Periodic Reporting for period 1 - CITIES2030 (Co-creating resIlient and susTaInable food systEms towardS FOOD2030)
Periodo di rendicontazione: 2020-10-01 al 2022-03-31
Given the rapid urbanization of the planet, food issues and related challenges are becoming serious and difficult for cities and regions. Food systems have an impact on climate change, environmental degradation, and economic disparity. Huge quantities of food are wasted, not only by consumers but at all levels of the supply chain (FAO, 2015). If cities continue to ignore the challenge of redistributing, reusing, composting, or disposing of wasted food more responsibly, the consequences could be dramatic for people's health. According to the latest UN projections, 68% of the world's population will live in urban areas by 2050, meaning two-thirds of people will live in densely populated cities. Cities are at the center of one of the most demanding challenges of our time: food. Cities depend on external food sources and their needs usually exceed the capacity of the surrounding agricultural region. In the current changing scenarios mentioned above, the Cities2030 project is helping to future-proof urban food systems by rethinking the role of city-regions as agents of positive change for food policies and practices. Cities are multi-actor food ecosystems, where open innovation must be fostered to facilitate the design and adoption of long-term strategies capable of ensuring healthy, nutritious, and sustainable food for all inhabitants and surrounding communities. To support city leaders to assume a key role in City Region Food System (CRFS) sustainable transition, the Cities2030 project provides a knowledge-based framework and a set of guidelines to support decision-making and policymakers. The approach is multi-actor and is based on both Policy Labs and Living Labs, in which system thinking is integrated and adapted to the socio-economic characteristics of the city-regions and their specific needs. The project urges city leaders to link fragmented food initiatives to a global food policy and innovation strategy, to ensure results in line with the political priorities of EU-FOOD 2030. The project actively encourages citizen participation, and transforms consumers from passive recipients to motivated and active change agents. Cities2030 assists the improvement of results-oriented innovation policies and actions within CRFS Labs.
Taking into account CRFS realities, the Cities2030 project promotes a harmonised approach to Policy and Living Labs, to ensure that the outcomes can be compared (also by means of a set of impact indicators) and disseminated via different channels (observatory, single click platform, website and social channels) towards the wide Cities2030 Alliance and follower city-regions.
Thematic working groups of experts are set up to assist city-regions to develop open innovation environment where food policies are defined and improved and where the actors of the Urban Food System are empowered. Several initiatives for education, awareness, capacities building and empowerment are organised throughout the entire project implementation period.
Cities2030 is generating a structured knowledge framework, and rather than systematically creating new developments, implements small but systematic changes per the specific context laying solid foundations for a larger transformation towards sustainable, healthy and inclusive food systems policies, where system thinking, institutional innovation and participatory planning are at the core. Cities2030 generates and deploys a holistic methodology to structure, accelerate and sustain transforming urban food systems and ecosystems, and to deliver frameworks for the renewal of policies and the development of innovations also towards the democratisation of sustainable urban food system practices, which will be piloted in real-scale selected cities. Cities2030 acknowledges and defines practical answers to combine FOOD 2030 pillars, UN’s SDG-11 and the New Urban Agenda.
The first 18 months of the project have been mostly characterised by the engagement of stakeholders and experts and by prototyping the Labs. It was expected to develop 12 CRFS pilot Labs and further deploy to a total of 50. At M18 we have activated 12 pilots and 8 multiplayer CRFS Labs; we had initiated to engage followers.
Thematic working groups of experts are set up to assist city-regions to develop open innovation environment where food policies are defined and improved and where the actors of the Urban Food System are empowered. Several initiatives for education, awareness, capacities building and empowerment are organised throughout the entire project implementation period.
Cities2030 is generating a structured knowledge framework, and rather than systematically creating new developments, implements small but systematic changes per the specific context laying solid foundations for a larger transformation towards sustainable, healthy and inclusive food systems policies, where system thinking, institutional innovation and participatory planning are at the core. Cities2030 generates and deploys a holistic methodology to structure, accelerate and sustain transforming urban food systems and ecosystems, and to deliver frameworks for the renewal of policies and the development of innovations also towards the democratisation of sustainable urban food system practices, which will be piloted in real-scale selected cities. Cities2030 acknowledges and defines practical answers to combine FOOD 2030 pillars, UN’s SDG-11 and the New Urban Agenda.
The first 18 months of the project have been mostly characterised by the engagement of stakeholders and experts and by prototyping the Labs. It was expected to develop 12 CRFS pilot Labs and further deploy to a total of 50. At M18 we have activated 12 pilots and 8 multiplayer CRFS Labs; we had initiated to engage followers.
The main goal of Cities2030 is to create a future proof and effective CRFS via a connected structure centred in the citizen, built on trust, with partners encompassing the entire CRFS. Cities2030 commit to work towards the transformation and restructuring of the way systems produce, transport and supply, recycle and reuse food in the 21st century.In a long term perspective, the key impact of the project is to make more sustainable and more effective the CRFS system transformations, enabling all relevant public and private stakeholders capacity building readiness to deal with the relevant challenges of the sector.
Cities2030 aims at activating and structuring food system transformation in city regions, in the prospect of achieving the SDGs (particularly the SDG 11) and the New Urban Agenda objectives. Cities2030 Labs have the ambition to incorporate a wide group of actors along the urban food value chain for innovating both food policies and practices. At the end of the first reporting period, 12 CRFS pilot labs and 8 additional multiplier labs have been prototyped.
The perspective development of the Cities2030’s CRFS Alliance, which now in M18 has a framework of almost 100 stakeholders, is to achieve a wider “umbrella” of more than 500 organisations active in Cities2030 at the end of the project in September 2024 (M48). The Multi-stakeholders platform is under improvement and in the following months it will be integrated with the CRFS intelligence platform, notably the Ciities2030 Observatory, which architecture is under planning and will be activated in September 2022. The Observatory will works as a decision support system, with its data dashboards, setting up and triggering virtuous innovations both in policies and businesses, but also rooting fertile social, environmental and cultural context of cross-fertilization of the key actors of the food system. In the reporting period several progress have been done in creating supporting documents for CRFS, such as the impact assessment compendium, and tools like the System Thinking Methodology, and comprehensive handbook to develop living labs and the Community platform, encompassing specific areas dedicated to CRFS labs and a collection of 100+ sustainable food innovative practices.
In a long term perspective, the key impact of the project Cities2030 is to make more sustainable and more effective the CRFS system transformations, enabling all relevant public and private stakeholders capacity building readiness to deal with the relevant challenges of the sector. This is clearly evident from the results of the CRFS Labs of Cities2030 which have highlighted not only the need to increase the understanding and the relevance of all the multi-faceted and intertwined aspects of the food sector, but also to improve the capacities for carrying out the most effective actions necessary to achieve the over-arching goal of improvement of the same CRFS processes.
Cities2030 aims at activating and structuring food system transformation in city regions, in the prospect of achieving the SDGs (particularly the SDG 11) and the New Urban Agenda objectives. Cities2030 Labs have the ambition to incorporate a wide group of actors along the urban food value chain for innovating both food policies and practices. At the end of the first reporting period, 12 CRFS pilot labs and 8 additional multiplier labs have been prototyped.
The perspective development of the Cities2030’s CRFS Alliance, which now in M18 has a framework of almost 100 stakeholders, is to achieve a wider “umbrella” of more than 500 organisations active in Cities2030 at the end of the project in September 2024 (M48). The Multi-stakeholders platform is under improvement and in the following months it will be integrated with the CRFS intelligence platform, notably the Ciities2030 Observatory, which architecture is under planning and will be activated in September 2022. The Observatory will works as a decision support system, with its data dashboards, setting up and triggering virtuous innovations both in policies and businesses, but also rooting fertile social, environmental and cultural context of cross-fertilization of the key actors of the food system. In the reporting period several progress have been done in creating supporting documents for CRFS, such as the impact assessment compendium, and tools like the System Thinking Methodology, and comprehensive handbook to develop living labs and the Community platform, encompassing specific areas dedicated to CRFS labs and a collection of 100+ sustainable food innovative practices.
In a long term perspective, the key impact of the project Cities2030 is to make more sustainable and more effective the CRFS system transformations, enabling all relevant public and private stakeholders capacity building readiness to deal with the relevant challenges of the sector. This is clearly evident from the results of the CRFS Labs of Cities2030 which have highlighted not only the need to increase the understanding and the relevance of all the multi-faceted and intertwined aspects of the food sector, but also to improve the capacities for carrying out the most effective actions necessary to achieve the over-arching goal of improvement of the same CRFS processes.