Can Participatory Action Research Deepen the Understanding of Intersectionality in the Field of Biodiversity Research?

Abstract

Halting biodiversity loss and reducing inequalities are targets of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), which are not within reach. In 2022, the European Commission started to explicitly include gender with an intersectional perspective in their Horizon Europe working programme. In this paper, research is presented that tackles the very interlinkage of social inequalities in biodiversity studies. The first – conceptual – phase of an ongoing biodiversity project is analysed, explaining the knowledge co-creation process within a transdisciplinary, international team of researchers and practitioners, aiming to elaborate a methodological framework of intersectionality. Five intensive biodiversity case studies from Norway, Germany, Austria, Great Britain, and Switzerland, and their specific understandings of the concept of intersectionality are presented in detail and analysed with an action research approach. The outcome of this conceptual project phase is a report, which was further analysed regarding the development of approaches to include intersectionality in overall eleven biodiversity case studies, with a quantitative and qualitative content analysis. The main conclusion of this research is that intersectionality is a hard to grasp concept outside gender studies. Thus, it is on the one hand used as a synonym for terms like sociodemographic variables, and on the other hand closely related to diversity. It depends on the definition of diversity, whether these terms can be used almost interchangeably. This paper argues that the general focus of diversity – inclusion of all potential persons – is different to the focus of intersectionality, pointing towards discriminations at the crossroads of social or political categories. The latter is of specific relevance for environmental justice issues by addressing neglected, excluded or oppressed persons and their knowledges.