Access to land and water, adequate norms and regulations, integration in land use planning (E-conference - 3-22 November 2003)

Objectives

• To share and discuss local experiences on alternative strategies to enhance access of the urban poor to land within the City boundaries for food production (horticulture, livestock keeping, aquaculture, a/o
• To share and discuss local experiences with the development and application of Municipal bylaws, norms and regulations regarding (access to land for) urban agriculture

Intended participants

The conference is a platform to facilitate exchange and discussion of local experiences between local authorities and senior technical officers in Municipal departments, sectoral governmental organisations, research organisations and urban NGO's and CBO's that are involved in urban poverty alleviation and/or urban food security policies and programmes in cities of developing countries as well as staff of international organisations and programme (like UN Habitat, the Urban Management Programme, the Sustainable Cities Programme) that advise national and local governments on issues of sustainable urban land management and urban poverty alleviation.

Background

An increasing number of local governments recognise the potential of urban and peri-urban agriculture as an effective strategy to reduce urban poverty and enhance food security, health and nutrition of disadvantaged groups.

Studies reveal that urban households that are involved in farming have a better nutritional status (as shown by caloric and protein intake, stunting and wasting measures) as compared to non-farming households. Moreover, creation of better conditions for poor urban families to grow and market vegetables, livestock, fish, a/o will also positively affect the access of other urban poor to fresh and nutritious food at affordable prices, which is highly needed.

Food being the largest component of household expenditure (low income households usually spend over 50-60 % of their income on basic food and drink), any saving on food expenditure translates into a significant portion of the family income becoming available for other non-food expenditures.

Where urban agriculture results in surpluses that are sold, the resulting addition to the income can be sizeable. Urban farming provides a source of employment not only for the producers involved (men and especially women) themselves, but also for hired labourers and people operating in related micro-enterprises. There are a whole range of input and output services related to urban agriculture like the production of compost, herding, collection and selling of grass or manure, processing of agricultural produce and street vending of food.

In many cities the large majority of the urban farmers are women (in average around 65%). Urban farming is a viable alternative to wage labour for women who lack access to formal employment due to limited education and training. Urban farming has the added value of allowing women to work closer to their home enabling them to combine multiple tasks during the day. Cases of women in urban households earning more from food production than their husbands from a formal job are not unusual. The ownership of animals and/or independent cash income may strengthen her social position within the household and the community.

FAO integrated urban agriculture in its regular programme and created an interdisciplinary working group "Food for the Cities" in order to stimulate the integration of urban agriculture in national and local poverty reduction and food security programmes.

The WHO published the "Action plan on urban food production and consumption" as part of their strategy to stimulate the local production and consumption of fresh nutritious food and to improve nutrition and health of disadvantaged urban groups.

The Urban Management Programme (UNDP-UNHabitat) is studying and facilitating urban agriculture as part of their efforts to enhance community participation in sustainable urban land management.

Strategies to improve access of the urban poor to land and water for agricultural activities

An increasing number of cities and countries are including urban agriculture in their strategies and programmes to reduce urban poverty and enhance urban food security.

The last few years, various Municipalities and local development organisations have been exploring a diversity of strategies to enhance access of the urban poor to land for agricultural activities. Some have focussed on poor urban households in general, others especially on female-headed households, unemployed youth, recent immigrants without sources of income, families with AIDS/HIV problems or disabled persons.

These actors are undertaking such activities aiming to:

• To facilitate and/or secure access of resource poor or otherwise disadvantaged families to urban land for agricultural use in order to enhance urban food security and income generation
• To facilitate the integration of the urban poor in the urban in the urban socio-economic system and to enhance self-reliance and micro-enterprise development
• To encourage civic/community participation in urban land and environmental management

In this E-conference we want to share and compare such experiences in order to identify the more "robust" strategies and to provide concrete examples for other Municipalities and local development organisations.

Two main situations / target groups have to be distinguished:

1. Poor urban families that already have taken up urban agriculture as part of their survival strategy (often next to other economic activities). Part of these households farm in their back yards or on field plots that are owned or formally rented. But most of these families use (often marginal) vacant public or private land like roadsides, riverbanks, along railroads, buffer zones, etc. User rights are minimal and the use of such areas is transitional. Where Municipalities see such land use with negative eyes, the urban farmers often encounter harassment by officials and policemen. Fear for eviction makes that most of these farmers tend to grow only quick-yielding seasonal crops and avoid investments in soil quality, tree and shrub components, erosion prevention, water harvesting measures, etc.
   
   Here the attention focuses on seeking ways that enable to accept urban agriculture as a legitimate form of urban land use and the inclusion of urban agriculture in urban zonification and strategic urban development plans. Also measures that contribute to making the user rights of the urban farmers more secure e.g. by providing temporary permits to current users of vacant public land for food production (under certain conditions regarding the farm management). For the very poor, even short-term tenure improvements can be a great advantage. When farming is taking place in a location where such practices are less desirable, farmers may be provided access to an alternative location, with better conditions.
 
2. Categories of the urban population that are in need of alternative sources of subsistence and income but have not taken up farming due to lack of access to land. Many of the urban poor would take up urban agriculture for a living if they knew how to get access to land (see e.g. Maxwell, 1995). Many cities in developing countries have much land in public ownership, with serious land use inefficiencies. Often one encounters many unused open spaces within the city boundaries (land earmarked for industry, infrastructure or housing but not yet developed, unused private land due to speculation, public or semi-public (e.g. ground of hospitals, schools, military centres, etcetera) open spaces that should be parks or gardens but in actuality are barren (and often used as illegal waste deposits), former Municipal dump areas or vacant industrial areas. These inefficiencies mean that land is often available for temporal or permanent use for urban agriculture without reducing the availability for new infrastructure or housing.
   
   Here the attention focuses on creating access for the urban poor to the available open spaces. Municipalities are experimenting with strategies like detecting available open spaces by G.I.S, leasing Municipal land to (groups of) urban poor for periods between 2 and 20 years, creating community gardens on former garbage dumps, forcing speculating private owners to lease vacant land to urban farmers, stimulating enterprises, schools and hospitals to do so too, creation of a land bank for selling/leasing land for agriculture, etcetera.

The above-mentioned strategies are often combined with provision of technical advice, access to irrigation water, credit services and creation of farmers markets.

Difficulties encountered by Municipalities

Some of the difficulties that Municipalities encounter when applying such strategies are:

• Land redistribution is contentious and politically complex (DFID, 2002). A major complication is that there are often different systems of legislation relating to land, and different forms of tenure, co-existing in the same city, or between an urban area and its surroundings. Often there are a large number of institutional actors, varying in size and legal status, that have -sometimes overlapping jurisdiction- over urban land, that further limit the capacity of city authorities to regulate urban land use.
• Although land tenure raises important technical and procedural questions, it is ultimately a political issue, since rights over land cannot be isolated from packages of rights in general (Payne, 2000). Moreover, access rules and procedures for land registration are often highly complex and bureaucratic which makes it difficult for urban poor to file an application (MDP, 2001)
• Municipalities encounter difficulties in translating their policy intentions, regarding facilitating access to land for urban agriculture, into effective municipal bylaws, norms and regulations that are financially sustainable and that are easy to control and maintain without major externalities. Especially in the South there are few good examples of such municipal laws, norms and regulations facilitating/regulating urban agriculture.

Expected Outputs

Following the conference a working paper will be produced with:

1. A discussion of the advantages and disadvantages of various strategies for the enhancement of access to land for urban agriculture
2. A discussion on the development of adequate norms and regulations regarding urban agriculture. Illustrated by concrete examples
3. Case studies