Urban/Peri-urban Adaptation (UPA) project

START together with UNEP and the WMO recently completed an assessment of urban and peri-urban agriculture involving partners from nine cities across West Africa, East Africa and South Asia. The assessments advanced knowledge of how rapid urban development and climate pressures converge to negatively impact urban and peri-urban agriculture in Africa and Asia. Food grown in and around these cities plays a critical role in ensuring diversity of urban diets—through offering important sources of fresh vegetables, poultry, dairy, and eggs—and providing critical environmental services to cities related to managing flooding and reducing urban waste streams through reuse of organic wastes.

One of those nine cities was Ibadan, Nigeria where the assessment was led by Prof. Ibidun Adelekan from the University of Ibadan’s Geography Department. Dr. Adelekan’s work has ensured that the team’s efforts have a strong link into policy and decision making. Her team recruited an expert from the Ibadan Urban Regional Planning Board as a lead author in the assessment, and engaged a wide range of stakeholders—from city and state government, national ministries, and farmers’ associations—early in the process to help orient the direction of the assessment towards producing actionable knowledge for urban resilience planning.

The findings of the Ibadan assessment have fed directly into the Ibadan Urban Flood Management Project and have given city officials a better understanding of how to work with women farmers involved in Ibadan’s vibrant urban agriculture sector.