Impacts of Urban Agriculture Annual Report.p65 - International ...

Introduction to Urban ecosystems healthUnderstanding both positive and negative healtheffects on households and the urban ecosystem isessential for determining strategies that multiplybenefits and mitigate risks. The urban ecosystemshealth framework provides a better lens for analyzinghealth issues related to urban agriculture. It is based onthe interdependence of human health with the healthof the natural, physical and social environments withinwhich urban populations live. It focuses attention on sixdimensions of urban health where urban and peri-urbanagriculture (UPA) can have both a positive and negativeimpact. These dimensions include: health of urbanpopulations, communal health, quality of the builtenvironment, quality of the physical environment,health and resilience of the biotic community and thehealth of the natural ecosystems.Many urban producer households are vulnerable tocontaminants such as pesticide use, liquid and solidwastes. Heavy dependency and use of pesticides indensely populated urban areas create health problemsfor producers and the natural fertility of soils. AlternativeIntegrated Pest Management strategies are beingintroduced, through farmer field schools, to mitigatethese negative effects. Moreover, water contamination,derived from inadequate water treatment plants indeveloping countries, causes many health problems forurban dwellers. The use of either wastewater orcontaminated river water as a source of irrigation causesmany health issues for producers as well as consumers.Access to natural and physical resources for agricultureand the potential impact of these resources onagriculture is important, although this is not enough.Natural and physical resources, of potentially great useto urban agriculture, go unrecognized by local officialsor remain underutilized by poor urban households.Hence the concept of urban resources recognitionand use is employed to address the high potential ofurban agriculture to mobilize and add value to naturaland physical resources, such as water, and, thus,strengthen and balance capital assets available to urbancommunities. Strongly linked to both the livelihoodsand urban ecosystems health frameworks, this will formthe basis of a third module with an emphasis onresource mapping, modeling and policy development.21