Earlier this month, outgoing Minister of Education, Culture and Science Robbert Dijkgraaf was introduced to the Eco-Imagining project, a research consortium based at the University of Amsterdam, in South Africa. The introduction was part of a Knowledge Mission intended to strengthen cooperation between Dutch and South African educational institutions.
Eco-imagining, which is funded by NWO and South Africa's National Research Foundation (NRF), is jointly led by Professor Eileen Moyer (UvA Anthropology) and Professor Lenore Manderson from the University of Witwatersrand. The project uses participatory ethnographic and art-based methods to investigate water, energy and food precarity in four urban settings in South Africa.
Learn "from below"
The project aims to learn "from below" by studying the ways that people on the ground are adapting to increasing resource deficits resulting from climate change, apartheid legacies, and a lack of investment in failing resources infrastructures.
Innovative digital storytelling and mapping tools
During a tour of Victoria Yards, one of the Eco-Imagining research sites, UvA PhD researcher and Soweto native, Sandra Zaroufis had the chance to tell Minister Dijkgraaf about her research with small scale farmers in Limpopo Province. Sandra, who has a background as a landscape architect, uses innovative digital storytelling and mapping tools to gain insight into the ways that access to land, water and electricity shapes the ability of small-scale farmers to earn a living and meet their subsistence needs.
Land access alone is not enough
Arouses' research demonstrates that land access alone is not enough to ensure sustainable livelihoods. Farmers need access to sufficient water and reliable electricity if they are to succeed.
Understanding the relationship between water management, energy supply and food security
Now back in Amsterdam, Sandra has joined up with the 4 other PhDs in the Eco-Imagining project to start analyzing their data as they gear up to start writing their dissertations. Eco-Imagining is one of several projects funded by NRF and NWO that seeks to better understand the relationship between water management, energy supply and food security as part of broader collaboration on the water-energy-food nexus.
The project will run until April 2025.
