“I’ve never seen anything like it as a researcher,” says Marianne Braig, a professor of political science at the Institute for Latin American studies (LAI) at Freie Universität Berlin, who has just completed her term as vice president for research. Two years before the project’s official end and in the middle of ongoing research, the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research announced that it would be cutting funding for the international project “Tipping Points, Dynamics and Interdependencies of Social-ecological Systems.” This news comes just before the highly productive concluding phase of the project, during which the data compiled over the last four years would have been evaluated and the results shared with the local populations in the affected regions, a key component in undertaking ethical academic work. “As a researcher, I’m taken aback,” says Professor Braig. Her colleague Dr. Regine Schönenberg, a political scientist at the Institute for Latin American Studies and head of the BioTip sub-project “PRODIGY – Soil Biodiversity Governing Tipping Points in the Amazon,” has written an open letter to the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research. The two researchers talk about the background to the project and the consequences the budget cuts will have on it.

Professor Braig, Dr. Schönenberg, “PRODIGY – Soil Biodiversity Governing Tipping Points in the Amazon” is one of seven BioTip projects and is based at the LAI. How does the Institute for Latin American Studies, which specializes in the political and social sciences, engage with climate and geoscientific research?

Regine Schönenberg: Ecological tipping points have a domino effect in that they set a number of processes in motion. In that sense, it is an important subject that connects many disciplines. Our team at the LAI is interested in root cause analyses of environmental destruction in the Amazon region from a sociological perspective, which means that we study its origins and consequences for society.

What is researched within PRODIGY?

Regine Schönenberg: The PRODIGY researchers study soil conditions and social and ecological transformation in the geographical triangle between Bolivia, Peru, and Brazil, which is a relatively inaccessible region. Part of the research includes the genetic mapping of soil-dwelling organisms.

No matter where you are in the world, soil composition is of great importance. It directly impacts people’s current and future lives. For example, if the diversity of organisms in the soil is significantly reduced, then this could mean that changes in the climate – for example, extreme periods of drought or torrential rain – may no longer be able to be offset, severely impacting those living in the region.

The primary goal of our team – which is made up of three political scientists from the LAI at Freie Universität Berlin and conflict researchers from the University of Landau – is to map out future scenarios for the culturally diverse populations indigenous to the Amazon region with a view to 2050 and to formulate potential solutions together with researchers from the University of Kassel who create simulation models of the environment.

Could you give us an example?

We are simulating how changes in land use could affect future economic output and the rainfall regime. This will help to make regulatory changes in good time. We also want to make it clear to policy makers what the cumulative effects of deforestation would be for the region and the entire world. The Amazonian rainforest produces rain for the entirety of South America and is a pillar of the world climate.

BioTip and PRODIGY were officially launched in 2019, but you’ve been working in the region for many years. How did this come to be?

Regine Schönenberg: The ten-person core team has been conducting interdisciplinary work in the Amazon region within the FONA program (“Research for Sustainability”) funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research since 2011, initially within CARBIOCIAL and now within PRODIGY.

We have worked together with research partners in the region since the very beginning. We wouldn’t be able to carry out our research without their cooperation. They bring us to important places, share their expertise with us, and we learn from them how people perceive their environment. Trust is essential for this relationship to work, and creating that level of trust takes time. It is precisely this basis that is needed for carrying out transdisciplinary work and producing knowledge collaboratively.

Researchers from about twelve disciplines work together in our project. This includes soil science, genetics, physical geography, ecology, botany, environmental economics, environmental modeling, anthropology, sociology, political science, conflict studies, and climate research. This is the only way of documenting and interpreting the complex relationships at and between the boundaries where ecological and societal sustainability meet.

Every specialist field uses its own jargon, even when they technically use the same terminology. For example, every discipline understands something different when it comes to terms like “community” or “resilience.” To be able to communicate across these kinds of disciplinary borders, unify different perspectives, and grow together as a research team – all this takes time.

Moreover, we’re also training the next generation of researchers in the region. Over the last few years we have been developing the PRODIGY postgraduate course that is taught in Spanish, English, and Portuguese and brings together students from different education systems across the globe. They learn all about the scientific and ethical issues concerning relationships between humans and the environment. This also includes handing any research data we’ve compiled back to the community so that local and indigenous people can access the results and benefit from them when planning for the future.

How exactly will the cut in funding to BioTip impact PRODIGY?

Marianne Braig: It means that the most productive phase of the project, in which the results of our years of research work were meant to be evaluated and interpreted, will no longer be happening. It means that the close links between our researchers will be cut off; research transfer to wider society will be cut off; and our dialogue with the people in the region will be cut off. It means that the future of the structures we have developed in the region, including our training measures for the next generation of researchers, has been called into question.

What are politicians signaling with this cut to funding?

Marianne Braig: I’ve never seen anything like it as a researcher. It’s totally understandable for an application to not receive approval. But the fact that a funding line is being terminated while the project is still ongoing, with the reasoning that they want to follow “new research activities,” has significantly undermined the trust between institutions that was once taken as a given. If a project has been approved for a limited period, then you have to be able to assume that any legal matters have been ironed out and that everything about the project will go smoothly – ultimately, we also bear a great responsibility for the local people and our early-career researchers involved in our project. Up to now we’d worked in close cooperation with the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research and enjoyed a productive, trusting relationship. As a researcher, I’m quite taken aback.

What reasoning was given for the budget cuts? Does it have anything to do with the war in Ukraine?

Regine Schönenberg: They’re not really being upfront about that. The reasons given for the funding cuts – as outlined in a letter from the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research to the German Aerospace Center, one of the project organizers and external funders – are that “the available budget resources are currently limited and research activities that produce a more direct impact are now being prioritized.” The money is being put into “DATI”...

… the “German Agency for Transfer and Innovation” – a transfer agency recently established to support specialized institutions of higher education and small to medium-sized universities as well as to create “innovation ecosystems,” or in other words develop connections between academic research and business in Germany.

Marianne Braig: But what does “direct impact” even mean...

…I suppose the expectation that any research carried out should pay off as soon as possible and take off in wider society…

Marianne Braig: …but how do you measure that? And is it sustainable? As a researcher, I would expect that the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research would provide reasons that were actually backed by science and research. Merely saying that they wanted to support research with a “direct impact” simply does not pass muster.

Plus, is it truly efficient to cancel a project before the transfer phase, making it impossible for any of the basic research we’ve carried out to truly come to fruition? It’s not only the financial support that’s at stake – it’s also the structures and trust we’ve built up over the years between institutions, researchers, and the local populations. What has taken decades to accomplish will end up being swept away in one fell swoop.

Why should the work carried out within PRODIGY be continued?

Regine Schönenberg: The Amazon region is a crucial tipping point in the climate system. That’s why it’s so important to conduct research in and on the area – and to do this in dialogue with the local indigenous populations. PRODIGY is the only project based in Germany that carries out work in the region. We are doing research in three of the largest protected areas in the Amazon region, where the rain for the entire continent is “made.” We now want to hand our research results over to the politicians and populations living in the area and announce them on an international level.

Marianne Braig: I mean that is essentially what the global community approach is: to understand climate policy as a global issue. Especially since climate policies in the Amazon region have significant global consequences. Perhaps the financial reasons behind the budget cuts are predictable and even comprehensible in some way – but the political impact on both a local and international level will be disastrous.

How has Freie Universität Berlin decided to proceed as an institution impacted by the decision?

Marianne Braig: Right now we are working on determining whether there are other indications within Freie Universität Berlin that the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research will be initiating funding cuts. Then we’ll compare notes with our U15 partners – fourteen out of the fifteen partners are involved in individual BioTip projects.

Is it possible that this move signals a fundamental change in the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research’s funding policy?

Marianne Braig: I really hope not because our funding policy over the last twenty years has made German research internationally acclaimed and visible across the world, especially because it has established important structures between institutions and researchers around the globe. We’re the object of much envy. This funding policy created trust. This change would actually be a tipping point itself: It may seem innocuous enough, but it will have some major consequences. I believe that trust is a precious asset in its own right.

Dr. Schönenberg, you wrote an open letter criticizing the plans to cut funding in June, which has since been signed by over 100 researchers. Have you received a response from the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research?

Regine Schönenberg: Not yet, no.

Christine Boldt conducted the interview.

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This article originally appeared in German on July 11, 2022, in campus.leben, the online magazine of Freie Universität Berlin.