Policy Advice, Action Planning, Training and Information Exchange

The Cities Farming for the Future project (2005-2010) is the follow up to the first phase (1999-2004) of the RUAF core programme. The CFF-project is funded by DGIS (the Netherlands) and IDRC (Canada) and is implemented by seven regional RUAF partners in co-ordination with ETC (Leusden, the Netherlands).

The Cities Farming for the Future programme seeks to make a contribution to urban poverty reduction, urban food security, improved urban environmental management, empowerment of urban farmers and participatory city governance by capacity development of local stakeholders in urban agriculture and facilitating participatory and multi-stakeholder policy formulation and action planning on urban agriculture, including safe reuse of urban organic wastes and wastewater.

The CFF activities are taking pace in seven regions and in each region the focus is on 3 pilot cities (20 in total) and about 10 dissemination cities (47 in total).

Objectives

• Result 1: Six regional Resource Centres on Urban Agriculture and Food Security (RUAF’s) have been consolidated and their capacities to successfully provide gender sensitive information, training and advisory services to local and national authorities, NGOs and farmers organisations and other stakeholders regarding policy formulation and action planning, implementation and monitoring in the field of urban agriculture, have been strengthened.
• Result 2: Various categories of local stakeholders in urban agriculture have obtained access to information on urban agriculture through channels and in a form well adapted to their needs.
• Result 3: Regional capacity has been established to deliver gender sensitive training on urban agriculture, well adapted to the needs of various categories of local stakeholders involved in formulation and implementation of local policies and action plans on urban agriculture and selected senior staff of over 50 organizations in 20 cities have been trained.
• Result 4: Local authorities in 20 cities are formulating and implementing gender sensitive policies and action plans on urban agriculture with active participation of urban farmers and livestock keepers, NGO’s and CBO’s and other stakeholders in urban agriculture (research institutes, governmental organisations, private enterprises) and about 40 pilot projects are implemented.
• Result 5: Over 50 organisations (local authorities, NGO’s and other organisations involved in formulation and implementation of policies and action plans on urban agriculture) use participatory, gender sensitive and learning oriented methodologies for monitoring and evaluation of the impacts of such policies and projects on income, nutrition and food security of the urban poor, reuse of urban organic wastes and wastewater in urban agriculture and reduction of health and environmental risks associated with urban agriculture.
• Result 6: Regional and local RUAF partners are mainstreaming gender in urban agriculture

Activities

• Policy seminars to enhance awareness regarding the potentials and risks of urban agriculture and to facilitate its recognition as an area of government intervention
• Training of trainers and training of senior and mid level staff of local government departments, NGO’s and other support organisations in order to enhance local capacity development regarding urban agriculture.
• Supporting local policy formulation and action planning on urban agriculture by facilitating the establishment of Multi-Stakeholder Platforms on Urban Agriculture and Food Security and guiding participatory processes of policy formulation and action planning in several cities. The proposed CFF-programme will support this process by facilitating and supporting local processes of participatory diagnosis, policy formulation, action planning, implementation and evaluation.
• Systematisation of experiences and preparation of policy briefs, fact sheets, "good practices", guidelines and manuals
• Networking and enhancing access to information by local stakeholders to documented experiences through a web of websites, the maintenance of databases as well as the publication of the Urban Agriculture Magazine in 7 languages (English, Spanish, French, Chinese, Arabic, Turkish and Portuguese).
• The co-organisation of regional workshops on critical subjects, jointly with specialised partner institutes. Examples of such events are the International Conference in Havana, 1999 with DSE and GTZ; the E-conference "Urban Agriculture on the Policy Agenda", 2000 with FAO; "The agriculture-urbanization interface in the middle East and North Africa" in Beirut 2001 with CERMOC and ESP, the regional workshop on "Reuse of wastewater in urban agriculture" in Ouagadougou 2002 with CTA and CREPA, the Southern Africa Ministers conference on Urban agriculture, 2002 with FAO-FANRPAN and MDP, the E-conference "Optimising Agricultural land use in the City Area" with the Urban Management Programme (UNDP / UN-Habitat), the Regional workshop on urban livestock, Nairobi 2003, with NRI and DFID, the regional conference on "Urban agriculture and agri-tourism" in Beijing, 2004 with Beijing Agricultural Bureau and the regional workshop/study visit on "ban microfarming and Hiv-Aids" organised with Abalimi Bezekhaya and CTA.

Special themes

• Urban agriculture and local economic development and poverty alleviation
• Integration of urban agriculture in land use planning
• Reuse of urban wastes and wastewater in urban agriculture
• Urban agriculture, food security and nutrition (also in relation to HIV-AIDS)
• Mainstreaming of gender in urban agriculture
• Monitoring and evaluation of the impacts of urban agriculture

Implementing Organisations

• Global coordination: ETC Urban Agriculture
• Latin America and the Caribbean: IPES (Promoción del Desarrollo Sostenible)
• West-Africa (Francophone): IAGU (Institut Africain de Gestion Urbaine)
• West-Africa (Anglophone): IWMI-Ghana (International Water Management Institute)
• Eastern and Southern Africa: MDP (Municipal Development Partnership Eastern and Southern Africa Regional Office)
• South and South East Asia: IWMI-India (International Water Management Institute)
• China: IGSNRR (Institute of Geographical Sciences and Natural Resource Research of the Chinese Academy of Sciences)
• North Africa & Middle East: AUB-ESDU (Environment and Sustainable Development Unit, American University of Beirut)

Funding organisations

The CFF project is funded by the Directorate-General for International Co-operation (DGIS) (The Netherlands) and the International Development Research Centre (IDRC) (Canada). DGIS-Environment and Development Department (The Netherlands) and IDRC (Canada).

The RUAF partners and the participating cities and other local actors all make substantial own contributions to the project activities in order to enhance sustainability.

Other national and international funding sources will be approached to fund follow up actions in each of the cities and complementary activities at global and regional level.

Cooperation

RUAF seeks to support local initiatives and to build partnerships with relevant programmes of international, regional, national and local organisations and networks, and pooling of resources in jointly planned actions.

RUAF maintains close working relations with various international organisations and programmes that have taken major initiatives on urban agriculture like IDRC ("Cities Feeding People" programme), FAO (PAIA "Food for the Cities" ), CGIAR (Urban Harvest Programme), UNDP/Habitat (Sustainable Cities Programme), WHO (Healthy Cities programme), ICLEI (Agenda 21), a/o.