Territorial Intelligence and Governance

These challenges affect as the subjects that are analysed as the used methodologies, the results transfer processes and, even and more important, the research topics.

The debate we suggest is extremely linked to the thinking we are developing within the caENTI WP5 , which members are trying to identify the ethical principles and the research protocols that should be respected in the research processes, so as they contribute to the improvement of the territorial governance of the aspects that are linked to the sustainable development, by deepening the democratization of the decision-making processes and empowering the development of the knowledge.

The debate is still open and during the latter we refer to various principles: mind of transforming reality, multidimensionality, partnership, co-responsibility, sustainability, transparency, equity, co-learning… Nevertheless, all the participants give a crucial paper to participation as a basic principle of a research activity that impulses the territorial governance.

The deep question is that the scientific knowledge about territory is usually ambiguous (due to the complexity of the factors that intervene in the analysis, the information scarcity and the results indetermination). Different legitimate interpretations that are based on observations or evaluations of similar data usually coexist. Above all in this latter case, values have a special importance during the results interpretation. Consequently, to generate knowledge that favour governance the territorial actors’, and including the people who benefit from the decisions and actions’, participation is especially important. Indeed, they bring different kinds of knowledge and explicitly refer to the different systems of values from which the scientific results can be interpreted.

On the other hand, the territorial actors themselves can neither generate this set of knowledge which is necessary for good governance, when they are leading actions. The problems complexity, the actions sectorialization and the urgencies which are linked to the action requirements usually prevent the actors from creating the global visions that are necessary to solve the territorial problems, and which development implies scientific knowledge and methods.

Most of the time, the actors, and paradoxically above all those who work at the closest level to the people towards whom the actions are directed, neither have the basic tools which are usually used in the scientific field to gather and analyse information, and much less to share it.

In other cases, information is available but the theories, methods, instruments, space and time to interpret the information and convert it into knowledge that is useful for action are missing. All these problematic worsen when the actors who are involved in the information production and management are numerous and diverse.

In this approach, that underlines the complementarity between scientific world and territorial action, the concept of participative research-action -that can be defined as the kind of research activity in which researchers and territorial actors are involved and that have a double objective: scientific, improving the knowledge about a concrete aspect of the territorial structure and, or dynamics and practical, intervening on a concrete problem of this territory- have a special importance.

In this context, the challenge of the territorial intelligence is to design and diffuse research methods and tools that facilitate the multidimensional approaches that are able to involve actors who have very different natures (partnerships) and that allow generating and managing the knowledge in a participative way, by intensifying the dialogue between science and society, research and action, by favouring the appropriation of those knowledge by the territorial actors and by the people and by contributing to the territorial governance improvement.

The conference of Huelva in October 2007 is precisely focused on the debate about these topics and especially on the participation potentialities and limits, as well as on the difficulties of this principle implementation in the territorial research-action framework.

The planned thematic fields for the communications are the following ones:

• A. The participative research-action that is applied to the sustainable territorial development.
• B. Application of the methods and tools of participative research-action to the sustainable territorial development.
• C. Analyse of Participative Research-Action Experiences that are applied to territorial projects diagnosis, programming, management and evaluation.

The members of the caENTI project encourage you to participate to this debate by presenting your communications projects. We hope to receive you in Huelva in October 2007!