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Workshop,
2 – 7 October 2001, Nairobi, Kenya
Appropriate
Methods for Urban Agriculture:
Research
, Policy Development, Planning, Implementation and
Evaluation
Urban agriculture is an ancient practice but a recent
focus of attention for a wide range of professionals
associated with urban management, urban planning and
agriculture. In the past these fields have been
quite separate, and have elaborated their own
approaches and methods associated with policy
development, planning, research and monitoring and
evaluation. We believe that to strengthen and
develop agriculture in the urban environment, there
is a pressing need not
only to explore the adaptation of the wide range of
methods used in rural agricultural research and
development, but also to provide an innovative integration of these procedures
with the specifically urban methods applied to
understanding planning and policy issues.
Given these considerations three organizations, ETC-RUAF,
SIUPA,
and HABITAT
Urban Management Program for Latin America and
the Caribbean (UNCHS-UMP-LAC) agreed to organize a
workshop on the issue. The workshop has the
following objectives:
1.
Bring
together, exchange and discuss field experiences
with a variety of methodologies related to (intra-
and peri-) urban agriculture research, policy
formulation, project planning, implementation and
monitoring/evaluation.
2.
Analyse
the adaptations needed in existing methodologies
applied in the field of urban agriculture in order
to make them more participatory, inter-sectoral and
more cost-effective.
3.
Assess
the relevance of methodologies applied in other
fields (e.g rural agriculture, urban environmetal
planning, a/) for use in the field of urban
agriculture
4.
Identify
effective ways to realise such improvements
To help achieve these objectives, six thematic areas
were identified that cover the major methodological
concerns in urban agriculture and allow a more
focused debate and synthesis:
- Situation analysisis/diagnosis and
baseline studies on UPA
- Participatory UPA policy formulation and
planning
- The integration of UPA in urban land use
planning
- Participatory technology development in
UPA
- Marketing assessments and micro-enterprise
development related to UPA
- Monitoring and evaluation of the impacts
of UPA
As an expert consultation, the meeting is planned to
minimize formal presentations and maximize workgroup
interactions, discussions and outputs leading to a
menu of methods for use in the research and
development of urban and peri-urban agriculture. Six
coordinators have taken responsibility for pooling
and synthesizing the methodological experiences in
the six thematic areas.
The Workshop is part of a
step-wise process leading to an enriched body of
methods which urban and agricultural professionals
can use to strenthen urban agriculture in their
cities. The syntheses discussed and debated during
the workshop will be revised based on workshop
inputs and short versions of these papers will be
published in the Urban
Agriculture Magazine (no.5,
December 2001). These papers will also provide the
starting point
for an email conference to be run early in the new year (See Urban
Agriculture Magazine for more information).
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