CFCJRG Research

Research Outputs

These outputs have resulted from the projects carried out by the Caribbean Food for Climate Justice Research Group

Recipes for Resilience: Engaging Caribbean Youth in Climate Action and Food Heritage through Stories and Song

This paper presents findings from the Recipes for Resilience project, an international, interdisciplinary collaboration between Caribbean and UK scholars of history, geography, anthropology, cultural studies, development studies, ethnobotany, and climate-risk studies, and the research partners, the Caribbean Youth Environment Network. The purpose of the project was to investigate how agrifood heritage may be mobilized in creative ways to engage Caribbean youth in climate action and justice. The project utilized arts and humanities methods, such as storytelling, songwriting, online games, and brief research-led talks, culminating in the co-created song: “Food and Resistance for Climate Resilience”. The results of the project provide evidence that climate action requires arts and humanities methods to appeal to youth, as opposed to purely fact-based or scientific forms of climate communication. We conclude that co-creative methods such as music and storytelling can inspire youth to engage in climate action, in this case through a (re)valuation culinary and agricultural heritage.

Memories of Social Sustainability in the Caribbean: Connecting Youth to Sustainable Food Heritage through the Recipes for Resilience Project

(Under review)

The plantationocene (Haraway, 2015; Murphy & Schroering, 2020), with its monocultural, export-oriented focus, disrupted African and Indigenous environmental mores based on relationships of care. Relying on Afro-Caribbean people for labour, this system introduced deep inequalities and unsustainable agrarian and economic practices that are still present in the Caribbean. Due to the racial capitalist nature of colonialism, Afrodescendant and Indigenous food cultures and practices were devalued and today, inequalities of access to healthy foods and prime agrarian real estate continue, a phenomenon witnessed elsewhere (Boström, 2012; Hochedez, 2022). Developing youth-led pathways to overcome these gendered, classed and race-based inequalities were the focus of the Arts and Humanities Research Council, United Kingdom Research and Innovation (2020-2021) funded project, ‘Recipes for Resilience: Engaging Caribbean and British Caribbean Youth in Climate Action and Afrodescendant Food Heritage’ (R4R). This project was designed as an intervention to connect Caribbean and British Caribbean youths from the Caribbean Youth Environment Network and the Black Open University, UK, to their ancestral food heritage through art-based actions for climate justice. Facilitated by researchers from the Caribbean and the United Kingdom, R4R consisted of workshops that used storytelling, digital games, music and songwriting to develop young peoples’ understandings of the plantationocene and ancestral food heritage in the Caribbean. Our ambition was to co-create story maps and songs to encourage behavioural change towards socially sustainable food production and consumption in the Caribbean, stemming the growth of neoliberal food import and export practices that increase health costs and class and racial disparities. This paper is a reflective piece that highlights participating youths’ concerns about a climate just future and the potential for harnessing food heritage as a pathway towards equitable and inclusive forms of social sustainability. collecting information about gardening, eating, cooking, commensality, and changing food choices through the participant-led interviews.