What we are doing
This project uses narrative and photography to convene stakeholders and explore interlinkages between food water and energy security in Cape Town and Kumasi. An understanding of African urban metabolisms is invaluable to shaping policies and plans which can provide basic services to rapidly growing urban populations in ways which support socially-inclusive and environmentally-restorative development. Studies of urban metabolism tend to focus on resource flows conducted through networked, centrally-operated infrastructure systems, inadvertently leading to an emphasis on energy and water. Such research findings conclude that, for Africa, improved service delivery is akin to providing networked infrastructure. These findings overlook the reality that multiple services in African cities are delivered in informal manners, in the form of capable interactions which are typically ‘hidden’ from decision makers awareness and processes. These hidden nature-society interactions are uniquely demonstrated in food systems, which are typically informal. Many urban households do not (or cannot) grow their own food and rely on local supermarkets, chain stores or informal small businesses to purchase the food they consume. Tracking the amounts or quality of these foods is difficult, making effective interventions in the food system uncertain and complex. A healthy food flows system will improve sustainability of resources and reduce food loss and food waste, while achieving the desired goal of ‘nutrition for all, forever’. Similarly, urban decision makers need tools to track the levels of water security and energy security, to ensure improved service to their citizens, and to result in improved economic production and social wellbeing. Finding detailed ways to articulate water and energy security as well as track these flows will improve this endeavour.
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