RUAF is pleased to announce that Rikolto, an international NGO working towards a sustainable income for farmers and healthy, affordable food for everyone, will be joining the Global Partnership as a new member.
With many challenges threatening our food and nutrition security, we recognize the urgency to accelerate actions in the development of sustainable, resilient and equitable agri-food systems. Rikolto joined the RUAF Global partnership in July 2021 with the aim to increase our impact on transforming food systems and support each other to achieve common goals.
In the last 5 years, Rikolto and RUAF partners have already collaborated closely with each other in the framework of various local and global projects, such as Quito’s Agrifood Pact in Ecuador, Ghent en Garde in Belgium, a (forthcoming) publication on urban and peri-urban agriculture, led by the FAO, and more recently a research project on food hubs in Lima and Quito, funded by Canada’s International Development Research Center.
At the end of 2020, RUAF, Rikolto and Let Us already decided to join their forces to offer consultancy services to third parties on the topic of resilient urban food systems with a focus on food systems assessments, sustainable food policy development, multi-actor governance mechanisms, peer-to-peer learning, short food chains to cities, and healthy and sustainable public procurement.
With Rikolto formally joining the RUAF Global Partnership, both organisations demonstrate their commitment to continue working together towards more inclusive, resilient and sustainable food systems in cities. This new partnership brings together RUAF’s experience in developing and implementing strategies to advance urban agriculture and in supporting cities to adapt policies to build sustainable food systems, and Rikolto’s expertise on the ground in creating bridges between smallholder farmer organisations, companies, authorities and other actors across rural and urban areas to create innovative ways of accessing, distributing and producing nutritious, quality food.
RUAF is pleased to welcome Rikolto in our Global Partnership, strengthen our collaboration with cities and continue our work on key projects, including the recently started IDRC funded initiative in Quito and Lima. Rikolto brings in additional expertise through their Food Smart Cities programme and their wide network of local offices. We are thrilled to cooperate to increase our impact on building inclusive food value chains.
René van Veenhuizen, Coordinator of the Secretariat of the RUAF Global Partnership
“We are eager to work together on facilitating peer-to-peer learning processes among partner cities, strengthening knowledge management, particularly in the field of urban food governance and inclusive business models to feed cities sustainably, and launching new projects with the RUAF partners. We are very enthusiastic about aligning our efforts on advocacy to raise the visibility of topics of common interest in international discussion fora such as the Milan Urban Food Policy Pact,” said Charlotte Flechet, coordinator of Rikolto’s International Food Smart Cities programme.
RUAF and Rikolto also collaborate with other networks to ensure long-term sustainable impacts. We are members of the One Planet Network Community of Practice on Sustainable Food Systems on the ground led by UNEP, the Urban Food Systems Working Group led by GAIN and FAO, the coalition behind the Glasgow Food & Climate Declaration led by Nourish Scotland and IPES-Food, and the AfricanCITYFOOD month led by ICLEI.
