowns on the rehabilitation of nature—aquatic life of many kinds returned to some water courses, less polluted air and water, and the list goes on. We gave nature a break in order to heal!
Now we have more evidence that what happens in the global North can impact the global South, and vice versa. We live in a world where everything is connected and where changes can happen quickly. This requires that we all work together to conserve and protect our natural resources, ensure people’s livelihoods, and enhance economic development. We must work together to achieve these goals, and this requires the integration of different disciplines and stakeholder groups to face these complex challenges. We need to find solutions that have a positive impact worldwide.
The SW CASC NRWD Fellowship provides the perfect environment to learn about fostering interdisciplinary collaborations, engaging with stakeholders, and using science to inform management decisions in the real world. Being part of the 2020-2021 cohort gives me the opportunity to realize that we face the same challenges, even if we live in different regions with different context (i.e., developing vs. developed countries). The theme for this year’s Fellowship cohort is “management in the aftermath of landscape-scale disturbances.” We are exploring how cultural and prescribed burning can have an impact on wildfire occurrences, the environment, and people’s lives and culture in California. Wildfires are a global problem and their occurrence and intensity have significantly increased in recent years. Paraguay, my home country, is not alien to this situation. Last year, we lost many hectares of forest due to human-induced wildfires. This Fellowship allows me to understand the problem from different perspectives and disciplines, explore how we can design collaborative and shared solutions, and at a later stage, how this approach can be adapted for the global South. This will lead to a successful interdisciplinary experience that can result in future international collaborations.
Another area of this Fellowship experience that I want to emphasize is our engagement with Tribal communities, which has been an enriching and growing experience for me. To highlight the importance of traditional and cultural knowledge on fire issues, we are working with a tribe from California. This has provided great insights for my dissertation project, since I am also working with Indigenous communities from Bahia Negra, Paraguay. I have learned how to create and strengthen these relationships, as well as how to co-develop a project with the communities. Moreover, I am already implementing some of these lessons in my research in Paraguay. Although this requires some adjustments in order to respect the different cultures of Paraguay communities, it has contributed to improving my protocol and the way in which I work with Indigenous communities.
This experience has been amazing as we all learn from each other. We have supported each other and helped each other find what area of the project best suits our interests so that we can best contribute to the team and project. I am grateful for this learning opportunity, which has allowed me to take what I learn and apply it to my research in my own country. This means that this Fellowship will not only have an impact in the southwestern U.S., but also internationally in South America, transcending the borders of the U.S., and promoting the implementation of interdisciplinary science without boundaries.