An action agenda for urban agriculture in India
The project explored the impacts of gardening and farming in and around Indian cities on human well-being and urban sustainability.
By Amruth Kiran, Ashwin Mahalingam, Chandni Singh, Dhananjayan Mayavel, Maitreyi Koduganti, Parama Roy, Prathijna Poonacha Kodira, Sheetal Patil, Swarnika Sharma, Teja Malladi
iihs
2023
Description
Ongoing urbanisation offers opportunities to reimagine how cities can restore and strengthen human-nature relationships while contributing to urban sustainability. Focusing on activities around growing food as a key space to examine solutions, the ‘Urban and Peri-urban Agriculture as Green Infrastructure’ (UP-AGrI) project explored the impacts of gardening and farming in and around Indian cities on human well-being and urban sustainability. Suggestions and recommendations to scale-up and mainstream urban agriculture practices were drawn from various stakeholder consultations. In this action agenda developed from those consultations, we highlight that proactive urban planning and converging with relevant institutional and policy spaces should leverage urban and peri-urban agriculture to address the food-energy-water-health-livelihoods-nexus by:
Using urban agriculture as an avenue for generating ‘Green Jobs’ in cities
Closing the loop between wet waste segregation, composting, and food-growing to reduce waste landfills around the cities
Strengthening School Kitchen Gardens to improve nutrition among children
Including urban agriculture in the school curriculum of primary and secondary schools for environmental sensitisation
Deliberating urban plans and building design that make space for and incentivise sustainable practices such as waste recycling and food-growing.
