Resource efficient land use and sustainable urban development are both high on the international, European and regional political agenda. However, both topics are still largely discussed separately from each other and silo thinking prevails. Against the background of a rapidly increasing number of people living in cities and the implications this has on land use an integrated perspective is now needed more than ever.
Challenges and opportunities of an integrated territorial development lie in the reduction of impacts resulting from additional land use for buildings and infrastructure, the establishment of regional resource and nutrient cycles, provision of resources for growing cities and improvement of resilience.
A particular powerful content area that recently receives rising attention in many regions worldwide is the development of city-region-food-systems. Food also serves as a “silo buster” to build coalitions around and to find integrated solutions and new actor coalitions for rural-urban-development. It also has the chance to contribute to various SDGs (SDG 2 on land use, 11 on sustainable cities and rural urban linkages, 12 for food waste reduction and sustainable consumption, 15 to avoid land degradation and environmental protection – to name the most relevant).
· Look in-depth at city region food systems and their resource saving potentials as one applied nexus case.
As physicist, Dr. Harry Lehmann has been General Director I “Environmental Planning and Sustainability Strategies” of the German Federal Environment Agency since 2004. He was an early member, and is now the President, of the Factor 10 Club for resource productivity and sustainable use of natural resources. He is one of the founders of Eurosolar. In 2011 he became Executive Chairman of the World Renewable Energy Council. He has published several books. Since 1985, Harry Lehmann has lectured at various universities, most recently at the University of Luneburg.
Stephanie Wunder works as a Senior Fellow and Coordinator for Land Use Policy & Coordinator Food Systems. Her work at the Ecologic Institute focuses on the sustainable use of land as well as the sustainable use of biomass for energy, feed and food. Among other projects on land use she currently leads the projects Implementing the Sustainable Development Goals for Soil and Rural Urban Nexus – Global Sustainable Land Use and Urbanization. For the EU H2020 food waste project Resource Efficient Food and dRink for the Entire Supply cHain (REFRESH), Stephanie coordinates the overall project communication. Stephanie Wunder frequently teaches for different international University programs and acts as an evaluator for the European research program H2020.
Maruxa Cardama is passionate about social, political, economic and environmental justice for human development, Maruxa is specialist in integrated sustainable urban and territorial development and serves as Urban Adviser in the Cities Alliance Secretariat. Prolific public speaker and analyst, she is also member of the Future Earth Engagement Committee and Urban Knowledge Action Network; member of the University Colleague London UCL-Nature Sustainability Expert Panel on the urban science-policy interface and Global Agendas Adviser to the Conference of European Peripheral Maritime Regions of Europe CPMR. In 2013-2016, Maruxa coordinated Communitas, an international, philanthropy-funded, multi-stakeholder coalition which she founded to pioneer knowledge-based advocacy for the Sustainable Development Goal on Cities & Human Settlements. In 2010-2012, Maruxa co-facilitated the engagement of subnational governments in the UN Rio +20 Conference, while she was Secretary General of the Network of Regional Governments for Sustainable Development nrg4SD.
Dr. Heidrun Moschitz is working as a senior researcher at the Research Institute of Organic Agriculture FiBL in Switzerland, in the Socio-Economics Department. She coordinates the thematic area of Agriculture & Society, interested in developing new approaches that rethink the roles of agricultural policy, rural development and urban areas for achieving a sustainable food and agriculture system. Her particular interest is in trans- and interdisciplinary research and in understanding processes of learning and innovation. Since many years, she has researched the development and challenges of urban food systems in several European and nationally funded projects. She is a lecturer at the ETH Zurich for a BA course on urban food systems. Furthermore, she is a member of the board of the Swiss Academic Society for Environmental Research and Ecology saguf, and leads the society’s working group on urban agriculture.