post-type: Blogs

  • City Region Food Systems to cope with COVID-19 and other pandemic emergencies

    City Region Food Systems to cope with COVID-19 and other pandemic emergencies

    Written by: Alison Blay-Palmer, Jess Halliday, Guido Santini, Makiko Taguchi, and René van Veenhuizen This blog has been developed by RUAF Partners with FAO and is also posted at the FAO City-region food system website, where you also find a series of blogs on various city and country experiences.   The COVID-19 pandemic is affecting…

  • Video diaries from Nairobi: Navigating food insecurity in times of the COVID-19 pandemic

    Video diaries from Nairobi: Navigating food insecurity in times of the COVID-19 pandemic

    Written by Louisa Nelle, Dr. Serah Kiragu-Wissler and Dr. Sarah Ann Lise D’haen   The impact of the coronavirus and government measures to curb the COVID-19 pandemic are causing unprecedented disruptions across all sectors of the economy and all segments of society in virtually every country across the world. As the pandemic and the measures…

  • COVID-19: a wake-up call to rebuild our global food system

    COVID-19: a wake-up call to rebuild our global food system

    Frank Mechielsen, Programme Manager, Sustainable Diets for All at Hivos Instead of treating the COVID-19 outbreak as a stand-alone crisis, we should acknowledge that it is a symptom of something larger. Namely, the disruption and destruction of natural ecosystems and biodiversity, which has brought us much closer to wild animals – and their viruses. And…

  • Cities, climate change and the food system of the majority

    Cities, climate change and the food system of the majority

    The 10th session of the World Urban Forum is underway, where innovative approaches to sustainable urbanisation are showing how we can achieve inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable cities. RUAF partners, including Hivos and FAO, are there to present ways of planning food systems in urban and peri-urban areas that emphasise systemic thinking and the importance…

  • Spotlight: Urban farmers’ networks in East Africa

    Spotlight: Urban farmers’ networks in East Africa

    The urban food policy community is alert to the benefits of higher-level Food Policy Councils and city food departments, but there is less attention on organisations dealing with urban food at community level. This means there is untapped potential for sharing experiences and learning between urban farmers’ networks in different city and country contexts. Any…

  • A growing menu for the urban food agenda

    A growing menu for the urban food agenda

    The regulars at the Resilient Cities congress might recall that when urban food first appeared as a topic in the congress series, it almost seemed out of place – a topic more fitting to the agricultural community than urbanists. The conversation started from the basics, emphasizing food as a system, which includes producers, consumers and many other stakeholders all along…

  • Hungry for more: Cities are shaping the global food agenda

    Hungry for more: Cities are shaping the global food agenda

    It is clear that the food, urban, resilience and sustainability agendas must come together. At the Urban Food Forum at Resilient Cities 2017, Monika Zimmermann, Deputy Secretary General of ICLEI and Thierry Giordano, Decentralized Cooperation Advisor at FAO, drew an analogy between the way cities are seizing the food agenda and how they got a…