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Presented at the GLOBELICS 6th International Conference 2008 22-24 September, Mexico City, Mexico. ; OBJECTIVES: We face an important challenge in collaborating with communities to use state of the art science and technology that will also permit them to use their own capabilities and knowledge as part of a process to strengthen their communities on many different levels: political, social, productive, cultural and environmental. As social scientists, we join this effort from the paradigm of Ecological Economics (Barkin y Rosas, 2006; Burkett, 2006), a heterodox advance guided by three ethical principles: intergenerational equity, social justice, and sustainability. Its implementation requires methodological innovations that assure consideration of solutions to the aforementioned challenges in an interdisciplinary way, with a pluralistic approach, and with a historical perspective that takes into account cultural, material and environmental heritages. An integral part of this method is the incorporation of the “Precautionary Principle” that privileges productive processes that avoid social and environmental risk in contrast with orthodox systems that try to measure the relation between benefits and costs, selecting those results with the highest return (Reichman y Tickner, 2002; Harramöes, et al., 2002). The proposal incorporates innovations using well known or state of the art scientific and technological advances that can enhance traditional capabilities in the communities, raising productivity in traditional activities or contributing to introduce new activities consistent with social and productive structures that also help to protect or rehabilitate their ecosystems. The point of departure for this proposal is the combination of different forms of knowledge that permit the users to better protect their societies from the homogenizing and most destructive effects of globalization; in the practice of the European Union, this current is known as “Post- Normal Science” (Ravetz, 1996; Funtowicz y Ravetz, 2000). ... |