On the occasion of the EWA-BELT General Assembly, held on September 24th, 2024, at Spazio Cairoli in Milan, Cécile Michel, a representative of the Milan Urban Food Policy Pact, highlighted the important relationship between food and cities.
The Milan Urban Food Policy Pact, launched in 2015, is a non-binding international agreement among local governments that commit to improving their approach to food management. The pact now involves 290 cities worldwide, 41 of which are based in Africa and it has a wide range of partners, from international organizations to NGOs.
As stated by Ms. Michel, cities all around the world are very different from each other, but at the same time, all of them have to face the same challenges such as administration, electoral cycles, and growing urbanization. With global urbanization steadily increasing, cities are playing a crucial role in transforming food systems to make them more sustainable, equitable, and resilient. Over the last few years, the city of Milan has become more and more aware of the tight relationship between urban expansion and food management.
Ms Michel explained that the Pact is based on 3 pillars:
Providing cities with a framework for their actions, which is a set of 37 recommended measures. This first pillar is built on 6 fundamental areas: governance, creation of standing committees and regulations to protect urban agricultural areas; sustainable diet and nutrition, introduction of school feeding programs, school gardens and regulations against junk food; social and economic equity, projects such as markets run by women and indicator systems for urban food insecurity; food production, support for urban and sub-urban agriculture through initiatives such as micro-gardening or greenbelt restoration; food supply and distribution, implementing mobile markets and reducing the length of food supply chains and finally food waste, composting, awareness campaigns and innovative use of waste, such as insect cultivation.
Collaboration with FAO and the Rural Foundation. Together with the Pact, they developed a monitoring framework in order to allow cities to evaluate the implementation of their actions.
Milan Pact Awards: this is a competition between the signatory cities that present their best practices to implement food management. The competition is extremely useful because it allows the MUFPP to be updated on what the signatory cities are experimenting with, and it also represents a way to collect and bring out knowledge, initiatives, policies, and practices and incorporate them into a global platform for city-to-city exchange. So far, more than 621 examples of innovative solutions have been collected, creating a “living library” of urban food policies.
During the General Assembly, Ms. Michel showcased different examples of initiatives carried out by some of the signatory cities that have been successful. For instance, Addis Ababa, in Ethiopia, has developed a large-scale school feeding program. Rosario, in Argentina, is restoring its greenbelt using agroecological techniques. Whereas Surakarta, in Indonesia, is using non-avoidable food waste from the hotel industry to grow insects. And finally, Nairobi, in Kenya, with the support of the MUFPP, has developed urban-specific food indicators.
Although cities are often perceived as a major cause of environmental problems, the Pact shows that they can be part of the solution. Through targeted food policies, local governments have the power to positively affect public health, reduce waste, and promote environmental sustainability.
In conclusion, the city of Milan is an example of how cooperation among cities can help realize a global change. This approach offers hope for a future in which food becomes not only a necessity but also a tool for building sustainable societies.
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