The future calls for a more active involvement and appreciation of our environment alongside an understanding of the balances that our planet requires.

The relationship between the ongoing changes to our environment and the continued impact of human intervention on it is becoming increasingly visible with each passing year. For this reason, the connections between the observed and projected effects of climate change, the world’s growing water crisis, food insecurity, the call to phase out fossil fuels – all of which are made more complex by the varying conditions of socio-political instability around the world – have made the discussion of these many overlaps crucial to any meaningful decisions and actions for our future.

Recent Participations and Projects

THE WATER PROJECTS

The first art initiative to be hosted by ACTIVATE is a series of Water Projects that began several years ago. Part of this series is the art exhibition THE POLITICS OF WATER—the first ever presentation of its scale topically, and scope aesthetically, devoted entirely to the subject of global water politics. The art works and projects included in this show illustrate the innovation within contemporary artistic responses to this growing global issue, and the extent to which diverse disciplines and fields of research have converged in current art practices.

This initiative presents to the wider public and to policymakers alike, not only the critical role water plays in the environmental climate change debate, but also the effect of global politics surrounding the protection, access, ownership, and distribution of the world’s water resources.

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THE EM/MENA PROJECTS

This series of projects addresses the geographical region of the Eastern Mediterranean, Middle East & North Africa, designated as a climate change ‘hot spot’. Home to a population of nearly 500 million people, the combined pressures of warming temperatures, spreading desertification, over-exploited resources, plus political and societal transitions, have already caused unprecedented challenges for people living both in urban centers and rural areas. Countries of the region must urgently devise appropriate mitigation and adaptation strategies for the growing threats to the availability of energy, water supply, food resources, and to human health and security.

This ongoing initiative is composed of collaborative and research-based projects that address the interconnected challenges of this region. The first iterations of this project were presented at the 2017 Seoul Biennale.

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MULTIPLE PRESENTATIONS

As the future environmental challenges of the Eastern Mediterranean and MENA region (Middle East and North Africa) are expected to have particularly strong manifestations in urban settings—extreme water-related weather events, air quality deterioration, rising heat indexes, increased need for energy for space cooling—the daily lives of people living in its urban centers will be most affected by these projected conditions.

At the 2017 Seoul Biennale entitled ‘Imminent Commons’, ACTIVATE presented four city projects in the Cities Exhibition, that set forth the current issues and anticipated challenges faced by these EM/MENA region urban locations. Each project, produced in collaboration with a recognized regional institution, was developed within the exhibition’s curatorial focus on both contemporary urbanism and on proposing solutions for the future.

Parallel to this—within the Biennale’s Thematic Exhibition—were multiple presentations focused on agricultural and nature-based solutions that can resolve the water, energy and food challenges of this region, and help build ecological resilience: “Going Beyond Sustainable: Water. Soil. Land. Food.” →

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ESSAYS ON WATER

As part of our larger objective of sharing information around the urgent concerns of our time, our participatory platform ACTIVATE | DISCUSSIONS presents our first series of publications—around the topic of water.

As water-related issues around the world are interconnected on countless levels, these essays engage with the many aspects of this subject, from water’s social, cultural and aesthetic manifestations, to climate change, the escalating pressures on water security worldwide, and the power struggles that limited access to water creates between communities and between nations.

In an effort to inform our audience about ongoing discussions in global water politics, our last series addressed the socio-politically and environmentally controversial water-transfer project, the “Turkey to Occupied Cyprus Sub-Sea Water Pipeline”  that was inaugurated in October 2015.

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As the planet’s resources continue to diminish, the need for commitment and action on both the regional and global level has become essential for the good of our shared and increasingly interdependent futures.

In order to address our collective challenges and to find solutions for the years to come, we must seek more collaboration and exchange between people, disciplines, and between nations. At this critical moment in time, each individual effort to become actively engaged is both vital and important.

Based upon this understanding, Climate Action Diplomacy has become crucial to global collaborative efforts to address the many challenges of the climate crisis, from the challenges of water, energy and food security, to the protection of cultural heritage sites from the effects of our changing planet.

Success in this mission requires creative, practical partnerships, and integrated approaches. For this reason, across the planet today we are seeing that nations are ushering in a new age of climate diplomacy in their foreign agendas, indicating that cooperation on climate action has become one of the highest priorities today for ensuring security and human well-being for present and future generations.