TMG’s work as part of the Urban Food Futures programme addressed the two questions:
1)How can urban and peri-urban food systems be transformed and made more equitable and accessible both for food system actors and in terms of food security and nutrition outcomes?
2) How can citizens be engaged and empowered to drive inclusive, transparent, participatory processes for urban transformations, ensuring synergies and complementarity with city councils?
Setting out at the height of the Covid-19 crisis, our work was driven by one overarching question: how have low-income communities in the three cities responded to the impact of the pandemic on food security? And, subsequently, what can we learn from immediate community responses to design pathways for transformation of urban food systems? To achieve food system transformation, therefore, we need to re-politicize issues around food and hunger. While celebrating individual successes, the impact we want to see goes beyond the single project. One of our main objectives for the second phase of the programme is to establish “Urban Nutrition Hubs” as spaces for learning, dialogue, and piloting of innovation. Using a living lab approach, the Hubs will serve as spaces for co-creating knowledge with local communities and other actors, and driving the implementation of our programmatic pathways as we continue to pilot and link multiple local innovations with municipal action. To achieve food and nutrition security in urban areas, food and nutrition policies must be fundamentally rethought from the point of view of the needs of those who are experiencing food and nutrition insecurity. Food security policies tend to neglect cities as a distinct entity requiring distinct policies, and they tend to focus on increasing food production. This negates the recommendations arising from a range of findings that show that food insecurity is often tied to income, gender, and social status. Strategies to address food and nutrition insecurity in informal settlements and low-income areas require solutions beyond traditional strategies that are often focussed on production-oriented solutions. If those had worked in the past, lives in informal settlements would look different today. Transformative changes to improve urban food security and nutrition must employ different strategies informed by local realities and must centre the consumer perspective. This requires a commitment to understanding the complex realities of urban low-income areas and informal settlements and acknowledge the drivers of food insecurity, particularly in the light of crises. Urban Nutrition Hubs are living labs in real-life settings where solutions to food system challenges emerge. Urban Nutrition Hubs are characterised by their multifunctionality. Food is symbolic of identity and collective culture and is often manifested in unpaid care work provided by women on farms, in kitchens, as vendors, or in other communal roles. Urban Nutrition Hubs will serve as places to advocate for women’s rights and support the empowerment of women through networking and advocacy programmes.
TMG's Pathways for Transformation:
https://downloads.ctfassets.net/rrirl83ijfda/6mSvmaV4SgT1Kedf6dS0jM/a24…
Dr. Nicole Paganini