> For the complete documentation index, see [llms.txt](https://sexytrees.savimbo.com/llms.txt). Markdown versions of documentation pages are available by appending `.md` to page URLs; this page is available as [Markdown](https://sexytrees.savimbo.com/appendices/wbp-case-study.md).
# Case study: how postcolonial co-design produced the WBP
This is a [bricolage](/foundations/bricolage.md) protocol; which means we are building it in public! Some pages are under construction — but check back soon its updating fast!
This is a story of good friends and great innovations.
People who crossed out of the traditional funding and credentialing silos to make something happen fast for an ecosystem with a 10% annual deforestation rate ([Global Forest Watch 2024](https://www.globalforestwatch.org/dashboards/country/COL/26/)), in the Tropical Andean biodiversity hotspot, within the Amazon jungle, a planetary boundary crossing its tipping point ([Flores et al. 2024](https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-023-06970-0)).
This is the future of planetary science, and anyone who debates it isn't working for reality.
### The chain of collaboration
We are recommending a chain of parallel collaboration: across disciplines, institutions, continents, and ways of knowing — compressed into months instead of the years a conventional research pipeline takes.
The utility of the [Water Bucket Protocol (WBP](/biodiversity-credits/water-bucket-protocol.md)) is in itself central evidence for the Sexy Tree methodologies' core argument. We're not preaching an ideology. We're showing a working solution.
Postcolonial co-design was, and is, an ethical preference for us. But by applying it, we have shown it's also a practical way to 'get sh\*t done' for lack of a better term. It's operationally faster, methodologically stronger, and produces tools that actually function in the field.
The ethics aren't the cost. They're the mechanism, and the results make the argument for their adoption.
### What each contributor brought
The collaboration started the way the best ones do: people with radically different training and incompatible structural incentives trusted each other enough to share half-built ideas and stress-test them in the open.
The trail began with a metabarcoding paper by Danish and German scientists ([Klepke et al. 2022](https://doi.org/10.1002/edn3.340)).
That paper inspired a trial protocol for agroforestry systems, because a Swiss eDNA startup ([SimplexDNA](https://www.simplexdna.com/)) — run by a US expat sitting on cross-market comparison data ([Kristy Deiner](https://www.linkedin.com/in/kristy-deiner-44021111/)) — recommended it to a bee startup in Germany, who had funding for field testing.
We are working outside of our training. As an MD-turned-planetary-scientist from a biogeochemistry course ([Drea Burbank](https://www.linkedin.com/in/dreaburbank/)) and a PhD trained in neuroethology and conservation ([Anja Hutschenreiter](https://www.linkedin.com/in/anja-hutschenreiter-9b58892b6/)). Because of this, we *knew* we didn't know what we were doing and avoided the trap of metaignorance[^1]. We spent an unusual amount of time talking to a wider selection of eDNA experts, finding Kristy had the best domain expertise and most active projects internationally, with a lot of unpublished practical insights, including actual costs for the Global South.
We negotiated and incorporated the European preliminary results and field experience into a parallel project in Latin America. A Canadian-funded charity in Peru ([Bioversity/CIAT](https://alliancebioversityciat.org/)), running a research grant from Italian researchers in Pisa, Italy, in Putumayo, Colombia. Researchers were working on frontier academic topics but were willing to reconsider the planned protocol and incorporate an experimental methodology into previously funded work.
The ground team testing the protocol relied on local negotiators ([Jhony Lopez](https://www.linkedin.com/in/hector-jhony-lopez-381786308/) and [Fernando Lezama](https://www.linkedin.com/in/fernando-lezama-386645299/)) to get safe access to field testing in a red zone, international lawyers to get proper consents defined for any human DNA ([Michael Nichols](https://www.linkedin.com/in/michaelgnichols/) and [WarīNkwī Flores](https://www.linkedin.com/in/wariflores/)), and local field staff working with international researchers to get supplies and maintain adequate conditions ([Santiago Romero](https://www.linkedin.com/in/santiago-r-2126b7328/), [Jeidy Caicedo](https://www.linkedin.com/in/jeidy-caicedo-ab9106378/), and [Karen Yulieth Serna](https://www.linkedin.com/in/karen-yulieth-serna-7721982a3/?lipi=urn%3Ali%3Apage%3Ad_flagship3_profile_view_base%3Bnu%2B2%2FSH3QoWEnacwUgpHYg%3D%3D))
#### **Figure X. Savimbo team and scientific collaborators doing eDNA sampling in the Colombian Amazon.**
### Why the chain worked
This is not a standardized methodology. It is barely science. And it is already stopping deforestation by characterizing restoration biodiversity credits on experimental markets.
### What this protocol still needs
### The unanswered question
[^1]: When someone is unaware they are ignorant. They don't know they don't know.
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