It’s rare to find people in India who know their food supply chain well — from farms and wholesale markets, to retailers and kitchens. And even then, we tend to ignore the key figures in this supply chain: truck drivers.
Read MoreWhile the government intends to take stricter measures in Delhi to decrease not only the contribution of Delhi to climate change (mitigation), but also, the impacts of climate change in Delhi (adaptation), it is vital that Delhi must create a reality where both top-bottom and bottom-up approaches are allowed to achieve a livable city for future generations.
Read MoreClimate change – undoubtedly brought on faster by globalization – is forcing architecture to rethink situationally its relationship with its near environment, which necessarily requires leaving the precepts of modernism and returning to a new vernacular architecture, namely one that is ecologically attentive to the heterogenous effects of climate change.
Read MoreOne of the most yawning gaps, however, in India’s climate action plan, which can be observed across the world as well, is the lack of a local climate action framework; the grand plans at the national level rarely trickle down to concrete steps at the regional level, where there can be real tangible change. Nonetheless, this absence of a ‘rule book’ at the smaller scale has led to an interesting turn of events in India: increasing local action as a result of the city’s interests and the rise of eco-citizens.
Read MoreAs COP 25 opens its doors in Madrid this week, I would like to highlight that climate summits are no longer only about the 13th Sustainable Development Goal (SDG): “climate action.” Rather, they most now encompass all of the United Nation’s global goals in order to be successful.
Read MoreIncreasingly, cities are home to a full spectrum of climate action — innovations in green retrofitting, and sustainable mobility; frameworks for ‘good growth,’ and resiliency planning; and battlegrounds for protest, and social upheaval over the current climate crisis. Where they go from here will help determine the larger international conversation around what the global community can do to keep temperatures below the infamous 1.5-degree Celsius threshold.
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Since the last decade, urban and peri-urban agriculture has been designated by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) as a fundamental strategy to provide means of subsistence, Following this trend, since 2006, Rio de Janeiro’s City Hall has been developing the Hortas Cariocas Program (PHC), aiming to encourage urban agriculture, and extract the various social and environmental services inherent to the practice. Inside an urban scenario of extreme inequality, legitimized by the public powers for centuries, we discuss how the Hortas Cariocas Program, with the efforts of its founders, contributes in a practical way to the improvement of the quality of life to the citizens of Rio.
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The story of cities is also the story of managing food production and consumption. The relationship between urban living and attaining quality nutrition, or food safety, is clearly stated in the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals. While simple, innovative solutions target data collection and urban agriculture, food scarcity remains a major challenge in cities worldwide. There’s a long road ahead for food security as a planning priority.
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This August, Oxford Urbanists (OU) enters the global debate on waste management in urban centers, highlighting its challenges, controversies and opportunities for growth in developing countries.
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