Early this year a backyard reservoir was constructed in Carapongo, Lima with the aim to improve human health, the natural environment and household income. Based on previous indications of contamination of the Rimac River, one of three sources of irrigation water for Lima agriculture, a project has undertaken an evaluation of irrigation water quality, to determine the presence of heavy metals, bacteria and parasites. Whilst heavy metals were not found to be a major problem, the water had high levels of e-coli bacteria and parasites, mainly coming from untreated domestic wastewater released into the river.more...

CD-Rom - Anglophone Africa Training Course on Urban Agriculture

Urban Harvest has published an interactive traning CD-Rom entitled: Feeding Cities in Anglophone Africa with urban agriculture: Concepts, tools and case studies for practitioners, planners and policy makers based on the three-week regional training course for Anglophone Africa on Urban Agriculture from 8 - 26 March, 2004. more...

Using GIS for Urban Agriculture in Manila

Unplanned urban growth may have undesirable results, foremost of which are slum formation, traffic congestion, environmental degradation, and a decline in the quality of life. Urban planning is, thus, required to control the combined effects of industrialization, urbanization and population increase. Such planning should be based on an understanding of the spatial changes due to urbanization. more...

Nakuru was once dubbed the ‘cleanest town’ in East Africa, but rapid population growth is altering the urban environment. A formal waste collection system involving one dumpsite on a hill above Lake Nakuru National Park indicates incomplete collection of organic and inorganic wastes with uncollected waste mostly causing problems in the low-income residential areas and a cause for human and environmental health concerns.  more...

Metropolitan areas the world over are experiencing of urban sprawl that causes the loss of open space, loss of the natural environment and loss of agricultural lands. This is a global trend where one hundred years a go approximately 15 percent of the world population lived in urban areas. Today that percentage lies around 50 percent. In Latin America and the Caribbean between 1972 and 2000, the urban population rose from 176.4 million to 390.8 million mainly due to population growth and rural-urban migration. Metropolitan Lima has also gone through dramatic demographic and physical changes in the last 60 years. more...