Speaker
Description
The urban model and the globalised food system are key factors in crossing several of the planetary boundaries. The food system directly affects several of the planetary boundaries and biophysical integrity: climate change, novel entities, biogeochemical fluxes, biodiversity, and changes in freshwater and land use. (Kronenberg et al., 2024(. Reducing pressure is essential, since the biosphere is a component and a first-order factor in the regulation of the Earth system (Richardson et al, 2023).
In 2024, the International Seminar "Placing the Food System within Planetary LimitsPlacing the Food System within Planetary Limits, Challenges for Spatial Planning" brought together different instruments, plans, strategies and research on the topic, both at the urban and territorial level. The result was a collection of eighteen innovative plans and actions, most of them related to agroecology and/or sustainable food systems (Simón-Rojo et al., 2025). These range from bioregional proposals and metropolitan plans to agrocities of food-producing neighbourhoods, urban master plans, farmers and market networks. They were then screened for references to carrying capacity, ecological footprint, planetary limits, sociometabolism and degrowth.
The preliminary results show that, even if not always explicitly stated, the majority of the plans and projects imply to some extent a paradigm shift in the approach to the food system. Examples of urban land stewardship, green infrastructure, water management, and new planning tools for the payment of ecosystem services with a strong environmental component were found. There have been methodological innovations in the analysis and diagnosis processes in the design of the plans or projects. In one case, Kate Raworth's doughnut model was used. The reference and inclusion of circularity indicators and measures is present in almost all projects. Although only half refer explicitly to the circularity of the food system
A second analysis confronted the plans and projects with the demands (focusing on demands related to urbanism) coming from social actors involved in innovative initiatives (López-García et añ. 2025), food justice or food democracy, i.e. the commission of social organisations from the Spanish Network of Agroecological Municipalities. For these groups, the role that urban planning could play remains unclear. Nevertheless, windows of opportunity are opening up for urbanism and spatial planning, which have the capacity to broaden current environmentally oriented plans and urban generation strategies and link them more directly to the food sector: how to close material cycles, how to reduce consumption, and how to integrate the agri-food system when discussing degrowth, especially how to plan degrowth (Savini, 2024, Guerrero Lara et al., 2023).
References
Guerrero Lara, L., Van Oers, L., Smessaert, J., Spanier, J., Raj, G., & Feola, G. (2023). Degrowth and agri-food systems: a research agenda for the critical social sciences. Sustainability Science, 18(4), 1579-1594.
Kronenberg, J., Andersson, E., Elmqvist, T., Łaszkiewicz, E., Xue, J., & Khmara, Y. (2024). Cities, planetary boundaries, and degrowth. The Lancet Planetary Health, 8(4), e234-e241.
López-García, D., García-García, J., García-García, V., Rada-Sereno, O., & Vázquez-Macías, G. (2025). What is transformative in participatory approaches to territorial agroecological transitions? A systematization of five case studies in Spain. Agroecology and Sustainable Food Systems, 1–39. https://doi.org/10.1080/21683565.2025.2456946.
Richardson, K., Steffen, W., Lucht, W., Bendtsen, J., Cornell, S. E., Donges, J. F., ... & Rockström, J. (2023). Earth beyond six of nine planetary boundaries. Science advances, 9(37), eadh245
Simón-Rojo, M., Gioccoli, A.; Santos, M.A., Horrach, B. (2025) “Acomodar los sistemas alimentarios a los limites planetarios. Avances y desafíos para la ordenación urbana y territorial”. Universidad Politécnica de Madrid
| Keywords | agrifood systems, agroecology, innovation, planetary boundaries, urbanism |
|---|---|
| Best Congress Paper Award | No |
