Essex experts secure £500,000 grant to support global human rights project

Experts from Essex’s Human Rights Centre will team up with researchers from around the world in a bid to improve access to traditional foods and mitigate climate-related risks to food security, human health and living standards.

The University of Essex has received a £500,000 grant from UK Research and Innovation’s Economic and Social Research Council to take part in the project, which will rely on indigenous and local knowledge and skills.

The research, which will be led by the University of Manitoba, Canada, will involve academics as well as community partners to aim to identify existing global, national and local opportunities and challenges affecting food systems, including those related to human rights.

In advancing indigenous food systems, the project will support climate change mitigation as well as improvements in public health, reducing pressure on healthcare systems.

The Human Rights Centre’s Judith Bueno de Mesquita, Professor Karen Hulme, of Essex Law School, and Professor Rekha Rao-Nicholson, of Essex Business School will all be taking part in the three-year project.

This human rights team, which also includes Nathan Derejko at the University of Manitoba, will develop research and rights-based community assessment tools to support the development of food systems advancing climate change adaptation, mitigation, and social justice.

Judith Bueno de Mesquita, the lead University of Essex researcher on the project, said: “We are delighted to be able to support the application of human rights-based approaches under this interdisciplinary project to improve access to culturally significant foods for communities experiencing disadvantage around the world, and to help leverage a more just and sustainable future.

“Too often, the human rights as well as the expertise of such communities have been disregarded under commercialised food systems, which have also contributed to climate change. “This project seeks to reimagine existing dominant approaches for a more just and green future.”

In line with the Human Rights Centre’s foundational commitment to interdisciplinary research, this project involves a team of international researchers whose expertise spans agronomy, anthropology, biology, biosystems engineering, economics, geography, and nutritional science – as well as international human rights law.