Urban Agriculture for Poverty Alleviation:A Case Study of Hyderabad, India

<p>Conceptualising sustainable development as that which seeks to achieve holistic well-being means that as a barrier to attaining and sustaining well-being, poverty takes on a similarly more broad definition. Within this framework it is proposed that the breakdown of community; the extinction of experience; degradation of the natural environment; and food insecurity are examples of poverty in the contemporary urban setting because they obstruct access to overall well-being. Through a case study of the Resource Centres for Urban Agriculture and Food Security - Cities Farming for the Future (RUAF-CFF) project being piloted in Surabhi Colony, Hyderabad, India, urban agriculture is assessed as a means of alleviating these diverse forms of poverty. While the findings indicate some success at the project level, urban agriculture's limited ability to address Hyderabad's more widespread and pressing problems - in particular its water scarcity - coupled with the form of development the city is taking means that it is unlikely urban agriculture will gain the institutional support necessary for its further spread throughout the city. Although such findings do not inspire hope for the future use of urban agriculture as a poverty alleviation strategy within Hyderabad, a number of issues are considered which suggest that urban agriculture should rather be supported for its ability to facilitate 'good change' in our urban centres.</p>

Urban Agriculture for Poverty Alleviation:A Case Study of Hyderabad, India

<p>Conceptualising sustainable development as that which seeks to achieve holistic well-being means that as a barrier to attaining and sustaining well-being, poverty takes on a similarly more broad definition. Within this framework it is proposed that the breakdown of community; the extinction of experience; degradation of the natural environment; and food insecurity are examples of poverty in the contemporary urban setting because they obstruct access to overall well-being. Through a case study of the Resource Centres for Urban Agriculture and Food Security - Cities Farming for the Future (RUAF-CFF) project being piloted in Surabhi Colony, Hyderabad, India, urban agriculture is assessed as a means of alleviating these diverse forms of poverty. While the findings indicate some success at the project level, urban agriculture's limited ability to address Hyderabad's more widespread and pressing problems - in particular its water scarcity - coupled with the form of development the city is taking means that it is unlikely urban agriculture will gain the institutional support necessary for its further spread throughout the city. Although such findings do not inspire hope for the future use of urban agriculture as a poverty alleviation strategy within Hyderabad, a number of issues are considered which suggest that urban agriculture should rather be supported for its ability to facilitate 'good change' in our urban centres.</p>

Urban nature at the fingertips: Investigating wild food foraging to enable nature interactions of urban dwellers

Meaningful human–nature interactions can counteract the extinction of experience and positively influence people’s nature relatedness, health and wellbeing. In this study, we explored urban wild food foraging to understand how best to enable human-nature interactions in cities by means of foraging. Using a structured questionnaire, a total of 458 residents of Vienna, Austria were surveyed. Sixty-four percent of visitors of public urban green spaces previously foraged for wild food species, whereas foraging frequencies were related to the targeted plant species and their life forms. People who foraged more frequently had greater nature relatedness, more childhood foraging experiences and lived on the outskirts of the city, but their socio-demographic backgrounds were heterogeneous. Social acceptance and lack of access to wild foods were perceived to be barriers. To promote nature relatedness through urban foraging, the legal framework, access to low-contamination foraging areas, availability of wild foods and social acceptance need to be improved.

What Environmental and Personal Factors Determine the Implementation Intensity of Nature-Based Education in Elementary and Lower-Secondary Schools?

As society becomes increasingly urbanized, children are becoming much less likely to experience nature. This progressive disengagement from the natural world, often termed the ‘extinction of experience’, has been viewed both as a key public health issue and one of the most fundamental obstacles to halting global environmental degradation. School education has an important role in mitigating and reversing the ongoing extinction of experience. Here, we examine the role of several factors that determine the implementation intensities of nature-based education by science teachers in the classrooms of both primary and secondary schools. We performed a large-scale questionnaire survey comprising 363 elementary and 259 lower-secondary schoolteachers. Several factors predicted the implementation intensity of nature-based education in schools. The most important predictor was teachers’ levels of nature-relatedness, with nature-orientated teachers being more likely to provide nature-based education in their classes. Levels of teachers’ ecological knowledge, frequency of childhood nature experiences, and greenness within the school were also positively associated with the implementation intensity of education. Our results suggest that, to promote nature-based education in schools, it is important to increase schoolteachers’ nature-relatedness and ecological knowledge, as well as to provide more green spaces within schools.

Vulture, culture and more: putting human-dimensions back in the saddle for conservation policy

Vulture collapse in South Asia accompanied rapid urbanisation. However, the Indian-Subcontinent’s “Action Plan for Vulture Conservation'' and the Conservation of Migratory Species of Wild Animals’ (CMS) “Multi-species Action Plan to Conserve African-Eurasian vultures” reflect poorly on how their scavenging services factored in the regional social-ecological tool - a nature-based-solution. We report the ethnography of the extinction of experience concerning vultures in the tropical megacity of Delhi to contribute to wildlife restoration policies in human-use landscapes. People anthropomorphised avian scavengers while sharing perceptions that promoted ritual feeding of crows and kites. It attracted and supported enormous bird-flocks in the region, an ecological response to the rapid niche-evacuation. Stakeholders’ perceptions that offered links in vulture salience and charisma corresponded with respective socio-cultural legends, based on bird morphology, behaviour, and ecosystem services. Conflating with ethnoecology, cultural legends mediated human-animal interface, based on species-specific life-history traits. The latter inextricably tied humans and vultures in their population and demographic parameters and mutual tolerance in behaviour that promoted co-existence. Therefore, wildlife restoration in urbanising landscapes is a moving target, necessitating policies sensitive to progressive loss and/or changes in associative heritage through shifting economic and cultural practices, and socio-cultural stories. In order to uphold their erstwhile functional ecology, vultures would need to behaviourally fathom new built-up spaces, interference from competing scavengers and mediatised misinformation.

Spaceship Earth Revisited: The Co-Benefits of Overcoming Biological Extinction of Experience at the Level of Person, Place and Planet

Extensive research underscores that we interpret the world through metaphors; moreover, common metaphors are a useful means to enhance the pursuit of personal and collective goals. In the context of planetary health—defined as the interdependent vitality of all natural and anthropogenic ecosystems (social, political and otherwise)—one enduring metaphor can be found in the concept of “Spaceship Earth”. Although not without criticism, the term “Spaceship Earth” has been useful to highlight both resource limitations and the beauty and fragility of delicate ecosystems that sustain life. Rene Dubos, who helped popularize the term, underscored the need for an exposome perspective, one that examines the total accumulated environmental exposures (both detrimental and beneficial) that predict the biological responses of the “total organism to the total environment” over time. In other words, how large-scale environmental changes affect us all personally, albeit in individualized ways. This commentary focuses the ways in which microbes, as an essential part of all ecosystems, provide a vital link between personal and planetary systems, and mediate the biopsychosocial aspects of our individualized experience—and thus health—over our life course journey. A more fine-grained understanding of these dynamics and our power to change them, personally and collectively, lies at the core of restoring “ecosystems balance” for person, place and planet. In particular, restoring human connectedness to the natural world, sense of community and shared purpose must occur in tandem with technological solutions, and will enhance individual empowerment for personal well-being, as well as our collective potential to overcome our grand challenges. Such knowledge can help shape the use of metaphor and re-imagine solutions and novel ways for restoration or rewilding of ecosystems, and the values, behaviors and attitudes to light the path toward exiting the Anthropocene.