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Agricultural Innovation and Restorative Justice: Facilitating Cooperation by Building Conflict Resolution Capacities

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Social Justice and Agricultural Innovation

Abstract

Due to the enormous number of people involved in the continuous improvement of agricultural practices—through tasks as diverse as the selection of seeds with desirable traits for the next harvest to the manipulation of genetic organisms, and from the identification of agroecological principles for reintegrating organic matter to the synthetisation of agrochemicals to fertilize soils—injustices in innovation processes are both foreseeable and unavoidable. Leaving such injustices unaddressed is detrimental for scientific advancement, as scientific enterprises depend on cooperation in order to benefit from the sharing and exchange of samples, observations, feedback and worries. Due to the large number of participants in agricultural innovation and the wide variety of scientific approaches and observation methods, as well as the extensive periods of time some innovation processes involve, it is difficult or even impossible to rely exclusively on conventional legal options to address injustices. Here the idea of restorative justice, which seeks to rebuild social cohesion instead of concentrating on punishment, has great potential. Reconciliation conferences can help to build trust between highly heterogeneous groups—for instance, between indigenous communities and corporate scientists—and suggest alternative compensatory and disciplinary actions.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    I owe this term and the background idea to Martin Luther King’s (1963) “I have a dream” speech.

  2. 2.

    It has been documented that restorative justice conferences even offer very good results for major crimes, especially when it comes to identifying perpetrators. See Braithwaite (2000).

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  1. Interdisciplinary Center for Studies in Bioethics, University of Chile, Santiago, Chile

    Cristian Timmermann

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Timmermann, C. (2020). Agricultural Innovation and Restorative Justice: Facilitating Cooperation by Building Conflict Resolution Capacities. In: Social Justice and Agricultural Innovation. The International Library of Environmental, Agricultural and Food Ethics, vol 31. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-56193-2_9

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