Donor: OneCGIAR

Project lead: IITA

Duration: 1 April 2022 – 31 December 2025

Project Location: Bangladesh, Philippines (focus of the work), Kenya and Ethiopia

Project manager: Pepijn Schreinemachers

Background

By 2050, more than two in three people on the planet will live in an urban environment, including over 5.5 billion in low- and middle-income countries. The agrifood sector will play a central role in humanity’s transition to an urban world. Local and global agrifood systems need to step up and adapt to feed and nourish expanding urban populations, reduce human and environmental health risks, and secure economic opportunities for the urban poor. Securing productive, green, and livable cities with healthy populations has become a global priority. Key challenges include growing pollution and environmental degradation, increasing social and economic inequalities, growing competition for land and water resources, and weak or absent agrifood governance structures.

Objective

Resilient Cities is organized in five work packages. WorldVeg and IITA lead the work package on “Enabling sustainable production of nutritious foods in (peri-) urban zones.” WorldVeg focuses on Dhaka and Manila, while IITA focuses on cities in Kenya and Ethiopia where they also work with the WorldVeg project “Veggies 4 Planet & People”. Ongoing work includes: (a) an impact study of a large program, implemented by FAO, promoting urban gardening in Dhaka; (b) a study on the food safety risk of vegetables produced in urban areas of Dhaka; (c) a study of the potential of vegetables to absorb microplastics—an important contaminant in urban areas; (d) (4) a study developing urban gardening technologies in Dhaka; and (e) a study on business models for vegetable seedling supplying urban gardeners in Manila.

Expected results

At the end of this first year, the project should have identified clear entry points for testing novel methods and approaches to promote safe food production (and consumption) of vegetables in urban environments.