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A Holistic Sustainability Assessment Method for Urban Food System Governance

Landert, Jan; Schader, Christian; Moschitz, Heidrun and Stolze, Matthias (2017) A Holistic Sustainability Assessment Method for Urban Food System Governance. Sustainability, 9 (4), pp. 1-21.

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Summary

A growing number of people live in cities. Urban food systems and their impacts on ecosystems and socio-economic conditions are becoming increasingly important. To address the challenge of making urban food systems more sustainable, a rising number of assessments of urban food systems have been published. Some used large quantitative datasets while others were descriptive in nature and/or do not address the whole thematic spectrum of sustainability. In this study, an indicator set was developed, which uses widely available data to address all dimensions of sustainability. The indicators focus on policies and measures of public administration and local politics and are based on the guidelines for Sustainability Assessment of Food and Agriculture Systems (SAFA) by the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO). To operationalize the SAFA-Guidelines, we developed, in a participatory process, a multi-criteria assessment method with 97 indicators for evaluating 51 of the 58 SAFA subthemes, which were deemed relevant for the context of an urban food system. The first application of this method in the city of Basel, Switzerland, revealed concrete areas of improvement relating to the sustainability of the food system. In combination with cost-effectives analysis, stakeholder consultation, and monitoring measures, the results of the assessment method can be used to initiate the process of moving towards more sustainable urban food systems.


EPrint Type:Journal paper
Keywords:urban food system, sustainability assessment, SAFA Guidelines, sustainable development goals, sustainable cities, indicators, urban food policy, Department of Socio-Economics, Urban areas, Urban Agriculture Basel: The Role of Urban Agriculture for a Sustainable Urban Food System
Agrovoc keywords:
Language
Value
URI
English
food systems
http://aims.fao.org/aos/agrovoc/c_bea5db85
English
sustainability
http://aims.fao.org/aos/agrovoc/c_33560
Subjects: Food systems > Community development
Food systems > Food security, food quality and human health
Food systems > Policy environments and social economy
Environmental aspects
Research affiliation: Switzerland > FiBL - Research Institute of Organic Agriculture Switzerland > Society > Rural sociology
ISSN:EISSN 2071-1050
DOI:10.3390/su9040490
Related Links:http://www.fibl.org/en/themes/food-systems-green-spaces.html
Deposited By: Schader, Dr. Christian
ID Code:31403
Deposited On:06 Apr 2017 08:43
Last Modified:27 Oct 2021 13:59
Document Language:English
Status:Published
Refereed:Peer-reviewed and accepted

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