Speaker
Description
In face of compelling socio-ecological urgencies, including conditions of persistent food insecurity and (planetary) health crisis, cities are confronted with the mounting challenge of guaranteeing access to healthy and sustainable food for all (HLPE, 2024). Thousands of urban food policies and initiatives have emerged in the last decade to incorporate food related concerns into urban agendas, signalling the emergence of urban areas as key actors creating more equitable and sustainable food systems (Moragues-Faus et al., 2024). In this context, academic and practitioner demands for overcoming siloed approaches and for linking food with key socio-ecological and urban systems have become more pressing (Hawkes, 2023; HLPE, 2024). Yet, existing conceptual frameworks and practical approaches do not adequately account for the wider urban socio-ecological configurations and multi-scalar governance relations which largely determine sustainability and food security outcomes. In other words, urban food governance actors still face hard times to look ‘beyond food’ and grasp how place-based socio-ecological, economic, and political dynamics of diverse urbanisation processes condition food security outcomes and governance responses. Thus, the risk is that food system interventions remain a niche, losing the transformative potential of key urban processes.
With the aim to address this problem, in this contribution we seek to provide a deeper understanding of how different urban social-ecological, economic, and political configurations hamper or, on the contrary, enable sustainable food security outcomes; and, consequently, how actors can leverage diverse urban dynamics to shape adequate food security governance and policy responses. To do so, we propose a conceptual framework that informs theories and practices of urban governance for sustainable food security. Helped by research which connects urban food systems with critical approaches on socio-ecological systems (urban political ecology, urban metabolism, hybrid socio-natural assemblages …), the framework will provide tools to illuminate how key urban and socio-ecological drivers impact on urban food security outcomes (Swyngedouw, and Kaika, 2014; Moragues-Faus and Marsden, 2017). These drivers – or layers – relate to: governance and institutional dynamics, networks and resource flows, urban infrastructure and form, socio-ecological dynamics. The governance layer will be particularly deepened by adopting urban and territorialized approaches to (food) sustainability governance (Cistulli et al., 2014; Sonnino and Milbourne, 2022), offering a place-based perspective on how governance arrangements deal with key drivers, accounting for their hybridity and complexity, so as to tackle the specific challenge of improving urban food security.
The paper will then develop first insights on how this conceptual framework can begin to be operationalised in diverse cities. Particularly, we will illustrate the development of a food system monitoring framework in which key variables related to the abovementioned layers are considered and, potentially, can become vectors for a more transformative urban governance for sustainable food security.
Finally, the paper will conclude by highlighting key implications for an improved sustainable food security governance and policy-making in urban areas. We stress how urban food system action and monitoring should keep attention to the question of “who governs the city” in order to take advantage of key urban dynamics that can help to address food security more structurally.
References
Cistulli, V., Rodríguez-Pose, A., Escobar, G., Marta, S., & Schejtman, A. (2014). Addressing food security and nutrition by means of a territorial approach. Food security, 6, 879-894.
Hawkes, C., 2023. Leveraging urbanization for food systems transformation. UN Food Systems Summit +2 Stocktaking Moment, Rome.
HLPE, 2024. Strengthening urban and peri-urban food systems to achieve food security and nutrition, in the context of urbanization and rural transformation. publication. A report by the High Level Panel of Experts on Food Security and Nutrition of the Committee on World Food Security.
Moragues-Faus, A., Clark, J. K., Battersby, J., & Davies, A. R. (2024). The potential of urban food governance to transform lives, cities, and the planet. Global Food Security, 40, 100751.
Sonnino, R., Milbourne, P., 2022. Food system transformation: a progressive place-based approach. Local Environ 27, 915–926. https://doi.org/10.1080/13549839.2022.2084723
Swyngedouw, E., & Kaika, M. (2014). Urban political ecology. Great promises, deadlock… and new beginnings?. Documents d'anàlisi geogràfica, 60(3), 459-481.
| Keywords | Urban food systems; Sustainable food security; Socio-ecological systems; Diverse cities |
|---|---|
| Best Congress Paper Award | Yes |
