JPIURBAN-Urban Europe

The project aims to substantially reduce resource inefficiencies in the urban food-energy-water nexus by developing and testing internationally applicable methods. This was undertaken through an international network of Urban Living Labs (ULL) in four urban regions - UK (Bristol), Netherlands (Rotterdam), South Africa (Western Cape) and Brazil (Campinas). Partners in Norway and the USA provide economic valuations of potential impact, and impact-led public education, outreach and dissemination. Waste occurs across food, energy and water (FEW) systems; at the interface of these systems, waste increases significantly the overconsumption of our limited resources: food (e.g. energy lost in food storage), energy (e.g. used to clean water) and water (e.g. nutrients lost in sewage). Resource scarcity is not only a matter of efficiency, but of access, distribution and equality. Each urban context has different pressures and opportunities. The focus of the project is therefore not so much on the specific downstream challenges, but on upstream processes by which cities can identify, test and scale viable and feasible solutions that reduce the most pressing inefficiencies in each context. Norwegian researchers have mainly focused on economic valuations of potential impact. Information and data generated from each of the ULLs has been gathered in order to exchange knowledge on the economics of using waste as a potential resource, identify its origins, instigate resource efficiency and successfully engage with stakeholders and the community. For the individual ULLs, a common issue was in the food sector: 1. Bristol: reducing food waste from both production and consumption; 2. Rotterdam: examining the introduction of new food businesses in Blue City; 3.Western Cape: water treatment for food production and local environmental improvement; 4. Sao Paulo: innovation technology in reducing waste or improving efficiency of production agroecologically. Individual ULLs have used different approaches to analyze the economic impact of waste in their local FEW Nexus. This included input from other partners on stakeholder engagement, modelling and impact. Findings from Bristol indicate it is more efficient to reduce food waste in terms of production, rather than to recycle food after consumption if only environmental impact is considered. However, in current economic system, the generation of food waste is also economically efficient as less waste leads to less consumption, which implies fewer jobs leading to a potential reduction in income such that the costs of reduced income would appear to far outweigh the socio-environmental benefits. This suggests proper economic policy necessary to compensate potential income losses and motivate food waste reduction.

Early work at a consortium-wide level included: introductory presentation and consortium-wide workshop in Rotterdam on impact foundations (e.g. definitions, template tools); follow-up online meetings to discuss the potential for application of these tools in each ULL; reporting and analysis on a plural, context-specific approach to impact planning and monitoring. Following these activities, and in line with the autonomous nature of each ULL, the 4 ULLs managed their own approach to impact, in engaging with their specific, relevant stakeholders and deriving recommendations depending on the outcomes of these discussions. As with all aspects of the programme, progress has been impeded by the Covid pandemic. There are plans to continue into 2022 in some cases, e.g. a paper on economic valuation will be finished jointly by Norwegian researchers and other partners. A consortium-wide report has been co-produced by the ULL leads in partnership with the key consortium leads.

This project aims to map and substantially reduce waste (resource inefficiencies) in the urban food-energy- water (FEW) nexus in city-regions across three continents: Europe, Africa and South America. We will establish four Urban Living Labs (ULL) made up of key stakeholders who together will undertake participatory research to: a) map resource flows; b) identify critical dysfunctional linear pathways; c) agree the response most appropriate to the local context (e.g. policy intervention, technology diffusion); d) model the market and non-market economic value of each intervention; and e) engage with decision-makers to close each loop. We will co-create and test newly integrated problem-solving methods appropriate to each context. We will use micro and macro-economic valuation based on generated metrics to effectively re-balance and communicate the resulting socio-environmental impacts. Knowledge brokerage by peer-to-peer exchange will enable the identification of commonalities across the ULLs and drive the application of our outputs elsewhere in the world. We include four PhDs - two will be shared supervision PhD projects (UK-South Africa) - and one Post-Graduate who will self-manage, under supervision, an international knowledge exchange forum. Ultimately, we will contribute policy decision support models for economically viable waste reduction and rethinking of waste as a resource in the FEW nexus perspective as well as contribute to establish entrepreneurship networks in each ULL to continue working after the formal end of the project.