Speaker
Description
Climate change is one of the most pressing challenges of our time, with scientists and experts emphasizing the urgent need to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, given the already devastating effects caused by global warming to our planet (IPCC, 2023). Food systems are increasingly recognized as major contributors to global anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions, with food production alone responsible for approximately one-third of global emissions (IPES Food, 2016; Thornton, 2012; Garnett, 2011). In response to this crisis, urban areas have become pivotal in governance and planning efforts aimed at meeting the Paris Agreement targets of limiting global warming to below 1.5°C or 2°C (Bulkeley et al., 2012; Busch et al., 2018). In this context, several cities are adopting re-localized food systems as a vehicle to achieve climate goals, implementing initiatives like productive nature-based solutions, plant-based food procurement, sustainable food environments, net-zero food waste strategies, and more (IPES Food, 2023). However, despite the potential of these urban experimentations to bridge food and climate sustainability, the urban sustainability literature has largely overlooked the food-climate nexus as a critical arena for achieving place-based sustainability, and for addressing socio-ecological justice.
Highlighting this gap, this reflective paper examines how cities are experimenting with a new socio-ecological agenda at the cross-roads between food and climate, positioning themselves as potential agents of transformative change within this nexus. Particularly, this contribution explores the key governance and planning strategies that emerging urban experiments employ to implement a food-climate nexus. Additionally, it interrogates the central tensions and questions surrounding socio-ecological justice in this context. To address these aspects, this paper will draw on insights from literature spanning both the urban food and climate (justice) domains. First, the paper will draw from work on climate urbanism and mundane innovations (Castán Broto, 2020; Robin and Castán Broto, 2021) to shift the focus from mitigation or adaptation as policy frameworks, to the understanding of the innovative and transformative potential of on-the-ground actions. Second, the analysis will argue about the emergence of a recent wave of urban food movements visibly linking food systems to climate action through place-based experiments and networks (IPES Food, 2023). Bringing on board critical insights on justice from the urban food and climate literatures (Amorim-Maia et al., 2022; Avelino et al., 2024; de Bruin et al., 2024), the analysis will then highlight emerging tensions in combining diverse dimensions of justice through the food-climate nexus. Starting to connect theoretical reflections to empirical evidence, this contribution will briefly illustrate few examples of urban experiments at the food-climate intersection spanning different sections of the urban food system. Particularly, the paper highlights how these initiatives enact sustainability governance strategies and deal with issues of justice as outlined above. Based on the analysis, the paper will conclude by highlighting the importance of learning from place-based practices, and understanding justice as a dynamic and continuously negotiated nexus.
References
Amorim-Maia, A. T., Anguelovski, I., Chu, E., and Connolly, J. (2022) Intersectional climate justice: A conceptual pathway for bridging adaptation planning, transformative action, and social equity. Urban climate, 41, 101053
Avelino, F., van Steenbergen, F., Schipper, K., Steger, T., Henfrey, T., Cook, I. M., ... and Crudi, F. (2024) Mapping the diversity & transformative potential of approaches to sustainable just cities. Urban Transformations, 6(1), 5.
Bulkeley, H., Castán Broto, V., and Edwards, G. (2012). Bringing climate change to the city: towards low carbon urbanism? Local Environment, 17(5), pp. 545-551.
Castán Broto, V., (2020) Climate change politics and the urban contexts of messy governmentalities, Territory, Politics, Governance, 8:2, pp. 241-258.
de Bruin, A., de Boer, I. J., Faber, N. R., de Jong, G., Termeer, K. J., and de Olde, E. M. (2024) Easier said than defined? Conceptualising justice in food system transitions. Agriculture and Human Values, 41(1), pp. 345-362.
IPES-Food, (2023) From plate to planet: How local governments are driving action on climate change through food (see: https://ipes-food.org/report/fromplate-
to-planet/, 14 Jan 2025).
Robin, E., and Castán Broto, V. (2021) Towards a postcolonial perspective on climate urbanism. International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, 45(5), pp. 869-878.
| Keywords | Food-climate nexus, urban experiments, socio-ecological justice, cities |
|---|---|
| Best Congress Paper Award | Yes |
