Associate Professor of French Richard Watts, in partnership with local collaborators and the community, has been awarded the 2024-2025 UW EarthLab Innovation Grant for Climate & Social Justice. The team, one of only five selected, has been awarded $80,000 to research and develop new and actionable knowledge on community-driven projects at the intersection of climate change and social justice
Titled Life, In Spite of It All: Water, Wetlands, and Reclamation in a Changing Climate, this project centers the voices and experiences of the Haalpulaar’en community of Khareirat in southern Mauritania and their relationship with Tambass, a 4,400-acre wetlands area. Mauritania, historically hot and arid, now faces extreme weather fluctuations between droughts and violent rainstorms. Although there are few wetlands in the country, they are crucial for flood control and water storage buffers in an increasingly unpredictable climate. However, human actors have drained Tambass, a critical water source for the Khareirat herders, their animals, migratory birds, and other life forms. This has left the community’s primary water source unreliable, exacerbating the impacts of climate change. Without some type of intervention, Tambass will disappear, threatening the social-ecological cultures it supports.
This interdisciplinary project, co-designed with local partners and the Khareirat community, includes creating a documentary film, developing a qualitative and quantitative wetlands map, and conducting historical analysis of drying events. The project aims to embody the mutually enriching potential of actionable humanities and science as forms of reclamation and repair.
The Innovation Grants Program invests in collaborations that span academic disciplines, engage multiple sectors and center community questions that are taking equitable action on climate change. Proposals were evaluated by a 10-member review committee that included faculty and staff from several disciplines and community partners from outside of the university. To date, EarthLab has awarded nearly two million dollars in Innovation Grant funding to 29 transdisciplinary teams across five cohorts.
To read more about Life, In Spite of It All: Water, Wetlands, and Reclamation in a Changing Climate, visit the UW EarthLab website.