A Recap of COP28: Water Cycles – Design ConversationsA Recap of COP28: Water Cycles – Design Conversations

As part of COP28’s designation of 9 December 2023 as Nature, Land Use and Oceans Day, this event at the Jameel Arts Centre featured Professor Dr Carola Hein and architect John Hanna (both from Delft University of Technology); researchers Ain Contractor (IHE Delft Institute for Water Education) and Anjali (Yugma Collective); and artist Aziz Motawa (Akkaz Collective).

Each speaker is concerned with (re)designing frameworks and pedagogies that support community-led forms of action and the co-creation of new water imaginaries. Together, they discussed ground-up regenerative approaches to addressing the hydrological impacts of the climate crisis, drawing on practices from the Netherlands, India, Kuwait and Bahrain. The symposium was moderated by Nora Razian, Head of Exhibitions at the Jameel Arts Centre, Dubai, and Aric Chen, General and Artistic Director of the Nieuwe Instituut.

The 28th Conference of the Parties to the UN Framework on Climate Change took place in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, from 30 November to 13 December 2023. COP28 was an opportunity to bring together perspectives and ways of thinking from different sectors to address the major challenges posed by climate change.

Nieuwe Instituut’s research theme Remapping Collaborations raised relevant questions in this regard. How might COP28 lead to sensitive, caring actions for overlooked, overflown spaces on a planetary scale? What is the impact of (re)design in challenging the status quo of Western governance, with capital and science competing for attention and power on this global stage? How can we work internationally, and what is the premise of, and problem with, a ‘global’ summit like COP? How can we build agency and action that benefits the communities and ecologies that are most overlooked, and denied access to these spaces?

The water cycle is being rapidly altered on a planetary scale by climate change. West and South Asia are particularly water stressed, with unsustainable groundwater-based agriculture coupled with increasing groundwater salinity and year-round temperature irregularities. The Netherlands, one of the world’s most densely populated coastal countries, is facing changing and unpredictable rainfall patterns. Salinity intrusion threatens the security of the Dutch groundwater supply, while the disappearance of peatlands and rising sea levels put pressure on urban planning and infrastructure design.

Treating water as a more-than-human commons , the presentations and panel discussion are anchored around four key questions:

• How are designers, architects, planners and artists bringing together the skills of design research and locally based adaptation techniques to enable water cycle-centred human habitats?
• How can this be done in a way that empowers local communities and civil societies most in need of support in regions affected by water-related disasters?
• How to ensure the long-term participation of communities and governance partners in order to influence socially responsible governance, policies and associated resources?
• What types of policies and urban plans enable an approach geared towards restoring the water cycle? What are the entry points for citizens and public discourse?

The introductions by Nora Razian and Aric Chen focused on what cultural institutions, designers and climate advocates can learn from each other, emphasising the importance of situatedness. This also involves a willingness to rethink the terms and language of the future and to take the lead in designing (re)solutions.

The speakers all started from different levels of designing a conversation, sharing their perspectives on designing for climate education, processes of resistance and solidarity, and design at the nexus of climate emergency and heritage conservation.

John Hanna and Carola Hein from Delft University of Technology, the Netherlands, began the speakers’ presentations with their paper Fluid Pedagogies: Teaching with and for Water. The presentation emphasised the importance of water awareness and the place of design and heritage practices in understanding systems from the past – for the benefit of the future. This includes the task of capacity building and awareness-raising around ‘water as a commons’, which Hein and Hanna are currently doing through the Water Value Case approach, with social justice and gender equality as fundamental lenses, and how to ‘teach’ about water. The latter project (Living With Water) is based on exploring the architectures of water systems, ways of visualising and imagining water – foregrounding restorative operations and critical views of ‘goods’, and zooming in on locally grounded adaptation techniques. In particular, it offers insights into how research can be translated into useful cases for international decision-making processes.

Anjali (Yugma Collective, India), and Ain Contractor (IHE Delft Institute for Water Education, the Netherlands), then talked about their work on water, gender and resistance, illustrated by a screening of excerpts from the film Fight with Care. Ain and Anjali focused on design for local community empowerment and the different ways in which the relationship between coastal and inland communities and shared resistance can be reimagined. These communities are developing creative and engaging ways, such as seafood festivals, to resist activities that interfere with the water cycles on which they depend for their livelihoods. Through care, these community activists seek to counter the irrational movement of capital by channelling their local heritage practices to protect their environment.

The third speaker, Aziz Motawa, Director of Akkaz Collective (Kuwait and Bahrain), talked about his artistic research projects Mud Flats and Outfalls. Looking through the lens of a mudskipper, Aziz Motawa researches the ecologies around sewage outfalls that function as artificial estuaries in tidal flats. He collects stories and recordings in order to uncover and counter-map the importance of the tidal flat. The Akkaz Collective uses liminality in its research practice as a third space where different processes converge, as free agents between ‘industry’ and ‘nature’. Through such an approach, Motawa and Akkaz Collective design a vocabulary that counters colonial languages around ecosystems by localising the terms through which one can engage with the environment.

John Hanna is an architect, teacher and researcher. His research explores the spatiality of urban conflict, with a focus on Paris and Beirut. John’s broader research interests include Mediterranean and Red Sea port and coastal cities, quarantine spaces, architecture and literature, and the urban histories of Africa and the Middle East, particularly in relation to colonialism and nationalism. Hanna is a member of the Leiden-Delft-Erasmus collaborative initiative Port City Futures and contributes to various educational programmes and research projects.

Carola Hein is Professor and Head of the Chair of History of Architecture and Urbanism at Delft University of Technology. Educated in Hamburg (Dipl.-Ing.) and Brussels (architecte), she received her PhD from the Hochschule für bildende Künste Hamburg in 1995. She has published and lectured widely on contemporary and historical architecture and urbanism, and is the author of several books and articles.

Ain Contractor’s research highlights the environmental conservation practices of indigenous fisherwomen living in the Ennore-Pulicat wetlands, north of the Indian port city of Chennai in Tamil Nadu. Working with a network of solidarity groups in Chennai, the fisherwomen organise seafood festivals to draw attention to the richness of their wetland ecology and their cultural ties to it.

Anjali is an Indian activist who learns from and supports forest, coastal and labour movements through back-end legal research, finance and policy activism, filmmaking, journalism and capacity building. She works in central and western India as part of the Yugma Collective, researching the intersections of caste, extractive industries, environmental policy, livelihoods and language.

Aziz Motawa is a visual artist based between Kuwait and Bahrain who works in photography, video, installation and sound. His practice focuses on the social and environmental impact of urban development and state formation on peripheral ecologies. He is also the director and co-founder of the Akkaz Collective.

Nieuwe Instituut (Rotterdam, the Netherlands) is the Dutch national museum and institute for architecture, design and digital culture, based in Rotterdam. Through its exhibitions, public programmes, research and wide-reaching national and international initiatives, the institute engages thinkers, designers, makers and diverse audiences to critically reflect on the urgent issues confronting the past, present and future. Nieuwe Instituut is committed to supporting design research and questions and urgencies. Through public events and exhibitions held locally, regionally, and internationally, the Nieuwe Instituut aims to contribute to social and spatial urgencies and a better future.

Art Jameel supports artists and creative communities. Founded and supported by the Jameel family of philanthropists, the independent organisation is based in Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates and operates globally. Art Jameel’s programmes – which include exhibitions, commissions, research, learning and community-building – are based on a dynamic understanding of the arts as fundamental to life and accessible to all.

The Kingdom of the Netherlands (represented by the embassy in Abu Dhabi and the consulate general in Dubai), in collaboration with the Nieuwe Instituut, the Dutch national museum and institute for architecture, design and digital culture, and the Global Green Growth Institute, instigated the interactive roundtable on water as part of the COP28 programme. The Embassy of the Kingdom of the Netherlands in Abu Dhabi and the Consulate General in Dubai, represent, support and protect the interests of the Dutch Government in the United Arab Emirates.

The Global Green Growth Institute (headquartered in South Korea, 30 offices worldwide) works to help governments around the world adapt to climate change through planning tools such as national adaptation plans or climate-smart agriculture. The organisation is currently assisting the UAE government to develop its National Adaptation Plan and is working across the Middle East. The GGGI is a treaty-based international intergovernmental organisation dedicated to supporting and promoting strong, inclusive and sustainable economic growth in developing and emerging economies.