Building Sustainable And Resilient City Region Food Systems

The City Region Food Systems (CRFS) programme is a global initiative of FAO and RUAF that aims to support national and local governments and local food actors to build resilient city region food systems by strengthening rural–urban linkages and improving the resilience to climate and pandemic risks. This Handbook is designed for technical staff in local and national institutions, and practitioners in cities/city regions that are implementing the city region food system (CRFS) assessment and planning process. Its purpose is to help familiarizing with the CRFS approach and key terminology, and guide the implementation of an assessment and planning following different steps and modules. The Handbook is intended to be used in conjunction with the online Toolkit, which contains supplementary explanations, how-to tools, training materials, technical examples, and workshop resources related to activities within each project module. The Toolkit can be accessed on the CRFS programme website (https://www.fao.org/in-action/food-for-cities-programme/toolkit/introduction/en/).

As people increasingly migrate to urban settings and more than half of the world's population now lives in cities, it is vital to plan and provide for sustainable and resilient food systems which reflect this challenge. This volume presents experience and evidence-based "state of the art" chapters on the key dimensions of urban food challenges and types of intra- and peri-urban agriculture. The book provides urban planners, local policy makers and urban development practitioners with an overview of crucial aspects of urban food systems based on an up to date review of research results and practical experiences in both developed and developing countries. By doing so, the international team of authors provides a balanced textbook for students of the growing number of courses on sustainable agriculture, food and urban studies, as well as a solid basis for well-informed policy making, planning and implementation regarding the development of sustainable, resilient and just urban food systems.

The coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic has highlighted food security issues and nutrition gaps in Asia and the Pacific, where various risks and fragilities have continually affected the food and agriculture sector. There is a clear need to integrate sustainable management of natural resources, nutritional considerations, and the economic dimensions of food supply chains to enhance resilience and mitigate climate change. This publication explores how innovative financing and transformative knowledge solutions can help address the financing gaps and other challenges of food systems in the region.

Sustainable Food System Assessment provides both practical and theoretical insights about the growing interest in and response to measuring food system sustainability. Bringing together research from the Global North and South, this book shares lessons learned, explores intended and actual project outcomes, and highlights points of conceptual and methodological convergence. Interest in assessing food system sustainability is growing, as evidenced by the Milan Urban Food Policy Pact and the importance food systems initiatives have taken in serving as a lever for attaining the UN Sustainable Development Goals. This book opens by looking at the conceptual considerations of food systems indicators, including the place-based dimensions of food systems indicators and how measurements are implicated in sense-making and visioning processes. Chapters in the second part cover operationalizing metrics, including the development of food systems indicator frameworks, degrees of indicator complexities, and practical constraints to assessment. The final part focuses on the outcomes of assessment projects, including impacts on food policy and communities involved, highlighting the importance of building connections between sustainable food systems initiatives. The global coverage and multi-scalar perspectives, including both conceptual and practical aspects, make this a key resource for academics and practitioners across planning, geography, urban studies, food studies, and research methods. It will also be of interest to government officials and those working within NGOs. The Open Access version of this book, available at https://www.routledge.com/Sustainable-Food-System-Assessment-Lessons-from-Global-Practice/Blay-Palmer-Conare-Meter-Battista-Johnston/p/book/9781032083933, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 license.

Many of today's communities face an unprecedented struggle to adapt and maintain their environmental, economic, and social well-being in an era beleaguered by fiscal constraints, uncertainty about energy prices and supplies, rapid demographic shifts, and accelerated climate impacts. This step-by-step guidebook for urban planners and urban designers explains how to create and implement an actionable plan for making neighborhoods, communities, and regions more environmentally healthy, resource-conserving, and economically resilient. Sustainable and Resilient Communitiesdelineates measures for repairing, retrofitting, and transforming our built environments and supporting systems.

Covid-19 was a canary in a mine. It exposed the vulnerabilities of 21st-century food systems but did not create them. Since then, the world has faced a “polycrisis:” a cluster of weather-related crop failures, war-induced food and energy shortages, and import dilemmas with compounding effects. Going forward, we need to plan for more sustainable and resilient food systems that improve environmental outcomes and address economic disparities. But food systems planning is a relatively new discipline and guidance is scarce. This book fills that gap. Where most food systems planning has focused on urban issues, this book takes a holistic view to include rural communities and production agriculture whose stewardship of the earth is so critical to public and environmental health, as well as to ensuring a varied and abundant food supply. Its goal is to inform planning practices and follow-up actions for a wide range of audiences—from professional planners, planning commissions, and boards to conservation districts and Cooperative Extension to the on-the-ground change-makers working to strengthen America’s food and farming systems. Embracing the fact that the U.S. is highly diverse in its people, places, and politics, the book lifts up principles and successful examples to help communities develop strategies based on their unique assets and the needs and preferences of their people.

In Rebuilding the Foodshed, Philip Ackerman-Leist provides a roadmap to re-localize our food systems. How? by rebuilding our foodsheds to keep more of our dollars in the local economy, meet food needs affordably and sustainably, and make our food systems more just and resilient. This book showcases some of the most promising, replicable models that are trying to tackle tough issues like distribution and transportation, energy costs, fair labor, rampant food waste, and institutional food needs. By answering these questions, and more, Rebuilding the Foodshed leads us to the next phase of the local food revolution.--COVER.

Environmental engineers support the well-being of people and the planet in areas where the two intersect. Over the decades the field has improved countless lives through innovative systems for delivering water, treating waste, and preventing and remediating pollution in air, water, and soil. These achievements are a testament to the multidisciplinary, pragmatic, systems-oriented approach that characterizes environmental engineering. Environmental Engineering for the 21st Century: Addressing Grand Challenges outlines the crucial role for environmental engineers in this period of dramatic growth and change. The report identifies five pressing challenges of the 21st century that environmental engineers are uniquely poised to help advance: sustainably supply food, water, and energy; curb climate change and adapt to its impacts; design a future without pollution and waste; create efficient, healthy, resilient cities; and foster informed decisions and actions.

National and global efforts have failed to stop climate change, transition from fossil fuels, and reduce inequality. We must now confront these and other increasingly complex problems by building resilience at the community level. The Community Resilience Reader combines a fresh look at the challenges humanity faces in the 21st century, the essential tools of resilience science, and the wisdom of activists, scholars, and analysts working on the ground to present a new vision for creating resilience. It shows that resilience is a process, not a goal; how it requires learning to adapt but also preparing to transform; and that it starts and ends with the people living in a community. From Post Carbon Institute, the producers of the award-winning The Post Carbon Reader, The Community Resilience Reader is a valuable resource for community leaders, college students, and concerned citizens.