On October 5 and 6, Rachel Wynberg and Jaci van Niekerk attended the inaugural meeting of the TRUST Project in Paris. Aimed at creating and enhancing trustworthy, responsible and equitable partnerships in international research, the project connects partners from Europe, Africa and Asia.

In an interdisciplinary collaboration between multi-level ethics bodies, policy advisors, civil society organisations, funding organisations, industry and academic scholars, the project will deliver three sets of tools based on participatory engagement covering all continents: (1) a global code of conduct for funders, (2) a fair research contracting on-line tool and (3) a compliance and ethics follow-up tool, which takes limited resources into account.

Apart from collaborating in a number of the work packages, the Bio-economy team will take the lead in developing a ‘Sustainability Roadmap’ which will highlight the activities needed to improve global adherence to high ethical standards.