EVENT - Resilient cities in practice

As part of the Recipes For Resilience initiative, organised and led by Nourish Scotland at the COP26, Rikolto and RUAF hosted a session focusing on how cities from different geographies and stages in their food systems transformation journey are putting their local food ambitions into practice to tackle the climate crisis while ensuring social inclusion.

The session started with an introduction by Joy Carey - Senior Programme Officer at RUAF- on how cities can use their food policies and collective actions to tackle climate change, highlighting the importance of integrating food in the climate discussion. Cities’ testimonials from three different countries followed.

How to shift from multi-stakeholder food planning to innovative food sourcing models for the city? Thibault Geerardyn - Food Strategy Facilitator at Leuven 2030 - presented how the city of Leuven is implementing its food strategy through innovative food sourcing models.

Then, the results achieved through the urban and periurban agricultural activities implemented in the city of Rosario since 2002, were showcased by Daniela Mastrangelo - Technical Coordinator of the Secretariat of Environment and Public Space of the Municipality of Rosario in Argentina - in a presentation prepared with Raúl Terrile - Coordinator of the Food Program, Secretariat of Economic Development and Employment of the Municipality of Rosario -.

Tokiana Rakotonirainy - Food Policy Coordinator of the Municipality of Antananarivo in Madagascar and member of the Steering Committee of the Milan Urban Food Policy Pact - and Carmen Zuleta Ferrari - Urban Food Systems and Resilience specialist at FAO - shared their experience in putting the  The City Region Food Systems tool" into practice in the city of Antananarivo.

A panel discussion around three different questions followed:

• What triggered your city to take action on climate change through food? What first steps did you take?
• What are the main challenges that you faced throughout your journey? How did you overcome them?
• In 1 sentence, what recommendations would you give to other cities eager to start a local food transformation trajectory in their city?

One hour and a half of enriching and relevant exchanges between the speakers and an engaged audience was wrapped up by the closing remarks of Jess Halliday - PhD, Associate, RUAF Global Partnership on Sustainable Urban Agriculture and Food Systems -.