Summary: Urban agriculture (UA) is a vital Nature-based Solution for the Global South, addressing food insecurity, climate resilience, and urban sustainability. It reduces carbon footprints, fosters biodiversity, and enhances community cohesion. Despite benefits like waste recycling and microclimate regulation, mainstreaming UA in India faces research, policy, and planning challenges requiring stronger evidence and integration.
“Urban agriculture (UA) is an important Nature-based Solution that can help the urban locals of growing urban sprawls of the country to reduce pressure on rural and periurban areas for sustainable growth of urban areas.”
– (Dhyani et. al., 2019)
By definition, Nature-based Solutions (NbS) are actions to protect, sustainably manage and restore ecosystems that address societal challenges, simultaneously benefiting people and nature. In this short note, we argue that urban agriculture (UA) can be an effective NbS for multiple problems for cities with limited access to green spaces and fresh food. In the global south, rapid unplanned urbanisation and food insecurity are major hurdles to sustainable development. UA can contribute to food and nutrition security and provide a local and sustainable source of fresh produce. UA can also help improve livelihoods and reduce poverty for many urban dwellers, especially migrants and people living in informal settlements, empowering communities and individuals.
Traditional agricultural practices, such as monoculture, chemical farming and long-distance transportation of food, lead to large-scale deforestation, soil degradation, and greenhouse gas emissions. By promoting local production and consumption, UA can reduce the carbon footprint of our food while contributing to biodiversity conservation by creating green spaces and promoting pollinators. With better living standards and changing diets, the demand for certain types of fresh food, especially fruits and vegetables, is on the rise. Such produce benefit from pollinators that city spaces are able to provide habitats and refugia to, often better than in neighbouring rural agricultural land.
A robust theoretical framework supports UA’s potential to enhance climate change mitigation and adaptation efforts and the resilience of cities. Green roofs and community gardens can absorb and filter rainwater, improving water quality and reducing the risks of urban flooding. UA can also provide shade, absorb heat, and release moisture through transpiration, helping to cool urban areas and reduce the urban heat island effect.
Emerging research studies have shown that UA can foster community engagement and social cohesion. By bringing like-minded community members together to produce, distribute, and share food, UA can catalyse community building and social integration and help develop resilience against climate and environmental shocks. Case studies in Australia emphasise the potential of urban agriculture to promote collaboration and support among marginalised populations, addressing key features of NbS such as aesthetic appeal, trust-building, inclusivity, and co-creation. UA can also help preserve the cultural heritage of a community and region by safeguarding traditional and indigenous plant varieties.
Furthermore, urban agriculture can contribute to the city’s waste management by reusing treated wastewater, promoting the management of organic waste, and upcycling the discarded waste materials for UA. Such practices decrease the overall volume of waste that ends up in landfills, easing the load on municipal authorities and reducing the greenhouse gas emissions from landfills. More often than not, UA practitioners are also involved in allied activities like rainwater harvesting that contribute to the city’s groundwater reserve while reducing the load on stormwater infrastructure. Overall, UA is a holistic NbS in its numerous forms and outcomes that have synergistic climate change, sustainability, and wellbeing implications, making it critical for sustainable inclusive urbanisation.
Multiple roadblocks, however, limit the potential of mainstreaming UA as an NbS in India. Current academic knowledge on the contribution of UA to the growing challenges of urbanisation remains fragmented, especially in the global south. While research on urban NbS primarily focuses on climate resilience, there is now an increasing recognition of the need to consider biodiversity protection and quality of life. The existing academic literature on UA’s contribution often overlooks the societal challenges of urbanisation that NbS should address. Empirical evidence on UA’s role in reconfiguring environmental functions and social well-being, including biodiversity, waste management, water recycling, micro-climate regulation, food security, gender relations, work burdens, land tenure, and community ties, remains limited in countries like India.
Another key challenge is to quantify the current and future potential of UA in sustainable growth of Indian mega-cities. In Indian cities, there is also a lack of integration of NbS potential into policy and planning, despite concrete examples of solutions such as wetland conservation for flood control. Therefore, the emerging evidence around UA’s potential as NbS needs further research and policy push to be able to scale up and scale out.
