ReWET Consortium wins REDAA Grant

Written By Tanzil Shafique

A global consortium, led by Tanzil Shafique, Lecturer of Urban Design at Sheffield School of Architecture have won a £499,995 research-to-action grant for "Climate impacted dwellers-led agroecological stewardship for restoring wetlands" project.

The grant is by Reversing Environmental Degradation in Africa and Asia (REDAA), administered by the International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED) in London and funded by the UK Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office. It funds an urban wetland stewardship program in Dhaka, Bangladesh, working with climate-impacted dwellers. The project has been selected from a pool of 1200 applications from around the globe and after a two-stage competition, 21 locally-led initiatives have been selected to receive a total funding of £5 million, taking place across 17 countries in Africa and Asia, these projects cover a diverse range of landscapes and ecosystems. See all the projects that won the funding, including ours: redaa.org/grantees.

The project consortium pulls together Efadul Huq (env policy) from Smith College, USA, Sifullah Khaled (climate finance) from Sheffield Hallam University, UK, and is spearheaded on the ground by Mohammad Azaz from the River and Delta Research Centre (RDRC) , and Dwip Unnayan Songstha (DUS) acts as local lead. Our consortium's climate activism is led by youth leader Sohanur Rahman MD Sohanur Rahman from YouthNet for Climate Justice and local engagement is facilitated by Ikram Uddin Abir from Prochesta Foundation. However, most importantly, the consortium includes the grassroots urban agroecological cooperative Nogor Abad, which has been operating in Korail, the largest "slum" in Dhaka, next to where this project's site is located.

Tanzil Shafique

Tanzil Shafique, Assoc AIA, is a PhD researcher at the Melbourne School of Design. Previously, he was the Design Research Specialist at the Office of the Dean of the Fay Jones School of Architecture + Design at University of Arkansas, where, he worked also as a Project Designer at the University of Arkansas Community Design Center and was a faculty for the Urban Design Studio, leading the Urbanism Seminar. He graduated at the top of his M.Arch in Ecological Urbanism class from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in New York in 2014. His thesis was awarded the Faculty Graduate Award. He was practicing architecture in NYC before moving to Arkansas. Previously he taught undergraduate studios in BRAC University in Bangladesh. As part of the UACDC, his work has been awarded numerous AIA awards. He writes and lectures on design philosophy around the world. In 2016, he co-founded Estudio Abierto / Open Studio with Paco Mejias. 

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Project Presentation_Urban Institute, University of Sheffield