CLIMAVORE x Jameel at RCA
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Reimagining foodways for drylands and wetlands in the climate crisis.
About
Expanding the work of CLIMAVORE on food systems in the climate crisis, CLIMAVORE x Jameel at RCA is a research initiative that reimagines foodways for drylands and wetlands. A partnership between CLIMAVORE and Community Jameel at the RCA, it advances ecological networks to produce new knowledge and action towards spatial justice. Based in the School of Architecture, the three-year partnership has two focussed research projects, which will be complemented with two research grants to develop CLIMAVORE projects worldwide.
Water Buffalo Commons
Wetland Disappearance, Deniz Sabuncu, 2021
Wetlands, mangroves, swamps, bogs, marshes and mudflats have been drained to ‘improve’ land for centuries. These liminal landscapes are nonetheless important biodiverse habitats, crucial migratory bird stopovers, water-filtering zones, and invaluable buffers against sea flooding and storms, contributing to overall climate resilience.
On the outskirts of Istanbul, inland wetlands are home to water Buffalo, their herders, and a host of species that depend on them. Knowledge brought by Bulgarian herders in Ottoman times, and Turks exiled from Greece after the 1923 population exchange, boosted buffalo milk as an essential ingredient in yoghurt, kaymak and sütlaç. Since 2013, the region has seen a number of hyper-scale constructions and the plans for digging a new shipping canal that threaten to transform the ecosystems of the Black Sea and Sea of Marmara. Located in the lands of the Buffalo, these megaprojects have rezoned the area from rural to urban, draining the wetlands and fragmenting the grazing commons as a side-effect.
Through the study of metabolic interactions across species the project works to preserve the food and ecological heritage of the wetlands, herders and their pastoralist ways of life. It builds upon existing collaborations with the herders, and the work developed by CLIMAVORE in Istanbul over the past four years.
Outputs
In Decmeber 2023 CLIMAVORE x Jameel completed the Water Buffalo Commons Baseline Report (PDF). It documents the current status of Istanbul's wetlands and the cultural heritage of the remaining pastoralist practices through a qualitative study including ongoing site-visits, mapping workshops, individual interviews and group conversations held between 2019-23. The findings highlight the potential for the wetlands of Arnavutköy and Eyüpsultan municipalities to be transformed once again into a productive food landscape for Istanbul, and map out potential sites of action. It argues that keeping the wetlands as common grazing areas could be supported by plural economies that can help safeguard this rich and resilient ecosystem for future generations.
Monoculture Meltdown
Most of the driest winters since the beginning of the 20th century around the Mediterranean Sea have been experienced in the past two decades. Yet the struggle to cultivate edible produce in water-scarce territories is not new. Over centuries, complex technologies have been developed to squeeze the terrain to the last drop, such as tunnels, cisterns, and terraces to channel and retain water or air humidity.
Places like Pantelleria, an island between Sicily and Tunisia without freshwater sources, developed dry irrigation techniques by building gardens with dry-stone walls. These systems consisted of microclimates to ‘water without water.’ As the heat frontier moves, increasing labour exploitation of North African and Eastern European workers continues to be driven by access to water for harvesting ‘affordable’ tomatoes, grapes, or blood oranges.
Through the study of dryland microclimates and the impact of modern industrialised crops, the project aims to experiment in Italy with alternative farming methods in drought conditions by seeking to diversify former monoculture crops that are failing to cope with climatic changes.
Outputs
From 27–29 October 2023, the CLIMAVORE Assembly debated new cultural and artistic tactics for ecologically-driven action and policy making. Temporarily occupying two landmark sites in Rome – Museo delle Civiltà (Museum of Civilisations) and Campidoglio (the seat of the City Senate) – it brought together a diverse set of voices to think, contend and question our collective role, as cultural producers, farmers, policymakers, activists, researchers, educators, thinkers, cooperatives, in addressing the broken food system. The event was a shared effort to reimagine the role museums and cultural platforms have as agents of transformation in food and agriculture systems within the climate crisis.
Partners
CLIMAVORE
CLIMAVORE asks how we eat as humans change climate? New ‘seasons’ are emerging as the lines between spring, summer, autumn and winter, or rainy and dry seasons, are increasingly blurred, while periods of polluted oceans, soil exhaustion, subsidence, pandemics and droughts are becoming more prevalent. CLIMAVORE develops proposals for adaptive forms of eating, shifting for instance to food infrastructures configured around drought-resistant crops in a period of water scarcity, enhancing pastoralist structures to prevent wetland drainage, or transition into small-scale filter-feeding aquaculture during times of polluted waters by intensive fish farms.
Initiated by Daniel Fernández Pascual & Alon Schwabe (Cooking Sections) in 2015, CLIMAVORE’s site-responsive iterations are either self-initiated or commissioned by cultural institutions, independent bodies, and non-governmental organisations. As the Principal Investigators of this partnership (2023-2026), they will lead two research projects developed at the Royal College of Art, School of Architecture, using architectural and artistic investigative tools, education and action to advance ecological networks beyond current understandings of sustainability, and produce new knowledge around food and climate justice.
Community Jameel
Community Jameel advances science and learning for communities to thrive.
An independent, global organisation, Community Jameel launched in 2003 to continue the tradition of philanthropy and community service established by the Jameel family of Saudi Arabia in 1945. We support scientists, humanitarians, technologists and creatives to understand and address pressing human challenges. The work enabled and supported by Community Jameel has led to significant breakthroughs, including the Jameel Clinic's discovery of the new antibiotic Halicin, critical modelling of the spread of COVID-19 by the Jameel Institute at Imperial College London, and a Nobel Prize-winning experimental approach to alleviating global poverty developed by the co-founders of the Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab (J-PAL).
Staff
Danielle Burrows
Project Manager
Enrico Milazzo
Research Associate
Merve Anil
Research Associate
CLIMAVORE x Jameel at RCA Food Action Awards
2025 Food Action Awards Winners
The Food Action Awards recognise projects that advance food systems in the new seasons of the climate crisis and build alternative diets that benefit human and non-human nourishing, led by international practitioners, collectives and researchers in the areas of architecture, visual arts, food studies, farming, queer ecologies, environmental humanities and related disciplines.
In 2025, The Research Action, consisting of £25,000, went to Museo Pelumpen for Trancestral Diet-ethics: NFTs for the Arts of Good Living. The project is recognised for its grounded and visionary approach to reconnecting ecological memory through food and forests in a region shaped by recurring wildfires and agro-industrial expansion. Based in Olmué and Limache, in Chile’s Valparaíso region, the work of the Museo Pelumpén collective revives ancestral relations with two heritage nitrogen-fixing trees (NFTs) – Vachellia caven (espino) and Neltuma chilensis (algarrobo) – whose pods produce high-protein flour once central to local diets before being dismantled by colonisation and extractive agriculture. Through seed saving, agroforestry, community nurseries, and a “gastrosophic laboratory,” the project advances how culinary practices can act as a tool for living with increasing periods of drought and soil disruption.
Image: Museo Pelumpen - 'Invernaderos Fantasmas' (Phantom greenhouses) - Scenic intervention by the theatre company 'Monstruos Postindustriales' in Limache, Chile 2022.
The jury commended Museo Pelumpen for its integrity as a situated initiative that intertwines ecologies and food cultures old and new. They valued the project’s modest yet well-articulated manifestations, spanning agronomy, culinary experimentation, and educational tools. The jury also recognised its social and political ambition to find viable food practices in landscapes scarred by wildfires, drought, and chemical dependencies and praised the collective’s passionate commitment to living and working on the ground.
The Emerging Practice award for recent graduates of the Royal College of Art, carrying a prize of £15,000, went to Green Violence, an eco-feminist collective formed by Vedika Kushalappa (MA Information Experience Design), Claudia Lehmann (MA Environmental Architecture), and Sejal Dalvi (MA Curating Contemporary Art), for the project Non-Mono-Soon. Set in the Western Ghats of Southern India, the project investigates how colonial-era coffee plantations and ongoing monocultural farming in Coorg (Kodagu) have disrupted local ecologies, seasonal rhythms, and Indigenous land knowledge. Introduced to the area by the British East India Company, coffee cultivation displaced wetlands, fragmented forests, and undermined agro-biodiverse farming practices. Non-Mono-Soon proposes a community-led approach to regenerative land practices rooted in Kodava ancestral knowledge, including shade-grown polycultures and forest-wetland farming systems that adapt to the instability of today’s monsoons. Through interviews, participatory mapping, collaborative cooking, and field research with local growers, foresters and ecologists, the project challenges extractive food economies by exploring “slow harvests” rooted in rest, care, and forest connectivity.
Image: Green Violence - Vedika Kushalappa, Sacred Groves Video Still
The jury commended Green Violence for its sharp and timely approach, recognising its potential for lasting transformative impact. They valued the project’s roots in a collective formed by three RCA graduates from different disciplines, reflecting a strong spirit of collaboration and a thoughtful engagement with the challenges of contemporary practice. The project puts forward politically engaged themes and methodologies, while raising important questions about how to intervene meaningfully in today’s social and ecological landscapes. The projects will start in summer 2025, and complete their work within 12 months with the support of CLIMAVORE x Jameel at the RCA.
The jury awarded an Honourable Mention to Gras a Sa for its powerful integration of agroecology, cultural memory, and climate justice. Led by artist Nathalie Muchamad and farmer Franswa Tibere, the project proposed to trace breadfruit as a crop resilient to the intensifying cyclones in La Réunion—reframing a food long burdened by colonial plantation stigma into a symbol of autonomy and liberation. With its broad canopy, adventitious roots, and high-yield fruiting, breadfruit is well-suited to island ecologies facing unstable soils and unpredictable weather. A single mature tree can produce up to 400 fruits annually, offering both nourishment and ecological stability. The jury recognised the strength of this long-term collaboration, its transoceanic and political connections across the Indian Ocean and beyond, and the critical role of artistic and culinary practice in re-signifying staple foods. The upcoming Breadfruit Festival in 2026, co-developed with the Food Art Research Network, exemplifies how storytelling, community organising, and ecological action can converge. The jury also valued the project’s engagement with nutritional concerns, particularly food security, diabetes prevention, and reducing dependencies on white rice imports—pressing issues for island communities across the Pacific and other postcolonial geographies.
Applications were received for projects across 36 countries, including Chile, Colombia, Iceland, India, Morocco, Mexico, Palestine and Zimbabwe. The jury was extremely pleased with the diversity and high quality of applications, their rigour and wide-ranging topics that address some of the most urgent questions around food justice and the climate crisis. The projects identified and addressed a range of human-made seasons that included: drought, wetland disappearance, monoculture, ‘invasive’ species, exhausted soils, and wildfires.
The Food Action Awards jury was chaired by Danielle Burrows (Director of Care, CLIMAVORE x Jameel at RCA) and consisted of: Cléa Daridan (Head of Arts and Culture, Community Jameel), Adrian Lahoud (Dean, School of Architecture, Royal College of Art), Boaventura Monjane (Institute for Poverty, Land and Agrarian Studies, PLAAS University of the Western Cape), Tracey McIntosh (Professor in Indigenous Studies, Wānanga o Waipapa | Faculty of Arts University of Auckland), Salma Tuqan (Director, Nottingham Contemporary), and Cooking Sections.
2024 Food Action Award Winners
After receiving almost 100 applications in its inaugural edition, it was worth highlighting how the different projects identified new seasons of the climate crisis and their manifestation in other geographies facing similar conditions along the broken food chain. Proposals included research into legacies of extractivism and possible reparative futures to address how we eat as humans change the climate. Congratulations to the following recipients:
Yara Dowani, Om Sleiman Farm, (Research Action Award - £25,000) for her project Regeneration Towards Liberation, which tackles a season of drought by testing syntropic farming as a regenerative method for food production in Palestine. The award will enable Om Sleiman Farm to expand its work with women and food collectives on the ground that can reach similar geographies facing the challenges of water exploitation, settler colonialism and drought across the Mediterranean and beyond.
Mingxin Li (Emerging Practice Award - £15,000) for recent RCA graduates for the project Golden Butter, Golden Motherland, which looks into ways to address the disappearance of the yak herding wetlands in Tibet. The project aims to reactivate ancestral food and pastoralist knowledge between generations, to form new networks that can support ongoing environmental crises.
The jury also gave the following six Honourable Mentions to commend the work of:
- Dharmendra Prasad & Pujita Guha (Harvest School & Hosting Lands)
- Alys Fowler
- Tizintizwa Collective
- Yoshiharu Tsukamoto Lab
- Qanat
- Cao Minghao & Chen Jianjun
The 2024 Food Action Award jury was chaired by Danielle Burrows (CLIMAVORE x Jameel at RCA) and consisted of: Cooking Sections, Cléa Daridan (Head of Arts and Culture, Community Jameel), Christine Eyene (eye.on.art), Rahul Gudipudi (Senior Curator, CARA), Adrian Lahoud (Dean, School of Architecture, RCA), Abby Rose (Farmerama Radio), and Paulo Tavares (autônoma / FAU, Universidade de Brasília).
Get in touch
For more information please contact Danielle Burrows, Project Manager
danielle.burrows@rca.ac.uk
