SDG Conference Bergen 2022: Ways of knowing, modes of living.

The annual SDG Conference Bergen is this year taking place the 10th and 11th of February. Due to the ongoing pandemic the conference will be purely digital, and all sessions are free and open for all.

Register for the conference here.

GRIP, together with Norad (Norwegian Agency for Development Cooperation) and UNDP Oslo Governance Center, is organising the session Justice and Equity: Diversity and the human wealth in modes of knowing on the 11th of February.

We also encourage you to join the sessions the 10th of February, where GRIP affiliate Maria Paula Menses will explore the contestation of knowledge and its implications for environmental sustainability.

Abstract – Justice and Equity: Diversity and the human wealth in modes of knowing : 

While diversity in knowledge is commonly acknowledged, interventions in and conversations about the 2030 Agenda too often treat this wealth of knowing as mere ‘local perspectives’. By many critical scholars, such an instrumentalization of non-Western or non-scientific modes of knowledge as ‘local’ has been seen as comprising cognitive injustices reflecting patterns of colonial and imperial conquest and domination.

Sustainable human development is faced with uncertainties of enormous proportions stemming from intensified planetary pressures, as well as the widening of the existing fault lines heightening social and economic inequalities. A vital easing of such pressures calls for transformational change based on recognizing the diversity of knowledge and its worth for survival and adaptation to a rapidly changing environment.

This panel discussion starts from recognizing both the right and worth of assuming differentiated perspectives on knowledge. We do so, however, not by making rigid distinctions between different modes of knowing but by creating a forum allowing participants to voice their visions of knowledge and its importance for sustainability. We ask:

• Which perspectives are eclipsed by the current format of policy and intervention work on sustainability?
• How can we bridge the epistemic differences to form new alliances between forms of knowledge?
• How can strengthened knowledge help in strengthening the achievement of the 2030 Agenda?

Programme and participants

Welcome and opening

• Dr. Godwin R. Murunga, Executive Secretary, Council for the Development of Social Science Research in Africa (CODESRIA)

Panellists

• Mr. Bård Vegar Solhjell, Director General, Norad
• Ms. Andrea Ordóñez, Director, Southern Voice
• Dr. Luis Fernando Sarango Macas, Rector, Pluriversidad Amawtay Wasi, Ecuador
• Mr. Arvinn Gadgil, Director, UNDP Oslo Governance Centre

Comments by student satellites

• PhD students in Intercultural Education at Universidad de las Regiones Autónomas de la Costa Caribe Nicaragüense (URACCAN), Nicaragua. Spokesperson: Sandra Rojas.
• Master students at University of Nottingham, Malaysia.

Discussion

Moderator: Sofie Høgestøl

Session organisers

Norad: Norwegian Agency for Development Cooperation

UNDP Oslo Governance Center (OGC)

Global Research Programme on Inequality (GRIP) University of Bergen

Resource/contact person

Jeanette Da Silva, Norad

Aseem Andrews, UNDP OGC

Bjørn Enge Bertelsen, GRIP