Research & reports

Álvaro Luis José Reyes Córdova · Horizontes Amazónicos · Ecuador

A bibliographic review of research on water quality in the Puyo River and its tributaries in Pastaza, Ecuador, compiled studies from scientific databases and institutional repositories reporting physicochemical, microbiological, and heavy metal parameters. The main sources of contamination were found to be wastewater discharges, fecal coliforms, and accumulation of heavy metals such as lead and mercury linked to urban, agricultural, and mining activities, with community perception aligning with technical findings as most of the population rated the water poor quality and associated it with health problems. Over the past twenty years, a progressive deterioration in water quality parameters has been documented, with increases in turbidity and pathogenic microorganisms despite some isolated recovery efforts, and the review concludes that lack of attention from the municipality and prefecture, together with the absence of continuous monitoring, is worsening the water crisis and demands comprehensive, participatory governance.

Zulma Lopez Reyes, Dalia Alshahrani, Jovana Čvorović, Mary May, Maged M. Saad · Frontiers for Young Minds · Global

An educational article on Sustainable Development Goal 2 (Zero Hunger) describing how soil microbes act as natural fertilizers that improve soil quality and protect plants. The authors are researching how to use microbes to help plants grow in warmer climates, testing this work in school gardens where students learn about healthy soils and growing nutritious food using new technologies.

Sumit Vij, Vishal Narain · Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews Water · Global

This review addresses a knowledge gap on how peri-urban residents in Asia and Africa adapt to the impacts of urbanization and climate change on water security. As rural-urban boundaries rapidly blur in the global South, peri-urban spaces are characterized by weakening access to water resources, depleting common property institutions and poor civic engagement, and the review presents the persistent marginalization of peri-urban residents from a water security perspective, while also showing that they do develop adaptation measures. Existing literature is found to focus primarily on (1) increased vulnerability of peri-urban agriculture and allied sectors, (2) barriers and enablers to water-security-related adaptation planning, and (3) justice in peri-urban areas, and the review calls for further study of emerging cooperation and collective action that could reduce conflicts between peri-urban and urban inhabitants and improve water security.

Abdul-Salam Ibrahim, Marney E. Isaac, Thembela Kepe · Land Use Policy · Ghana

Focusing on Ghana, where floods driven by urbanization and climate change are destabilizing urban systems in which land tenure is integral, this study drew on political ecology and land-tenure-security frameworks to examine how floods affect the land tenure security of flood victims. Based on semi-structured interviews with flood victims and planning officials, it found that flood-induced rezoning and new planning schemes, tenant insecurity, relocation, loss of land documents, and threats to urban agriculture all affect flood victims' land tenure security; possessing land documents was found to be important for tenure security but not an absolute condition for victims' perceived security. Post-flood land-use planning for flood risk management was found to have dual potential — it can enhance tenure security and bolster community resilience, but when carried out in an exclusionary way that overlooks the urban poor, it can instead perpetuate inequality and tenure insecurity. The study recommends tenure-responsive land-use planning that embeds contextual, procedural, and distributive equity principles into planning responses to urban floods.

Mouza Mohammed Eissa, Mohamad Zahir Zainudin, Norun Najjah Ahmat · International Journal of Social Science Research · United Arab Emirates

A qualitative study conducted semi-structured interviews with 35 stakeholders — home farmers, commercial producers, policymakers and agritech developers — in the United Arab Emirates, examined against the National Food Security Strategy 2051. It found 70% of home farmers engage in urban agriculture to reduce import dependency, but are constrained by high water costs (cited by 70%) and limited technical training (55%). Commercial farms widely use hydroponics (88%) and vertical farming (62%), though energy-water trade-offs limit scalability. Stakeholders emphasized AI-driven tools for water-use optimization (75%) and blockchain for traceability (45%); the most desired digital-platform features were real-time soil and weather data (90%), centralized subsidy access (80%) and market linkages (65%), though fragmented data systems currently limit their effectiveness. Policy implementation gaps persist, with 60% of farmers unaware of subsidy programs and minimal integration across agricultural initiatives; the study recommends expanding solar-powered irrigation subsidies, improving training and extension services, and developing a unified digital platform connecting farmers, policymakers and agritech stakeholders.

Stefano Follesa, Leila Farahbakhsh, Xinxin Song · DOAJ (DOAJ: Directory of Open Access Journals) · Global

A paper examines urban agriculture as a process capable of promoting environmental sustainability, social inclusion and the circular economy, proposing ways to use and develop it. Through an interdisciplinary approach based on "demand maps," it presents an implementation model aligning users' needs with design solutions. Critical analysis of case studies identifies benefits including reducing urban heat islands, supporting biodiversity, enhancing food security, fostering social cohesion, and aiding the development of vulnerable communities. The guidelines presented aim to encourage the use of demand maps in urban decision-making processes to support participatory, inclusive and sustainable strategies.

Shikha Patel, Deepthi John, Ahmad Mohammad Ahmad, Raffaello Furlan, Rima J. Isaifan · Journal of Sustainable Development Law and Policy (The) · Global

A 2025 study in the Journal of Sustainable Development Law and Policy used Onaiza, a low-rise mixed-use residential neighbourhood on Qatar's western coast representative of suburban Doha, as a case study to examine how urban agriculture could be integrated into land use policy as a climate-change mitigation strategy in Doha Municipality. Drawing on a literature review, examination of successful case studies, and expert interviews, it identified challenges and potential for permitting urban agriculture as a land use, then produced a design proposal amending land use policy through urban planning simulations, subsidies and other incentives. It starts from the premise that food systems, food security and urban agriculture are not yet well positioned within Qatar's existing land use policy, despite the country's vulnerability to food imports and to climate change.

Nazmul Haque, Ranjan Roy, Abdullah All Imtiaz, Rafio Rahmatullah, Ronzon Chandra Das, S.M. Abdul Gani, Md. Shamsuzzoha, Kamrun Nahar Sheuly, Khalid Syfullah, Akther Banu · International Journal of Agricultural Extension · Bangladesh

A study of 105 climate-smart agriculture (CSA)-practicing farmers in Chuadanga district, southwestern Bangladesh, using structured face-to-face interviews. Multiple regression analysis in SPSS (version 20) across eleven variables found that education level, organizational participation, ICT access and positive attitudes toward CSA significantly influenced adoption, while farm size and access to finance had comparatively less impact. The model explained 47.7% of the variance in CSA adoption.

Md. Maruf Billah, Al Muzahid, Md. Nasrul Millat, Mohammad Mahmudur Rahman‬ · Journal of Environmental Science Health & Sustainability · Bangladesh

A structured face-to-face survey of 200 randomly selected residents in Bangladesh, conducted in 2024 and analyzed with SPSS version 29, examined perceptions of urban agriculture. 34.5% of respondents fell into the early-adopter category; rooftop gardening was the most widely adopted practice (93.5%), followed by homestead gardens (80%) and container gardens (66.5%). 94.5% perceived urban agriculture as contributing medium to high to environmental sustainability, and 92.5% saw reduced cost of living as its main benefit. Innovativeness, training exposure, extension access, media contact, education, group membership and market access were identified as adoption factors, while 89% of respondents reported facing medium to high constraints to adoption.

Andreas Wesener, Matt Morris · · Global

This chapter examines urban gardening in Christchurch, New Zealand, since the 2010 and 2011 Canterbury earthquakes through the lens of resilience — disaster resilience, community resilience, food resilience, and the broader notion of urban resilience. After discussing post-earthquake urban gardening projects in Christchurch, it shows that notions of food resilience are contextually interwoven with the region's earthquake disaster history. It finds, however, that recent initiatives show discussions of food resilience have broadened to become inclusive of a range of environmental, socio-economic, and cultural challenges, with Christchurch's urban gardens becoming part of a wider resilience narrative responding to more diverse crisis scenarios. The chapter argues that this broadening of discussion and focus creates new opportunities — including new funding avenues, research, and strategic investment — for urban gardening.

Robert C. Brears · Cambridge University Press eBooks · Global

This book chapter outlines best practices and strategies for cities transitioning toward becoming circular and liveable. It covers applying circular economy principles across urban sectors including waste management, energy efficiency, transportation and urban agriculture, using a 5R approach — reduce, reuse, recycle, restore and recover. It presents strategies such as energy-efficient financing for building retrofits, grant programmes for water reuse, and e-waste collection and disposal systems, and discusses public participation and stakeholder collaboration through a Quadruple Helix model involving academia, industry, government and civil society. Case studies from Amsterdam, Paris and Copenhagen illustrate circular business models and governance frameworks, and the chapter sets out a roadmap centered on education, policy innovation and community engagement.

Puteri Sidrotul Nabihah Saarani, Asniza Hamimi Abdul Tharim, Zulkefle Ayob, Asmalia Che Ahmad, Osman Mohd Tahir · Journal of Construction in Developing Countries · Malaysia

Using a triangulation method combining a Delphi survey with a case study, researchers identified life-cycle cost (LCC) components and phases for smart urban farming (SUF) practices in Malaysia. Iterative semi-structured interviews and Delphi rounds built expert consensus on which SUF practices matter for LCC assessment, producing a structured framework for classifying these cost components.

Grace O’Connor, Kimberley Reis, Georgette Leah Burns, Cheryl Desha, Ingrid Burkett · Journal of Rural Studies · Australia

Researchers investigated the lived experiences of 24 small-scale farmers across 16 ecologically sustainable farms in South-East Queensland and the Northern Rivers region of New South Wales, Australia, examining how their experiences shaped participation in societal transitions to sustainable food systems and contributions to social-ecological resilience. Participants' narratives largely aligned with the "new peasantry" movement, and the paper uses a lens of collective autonomy to discuss how shared responsibility between individuals, communities, organizations, and governments could be reperceived through collective paradigm shifts, community-supported agriculture, and universal basic income.

Ioana | https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4755-779X Florea · OAPEN (The OAPEN Foundation) · Global

This entry is a chapter, "The Political Ecology of Collective Urban Gardening," within the New Routledge Handbook of Political Ecology, but the abstract provided describes only the handbook's overall structure and editorial approach -- 52 chapters across three parts on decolonizing political ecology, activism and praxis, and the making of twenty-first-century natures -- rather than this chapter's specific subject, methods, or findings on urban gardening.

B Sreejith, B Maneesh · South Asian Journal of Agricultural Sciences · Global

Set against challenges to social equity, ecological balance, and global food availability from population growth and rapid urbanization, this review paper surveys existing literature linking urban agriculture to multiple Sustainable Development Goals — including poverty eradication, ending hunger, health and well-being, gender equality, economic growth and employment, inclusive urban development, sustainable consumption and production, climate action, land ecosystems, and global partnerships — and discusses policy implications for India. It compiles prior findings associating urban agriculture with locally grown food supply, resource optimization and emissions reduction through urban forestry, rooftop gardens and vertical farming, reduced food miles, and education, skill-building and community participation opportunities including for women and youth. The paper presents no original empirical data of its own.

Hyeyung Yoon, N. Lee · · Global

Community activities in which citizens create needed activities in their own region span fields such as welfare, care, urban agriculture, autonomy, and environment, alongside activities organized by groups such as women and youth. This study focuses on the culture, arts, and media field within these community activities, investigating and analyzing cases to build "cultural communities" that activate citizens' cultural engagement and enhance sustainability, categorizing the cases and organizing the characteristics of each type, and proposing specific strategies. It categorizes cultural communities into three types — network-centered, subject-centered, and regional-asset-centered — and proposes measures for revitalization and sustainability: activating networks through weak ties, expanding participants and strengthening solidarity through multi-membership, and diversifying the use of and participation in regional cultural and artistic assets.

Nurulanis Ahmad, Zarita Ahmad Baharum, Yasmin Mohd Adnan, Nor Nazihah Chuweni · PLANNING MALAYSIA · Malaysia

This study qualitatively explored stakeholders' perspectives on urban agriculture (UA) toward sustainable urban development in Malaysia, using semi-structured interviews grounded in stakeholder theory. It drew on 15 stakeholders selected from different authority levels -- the Department of Agriculture Malaysia and PLANMalaysia at the federal level, the Department of Agriculture Perak at the state level, Subang Jaya City Council at the local level, private property managers, and academicians -- who were top management, practitioners, and officers with relevant background in urban agriculture, urban planning, and real estate. The findings produced a framework of action plans centred on social, economic, environmental, policy, and technological-innovation dimensions, intended to guide policymakers and urban planners in developing action plans for advancing UA toward sustainable urban development.

Jan Grossarth · Discover Cities · Global

This paper critically examines the dominance of quantification—certification scores, KPIs, life-cycle assessment—in sustainability practice for cities and buildings (including urban agriculture), arguing that data-driven metrics strip out the emotional and narrative meaning of sustainability. The authors label the shift from a culturally rich orientation to a purely technical, quantitative practice a "tragedy of sustainability," and argue that narrative-focused interviews and real-life storytelling in architecture and urban planning should not just accompany KPIs and ratings but be prioritized over them. The paper is a conceptual argument, not an empirical study with data or case findings.

Augustin Tshilumba Ilunga, Michel Mbumba Bandi, Albert Tshinyama Ntumba, Damien-Joseph Muteba Kalala · Revue Africaine d’Environnement et d’Agriculture · Democratic Republic of Congo

A study of urban agriculture in Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of Congo—a sector described as vital for food security and employment amid rapid urbanization, food insecurity, and unemployment, where farms face significant challenges including land pressure, restricted access to credit, and lack of institutional support. The study aimed to (i) examine the motivations of agri-entrepreneurs, (ii) assess their impact on farm viability, and (iii) identify the economic and non-economic factors influencing business sustainability, using a qualitative and quantitative survey combining 20 semi-structured interviews across three peripheral zones (via snowball sampling) with documentary analysis. Three categories of entrepreneurs were identified: civil servants farming as a supplementary activity, private-sector employees investing in farming, and traders farming to secure their survival. Non-pecuniary motivations such as social engagement and passion strengthened resilience, but land insecurity, a financing deficit, and lack of training were identified as the major obstacles farms face; observed adaptive strategies included diversification and informal partnerships. The study concludes by calling for integrated strategies to secure land tenure, facilitate access to credit, and professionalize the sector while integrating peri-urban agriculture into urban planning processes.

Bojan Baletić, Iva Bedenko, Marijo Spajić · · Croatia

A chapter examining the implementation of nature-based solutions (NBS) in the Zagreb Living Lab, in the post-industrial area of Sesvete, Croatia, as part of the EU proGIreg project. Key initiatives include the "City Gardens" project, offering citizens free plots for sustainable urban gardening, and a therapeutic garden designed for individuals with disabilities, alongside integration of green technologies including a modular urban farm combining aquaponics with green roofs and walls. Despite challenges from the COVID-19 pandemic and earthquakes, the chapter states these initiatives demonstrated the potential of NBS to enhance urban regeneration, social inclusion, and environmental sustainability, emphasizing co-design processes involving local stakeholders and citizens that successfully fostered community engagement and acceptance of NBS. It discusses challenges and opportunities in operationalizing NBS within urban planning and policy and reflects on the potential for scaling these solutions and their role in shaping Sesvete's future development.

Alejandra Acevedo-De-los-Ríos, Favio R. Chumpitaz-Requena, Daniel R. Rondinel-Oviedo, Úrsula Cárdenas‐Mamani, Johan Manuel Redondo · Environmental Science & Policy · Global

This study used a System Dynamics model to simulate five 10-year policy scenarios for an informal settlement in a developing country, addressing settlement consolidation and women's access to formal employment: business-as-usual, time-quality, women's formal employment, circularity (including organic waste management with urban gardens and urban agriculture), and a comprehensive scenario combining all interventions. Individual solutions alone did not fully capture potential synergies, whereas the comprehensive scenario reduced by 47.5% the time needed to improve women's formal employability, a result linked to the settlement consolidation process.

Edwin Javier Ortega Zúñiga · Ediciones Comunicación Científica eBooks · Colombia

A study of Palmira, Colombia — a city with a long tradition as the country's agricultural capital — finds that it nonetheless faces significant food insecurity. Prior research reviewed in the study attributes this to an aging rural population and young people's declining interest in farming (which has shrunk the available labor force and limited adoption of new technology), gender inequality that restricts women's access to agricultural resources and decisions, climate change impacts such as droughts and floods on production, and accelerated urbanization that has reduced cropland and fragmented the agricultural landscape. As a potential response, the study describes a pilot project at four sites in the city that installed small-space vegetable production systems, which it reports functioned as a viable source of fresh food in dense urban settings. The authors call for a multidisciplinary approach combining social, economic and environmental factors to address food insecurity in Palmira.

Parisi A., Walthall B., Clerino P., Firmbach P., Onyszkiewicz M., Vicente Vicente J. L. · Environmental Evidence · Global

A protocol for a systematic map of the scholarly literature on the relationship between urban agriculture (UA) and gentrification. The authors note that existing accounts variously present gentrification as a possible outcome of UA activities, as a risk that UA initiatives themselves face, and as other kinds of relationship, and argue that these divergent accounts are partly explained by different theoretical engagements with gentrification and by the breadth of activities gathered under 'urban agriculture'. It sets out the search and review strategy and aims to expose gaps in dominant academic discourses. Being a protocol, it reports no findings yet.

Sunamis Fabelo Concepción, Elizabeth Peña Turruellas, Maruchi Alonso Esquivel · Latin American and Caribbean Studies · Global

A discussion piece examines opportunities for cooperation on food security and sovereignty between Cuba and the Republic of Korea following the reestablishment of diplomatic relations between the two countries. It highlights the importance of a legal framework recognizing healthy, adequate nutrition as a fundamental right, and identifies urban agriculture — an area of success for both nations — as a key strategy for pursuing sovereign, local, and sustainable food systems. The piece frames this as an opening for scientific diplomacy grounded in mutual respect and long-term partnership, presenting no empirical data or measured outcomes.

Jennifer Newell, Siobhan Cox, Rory Doherty · Urban Agriculture & Regional Food Systems · Global

A systematic review synthesized literature on the oral bioaccessible fraction (BAF) of arsenic, cadmium, chromium, nickel, and lead in vegetables grown on contaminated soils, drawing values from multiple online databases across potentially toxic elements (PTEs), in vitro test methods, and vegetable types. The review starts from the premise that many urban and peri-urban brownfield sites carry a legacy of soil metal and metalloid contamination, so crops grown there may pose human health risks. Median PTE BAFs ranked Cd > Ni > Cr > As > Pb; among in vitro methods, the unified BARGE method (UBM) produced the highest median BAFs (63.0% gastric, 59.6% gastrointestinal); and by crop type, BAFs ranked non-vegetables (e.g., rice, fungi) > legumes > root vegetables > bulb vegetables > leafy vegetables.