Image Source: ARCEN Association,facebook.com/AsociatiaARCEN/
This project studies humans and has the potential to alter the ecosystem of the park. It concerns green spaces with a fragile ecosystem and has a cultural barrier, so our group stayed aware and attentive to various ethical considerations. Because of this, our group has outlined several overarching ethical goals of which we abided by throughout the entirety of our project.
1. Uphold the ethical standards enforced by the Institutional Review Board (IRB) for ethical conduction of interviews, surveys, and observation
Although our project topic was generally low risk for information gathering and interviewing because we offer confidentiality to the public, were not recording names or identifying information in surveys, and offered levels of confidentiality to interviewees, it was still our group’s best interest to protect the individuals who choose to participate in our study. We recognized that their participation in our research is voluntary, and that they are using their own time to help our project. In return, we did our best to safely store information collected and be as transparent as possible about the purposes of our research.
2. Keep a global conservationist mindset when evaluating infrastructural decisions
Compassionate conservation is known as the practice of evaluating the intentional effects of humans on the animals in the spaces, however, our group strove to follow consequentialist conservation as it, more broadly, covers those impacts found in compassionate conservation, but also the non-intentional effects of human behavior and anthropomorphic pollution. As Romania is still urbanizing and developing very quickly, their national priorities when it comes to conservation may differ from those of other countries. Because wetland conservation is affecting the global scale, however, it was in our best interests to maintain wetland conservation as a higher priority than the infrastructural development in the park.
3. Consider the unspoken needs of the ecosystem
The public and other stakeholders can vocalize their grievances, whereas the park’s organisms rely on spokespeople and environmentalists to fight for their protection. Because of this, our group used the global environmental consensus surrounding proper wetland conservation techniques to ensure the well-being of the park’s organisms.
4. Recognize the cultural differences between the US and Romania and work to address them in the project
Because different cultures may have different ways of solving problems, or recognize varying problems to begin with, it was our responsibility to attempt to best understand the problem statements in the perspectives of our collaborator and the local residents to make our final report useful for them. This was best accomplished through two ways. Firstly, through thorough background research, then supplemented by interviews and surveys. In addition to this, our group had to stay attentive to word choice, both in our report and when communicating with locals.
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