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We would like to receive your contributions or suggestions for the next issue of the UA Magazine:
No. 22 The role of urban agriculture in building resilient cities (June 2009)
Deadline for contributions: 15 MARCH 2009
The Urban Agriculture Magazine
The Urban Agriculture Magazine (UA Magazine) facilitates sharing of information on the impacts of urban agriculture, promotes analysis and debate on critical issues for development of the sector, and publishes "good" practices in urban agriculture.
The UA Magazine is produced under the RUAF programme From Seed to Table (FStT), funded by DGIS (Netherlands) and IDRC (Canada).
| The main aim of the RUAF-FStT programme is to contribute to urban poverty reduction, urban food security, improved urban environmental management, empowerment of urban producers and participatory city governance. It does this by developing capacities of local stakeholders and urban producers in urban agriculture, facilitating participatory and multi-stakeholder policy formulation and action planning on urban agriculture, and stimulating market chain development and organisation of urban producers. |
The UA Magazine is published two times a year on the RUAF website (www.ruaf.org) and in hardcopy version. This English version is translated into Spanish, French, Arabic, Chinese and Portuguese.
The UA Magazine welcomes contributions on new initiatives at individual, neighbourhood, city and national levels. Attention is given to technical, socio-economic, institutional and policy aspects of sustainable urban food production, marketing, processing and distribution systems. Although articles on any related issue are welcome and considered for publication, each UA Magazine focuses on a selected theme (for previous issues, visit: www.ruaf.org).
We would like to receive your contributions or suggestions for the next issue of the UA Magazine
No. 22: The role of urban agriculture in building resilient cities (JUNE 2009)
Please send us your contribution before: 15 MARCH 2009
In the past few issues of the UA Magazine we have highlighted the multiple functions of urban agriculture, its role in building communities and sustainable environments and in the last issue, in relief and rehabilitation. In this issue of the UA Magazine we will look into the role that urban agriculture can play in building resilient cities.
RUAF will collaborate in the development of this issue with the Center for Resilient Cities and the World Bank. It will be distributed at the 5th Urban Research Symposium on ‘Cities and Climate Change: Responding to an Urgent Agenda’ in Marseille, in June 2009. This symposium is held every eighteen months on key topics of urban development and is a flagship event of the World Bank in conjunction with a large network of partners.
More information at http://www.urs2009.net/
The number of people around the world who live in cities is increasing steadily. For the first time in history the percentage of population that lives in cities has passed the 50% mark. The major part of this urban population growth is taking place in low-income countries, notably in Africa and Asia. These cities are quickly becoming the principal spaces for planning and implementation of strategies that aim to eradicate hunger and poverty (the percentage of poor living in cities is expected to increase from 30% in 2000 to 50% by 2035).
Many cities cannot cope with the rapid population growth and face enormous challenges in creating sufficient employment; in providing basic services such as drinking water, sanitation, basic health services and education; in planning and maintaining of green spaces; and in managing urban wastes and waste water. In many cities, unstable economic and political situations or natural hazards aggravate this condition of vulnerability, for instance the growing scarcity of water, rapidly rising food prices and climate change.
Growing scarcity of water. In many countries, irrigated agriculture is the primary water user and a need is rising to reduce water use. Next to more efficient water use in agriculture, the productive use of recycled urban waste water has been identified as a more sustainable way to produce food for the growing cities.
Rapidly rising food prices. Due to increasing use of grains for biofuels, food prices in the cities are rapidly increasing and the call for intensive food production close to the cities is increasingly heard.
Climate change. In recent debates on climate change it is pointed out that many cities are at risk of becoming “disaster traps,” including the risk of severe food supply problems from floods, droughts and frost affecting the food supply from the rural areas. The World Meteorological Organization suggested more urban and indoor farming as a response to the ongoing climate change and a way to build more resilient cities. In addition, various cities are including urban agriculture as part of their strategies to reduce their ecological footprints and CO2 emissions, knowing that urban agriculture has lower energy use (less transport, less cooling, more fresh products sold directly to consumers) and enables cyclical processes and effective use of wastes (use of urban organic wastes as compost or as raw materials for production of animal feed; use of excess heat of industry in green houses, etc.).
New insights in the field of disaster risk management have shown the essential role of resilience and the tight connection of resilience, diversity and sustainability of socio-ecological systems.
Resilient cities are cities that can effectively operate and provide services under conditions of distress. Resilient cities can better absorb the type of shocks and stresses as identified above. One could say that resilience is the other side of the coin of vulnerability. Rather than focusing on vulnerability, however, a focus on resilience is more positive. It means putting emphasis on what can be done by a city or a community itself, building on existing natural, social, political, human, financial, and physical capital, while at the same time strengthening its capacities.
Urban agriculture can play a role in building more resilient cities. Growing food in cities reduces the dependency on (rural) food supplies, which can easily be affected by disrupted transport, armed conflicts, droughts or flooding and increasing food prices.
Apart from enhancing food security and reducing the ecological footprint, urban agriculture can also play a role in city greening and water management. Green spaces contribute to economic (energy) savings, by improving the microclimate (urban vegetation can have a significant cooling effect due to direct shading and increases in evapotranspiration, and reducing building energy consumption) or controlling storm water flows (by increasing infiltration). Urban agriculture can also ensure food availability during times of natural disasters when transportation and communication links may be disrupted. This may be of increased importance as cities, and their poorer residents in particular, are affected by various climate change impacts. Urban agriculture is thus closely related to the development of a socially inclusive, food-secure, productive and environmentally healthy city.
We are interested to receive your articles and well-documented experiences regarding the role of urban agriculture in building resilient cities, for example:
- Cases and experiences that discuss threats to cities and that show the potentials and restrictions of urban agriculture to building more resilient cities;
- Cases and experiences that show the contribution of urban agriculture to combating the negative impacts of rapidly rising food prices;
- The impact of cities on climate change, as well as the impacts of climate change and natural disasters on cities, and the role of urban agriculture and greening in reducing and adaptation to these effects;
- The extent to which urban agriculture plays (or can play) a role in reducing the city’s ecological footprint;
- The role of institutions and policies in meeting these challenges and in building more resilient cities.
Please clarify in your article the concepts used, the relation with urban agriculture, and also present where these experiences were gained and the main actors, impacts, related costs, problems/challenges encountered and solutions found, the major lessons learned and recommendations for both practitioners and planners or policy makers.
Articles
Articles on urban agriculture should consist of maximum 2000 words (three pages), 1200 words (two pages), or 600 words (one page), preferably accompanied by an abstract, a maximum of 5 references, figures and digital images or photographs of good quality (more than 300 dpi or in jpg format more than 1 Mb preferably). The articles should be written in a manner that is readily understood by a wide variety of stakeholders all over the world.
Other information on the subject
We also invite you to submit information on recent publications, journals, videos, photographs, cartoons, letters, technology descriptions and assessments, workshops, training courses, conferences, networks, web-links, etc., especially those relating to this theme.
Issues of the UA Magazine in 2009 and 2010
The following issues will be produced in 2009. Your ideas and contributions of articles are already most welcome:
No. 23: Management of Nutrients (including recycling and use in urban agriculture) in the city: November 2009
No. 24: Linking Urban Producers to Markets; Chain development for urban agricultural products: May 2010
Of course, all other suggestions and comments on UA Magazine are also welcome. Please take a moment to voice your opinion by sending an e-mail to the editor at ruaf@etcnl.nl, or write a letter to:
The Editor UA Magazine
RUAF, ETC Foundation
PO Box 64
3830 AB Leusden
The Netherlands
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