Title of Event:

Name of Organisation:

Date and time of the session:

Growing Better Cities: enhance food security, create jobs and protect the environment

International Development Research Centre (IDRC), Canada and ETC International, Leusden, The Netherlands

Tuesday, 20 June 2006, 13:30-15:30

Key Highlights

1. Estimated no of participants: 150
2. Stakeholder group representation at the event: Stakeholder groups represented included youth, students, women and indigenous groups, local government officials (mayors, councillors) and policymakers, journalists from North and South, NGOs, donor agencies.
3. What were the expected objectives: share city strategies (North and South) for integrating urban agriculture into municipal development policies for multiple outcomes.
4. What did the networking event achieve: a benchmark - to our knowledge, the first panel ever at an international conference to be staged by city governments from four continents on urban agriculture policymaking; it gave recognition to cities on stage and pointed these as resources for other interested cities.

2. What were the core issues identified in your event as they relate to the theme and sub-themes of WUFIII?

• Session focused exclusively on cities, which have turned ideas into action. These are part of a growing number of local governments, which are including urban agriculture in their policies to address a wide range of urban, social, economic and environmental challenges.
• Rosario, and Kampala's initiatives have focused on making the city more secure and inclusive, through putting into production underused land and water resources, and converting UA from a crisis response into an integral dimension of physical urban planning (new housing development and neighbourhood improvement).
• Beijing and Vancouver's initiatives have centered on making the city more sustainable and productive; the former has mainstreamed UA into its policy for promoting commercial agro-enterprises and agro-tourism, as well as support to poor migrant farmers; while the latter has integrated UA into its sustainability and food policies, through links with children and youth, multicultural and aboriginal programmes, environmental and urban development projects.

3. What were the main points raised by panellists and participants in relation to these different issues? What new ideas have been generated as a result of the discussion?

• While 30 years ago no one considered seriously that agriculture could be urban, the President of the Canadian Urban Institute acknowledged that the change since then has been remarkable. He predicted that, along with energy and security, urban agriculture would change the face and function of cities in the future.
• A political decision of integrating UA into the local government's agenda must be followed up by the municipal council's leadership in developing an enabling regulatory and normative framework (Rosario).
• Political support, including at ministerial level, is critical to including UA in the development plan of a city, and so are research and community participation in developing new ordinances; the city is helping the country develop new land legislation which include UA (Kampala).
• In Vancouver, the city wants to achieve multiple outcomes through UA, among which street safety, neighbourliness, physical recreation. It is investing in examples which can be turned into prototypes for other actors to emulate.
• Beijing also has a comprehensive program which includes, information sharing, training, festivals and subprograms aimed at different UA groups.
• Plenary: Participants wanted to know about options for more efficient water use, protection of agricultural land from urban sprawl, youth employment ("My mayor is here and I am taking him to task." (woman from Tanzania ), tax-paying by UA producers, seasonality of UA impacts, UA as an entry point for indigenous migrants ( Argentina ). Kampala is interested in marketing strategies developed by Rosario and Beijing.

4. What process steps have been identified in your event that could help turn ideas into operational reality?

• Vancouver will step up its commitment to UA: As a result of its participation on this networking event, Vancouver announced during WUF 2006 the creation of 2010 new garden plots in the city between now and the 2010 Olympics (which it will host).

• North-South mutual learning: Discussions were initiated during the rehearsal of this networking event on a possible follow up project which would enable Rosario and Beijing to learn from Vancouver's experience with integrating UA into urban design and help the latter city to learn from the formers' more extensive experience with processing and marketing UA produce.

• Sustain support to development research on UA: IDRC reiterated the need to catalogue urban benefits of UA, create expert platforms to address problems and challenges, promote mutual learning among cities through South-South networking and build trust among stakeholders through sustained support over a period of years. These are directions which IDRC will support, through its Focus Cities Initiative and its Ecopolis awards program.