India and France Panel Discuss Urban Agriculture
“When we think about cities, agriculture doesn’t come to mind,” says Jagdish Krishnaswamy, Dean, School of Environment and Sustainability (SES) at the Indian Institute for Human Settlements (IIHS).
By preeti zachariah
The Hindi
Oct 26, 2023
Excerpt:
“My reflections on this topic come from a 3-year-long project we did at IIHS,” says Prathijna Poonacha Kodira, a researcher and practitioner who works on climate change adaptation. Not only does growing your own vegetables, herbs, and fruits offer health advantages, but it also helps improve biodiversity and waste recycling, she points out in the panel discussion, which also saw participation from Dr. Rajendra Hegde, a trustee of Garden City Farmers and Flore-Anais Brunet and Marie Friers, both from the Association Française d’Agriculture Urbaine Professionnelle, a French network of urban agriculture professionals.
Urban and Peri-urban Agriculture as Green Infrastructure (UP-AGrI) project, the 3-year-long project that IIHS worked on in collaboration with the University of East Anglia, IIT Madras, The Open University of Tanzania and Tanzania Horticulture Association, among others, sought to examine how food grown in and around cities helps build better ones. The results of this project were then showcased as part of the Growing Greener Cities exhibition, which “brings together examples of urban and peri-urban agriculture in India and Tanzania, highlighting its outcomes for human well-being and environmental sustainability through life histories, short films, infographics, and photographic essays,” as the website puts it.
