NICE project team visits ETH Zurich

In March, the NICE project team facilitated a peer-learning week among Swiss and cities of the NICE project in Rwanda, Kenya, and Bangladesh, with field visits in Zurich and Geneva.

The goal of the visits was to allow for a sharing of experiences in designing and implementing interventions that improve the nutrition of vulnerable groups, women, and youth through supplying nutritious food produced using agroecological practices.

One day of the visit was held at ETH Zurich, where the NICE cities representatives met and exchanged with Zurich city representatives. The public was then able to join in discussions with the consortium in the evening at the seminar ‘How do we build sustainable urban food systems?’

At the event, the varied presenters highlighted the importance of the larger urban and peri-urban context where aspects and questions of food and nutrition security, infrastructure, health, and energy need to be considered simultaneously. They shared experiences from their local contexts on how to tackle key challenges of urban food systems such as sustainability, justice, nutrition, and resilience. And they highlighted that using a coordinated food system approach in urban food systems provides opportunities for livelihoods, improved diets especially for women and youth, and an increased agency of all food system actors.

Experiences and learnings from different cities where shared and it became clear that it is essential to look beyond market sites and also consider logistics, transport, processing and governance to improve food security and nutrition outcomes. Furthermore, beyond markets, non-market mechanisms, such as school meals programs, community kitchens, food banks, and food aid, play a key role in addressing food and nutrition needs of an urban population.