Integrating the stakeholders' perspective in the design of sustainability accounting methods: the experience of the SustUrbanFoods project

The growing urban population and the environmental awareness of the globalized food system has recently led to the expansion of urban food systems (UFS) through the reincorporation of agriculture in cities and the promotion... [ view full abstract ]

The growing urban population and the environmental awareness of the globalized food system has recently led to the expansion of urban food systems (UFS) through the reincorporation of agriculture in cities and the promotion of alternative supply-chains. In particular, UFS have sprout around cities of developed countries seeking for the enhancement of urban food security and social justice as well as the mitigation of climate change. The multifunctionality of UFS resulted in diversified types of projects, from commercial high-tech farms to community-led social initiatives, and the contribution to urban sustainability varies substantially among them. To date, literature has mostly focused on the quantification of the environmental impact of urban agriculture case studies, with particular attention to the comparison with conventional food production. In addition, limited works have quantified the costs of the systems. However, the evaluation of the social dimension of sustainability has only been approached from a descriptive and qualitative perspective.

The SustUrbanFoods project (MSCA-IF-708672) aims to evaluate the sustainability of UFS by developing an integrated sustainability method to assess UFS in a comprehensive way (i.e., three-bottom approach) based on quantitative methodologies such as Life Cycle Assessment and Ecosystem services valuation. However, the research design follows a participatory method to integrate the perspectives of the different stakeholders involved in UFS. This contribution presents the design of the participatory method and their results.

The participatory design process was developed in the form of stakeholders' workshops. Two different meetings were organized in the city of Bologna (Italy). The first workshop was joined by 20 stakeholders that were distributed in four categorical groups: administration and associations; urban garden managers and practitioners; UFS-related companies and co-ops; and Young researchers on food systems. The second workshop was held within the course on urban agriculture of the ERASMUS+ Urban Green Train project with the participation of 31 students.

During the workshops, three different exercises were proposed. As a first step, the participants identified the elements tied to the environmental, economic and social sustainability of UFS through mind-mapping. As a second step, the participants proposed quantitative indicators to evaluate such elements and complemented their proposal by adding a set of indicators already used in the literature, provided by the organizers. Finally, the participants valued a list of environmental and socio-cultural ecosystem services and ranked their importance for the evaluation of UFS.