From the pandemic to climate change and economic crises, cities have shown remarkable agility in their ability to prepare and respond to challenges that affect their food systems. Capturing the lessons learned can create a basis for building resilience capacities to all future shocks and stresses, as well as reconfiguring food systems for long-term sustainability. For this reason, Rikolto, RUAF and Nourish Scotland co-organised the online event ‘Resilient cities in practice – How cities are tackling climate change through inclusive food actions’ on November 3rd, 2021. The session was part of the Recipes for Resilience event at the COP26 Food and Climate Zone.

The event focused on how cities from different geographies and stages in their food systems transformation journey are putting their local food ambitions into practice to tackle the climate crisis while ensuring social inclusion. Following an introduction by Joy Carey, Senior Programme Officer at RUAF, on leveraging local food policies and initiatives for climate action, three diverse cities – Antananarivo (Madagascar), Rosario (Argentina) and Leuven (Belgium) – presented their concrete strategies, the impacts they achieved and the lessons they learned.

Thibault Geerardyn, Food Strategy Facilitator at Leuven 2030, highlighted how Leuven is using multistakeholder food planning for innovative food sourcing models. The local food distribution platform KORT’OM LEUVEN connects local farmers with consumers through B2B channels. Created through a multistakeholder process between the local administration and external stakeholders, the initiative allows farmers to have ownership of the market mechanism and the narrative, while ensuring municipal support. Geerardyn also emphasized that without a sustainable economic model, it is hard to achieve added social and environmental value. 

Raúl Terrile, Coordinator of the Food Program of the Municipality of Rosario, and Daniela Mastrangelo, Technical Coordinator of the Secretariat of Environment and Public Space, presented how agro-ecological urban and peri-urban agriculture contributes to a climate resilient city. The initiative emerged as a response to the economic crisis in 2001, but was transformed and institutionalized into city plans and policies thereafter. Now the city protects spaces for food production through urban planning and provides technical and financial assistance to urban farmers. By boosting income generating activities of vulnerable populations, urban agriculture in Rosario combines economic, social and environmental benefits.

Tokiana Rakotonirainy, Food Policy Coordinator at the Municipality of Antananarivo and member of the Steering Committee of the Milan Urban Food Policy Pact, and Carmen Zuleta Ferrari, Urban Food Systems and Resilience specialist at FAO, showcased how Antananarivo uses the City Region Food Systems approach to build resilience towards climate change. This includes multistakeholder engagement and multi-level governance, a comprehensive vulnerability and risk assessment, the development of policies and strategies to enhance resilience, and capacity development of vulnerable stakeholders. Creating a shared vision through multistakeholder participation not only ensured trust, understanding and consensus but also allowed leveraging synergies and strengthening financial and technical capacities. 

Key messages, monitoring and knowledge exchange 

Dr. Jess Halliday, Associate of RUAF, closed the session by capturing a few common themes that emerged among the three city experiences: the importance of citizen empowerment and involvement, capacity development of the vulnerable population, as well as multistakeholder collaboration; putting an economic model at the centre of action; and transforming responses to crises into institutionalized policies and plans. She emphasized that cities have the ability to respond, reconfigure and do things better in the face of crises, as the pandemic demonstrated. To prepare for future shocks and stresses it is essential to capture lessons learned and build resilience capacities in order to be able to respond better in the long-term. 

Monitoring their progress allows Leuven, Rosario and Antananarivo to show real impacts of their strategies. It is also a crucial lever to engage stakeholders at national, regional and local levels, and inspire other cities to take similar action. The Milan Urban Food Policy Pact Monitoring Framework Handbook and Resource Pack as well as the forthcoming City Region Food Systems Assessment and Planning Manual, both developed by FAO and RUAF, are helpful resources for cities wishing to develop their urban food policy and keep track of their actions and impacts. 

Moreover, the new online platform Food Action Cities by RUAF, GAIN and the MUFPP Secretariat, provides a space for cities to share their experiences, actions, impacts and enabling conditions. 

The recording of the event can be found here.

Photo credit:  @Centro WRI