Social impact or impact washing? The case for a deeper ethical understanding and concrete action

It is common that research projects related to geoscience require a contribution to social impact. This is often especially true in relation to climate change mitigation and adaptation. From large-scale science-policy projects to participatory citizen workshops, scholars do their best to understand and professionally execute collaboration and outreach strategies. I argue that despite of the benefits, the process of social impact is largely misunderstood, undervalued and poorly resourced in academia. This can lead to negative effects on desired social impacts, on reseachers’ well-being, on stakeholder experiences and on resources aimed at important basic research. To improve the situation, social impact of research should not be diminished but rather rethought in a way that properly meets the standards of professional ethics and ethics related to collaboration between different sectors of society. The term impact washing (c.f. greenwashing) is used here to refer to providing false, ineffective, irrelevant and vague promises, information and actions to promote social impact to improve your own status, get funding and to distract attention away from concrete and sustainable action.

The topic is approached by providing examples of practical work with transdisciplinary projects in the Finnish academia and beyond, especially in the realm of geosciences and climate change. This presentation aims to act as a conversation starter and to focus on practical steps that we could take to improve social impact and move away from tick-the-box impact strategies. Such steps might include shifting the focus of implementing social impact work from researchers to professional facilitators and societal experts, education, and rethinking funding models and career paths in the academia. Coming from an ex-ethics researcher point of view, the presentation also provides simple tools that can help researchers rethink their work in the context of larger societal discussion and ethical questions. We will look into to this via questions such as: What is the resposibility of institutions and researchers in choosing which type of social impact to focus (or not focus) on? What consequences can false promises of social impact or poorly executed social impact initiatives have on climate change, policies and academia? What ethical concerns are related to interactions between disciplinaries, sectors, communities and individuals?