Quito, Ecuador: pioneering food as part of urban resilience

Quito is one of the very few cities to have institutionalised food within its urban resilience strategy. With a long history of urban agriculture and food system assessments, Quito has developed resilience capacities to address multiple shocks and stresses. The Resilience Strategy of the Metropolitan District of Quito, published in 2017, includes the goal to ‘promote the food economy as a foundation for development’ as part of the pillar to forge a ‘resourceful and solid economy’.

This goal includes three actions:

• Develop a plan to strengthen Quito’s food system
• Strengthen the urban agriculture programme in Quito (AGRUPAR);
• Develop a Sustainable Agricultural Production programme.

The recognition of food as a component of urban resilience followed Quito’s participation as a pilot city in the first phase of the RUAF-FAO City Region Food assessment and planning programme from 2015 to 2018. The assessment and consultations under this project highlighted the vulnerability of the food system to many hazards including climatic, volcanic and seismic events and landslides, human pressures caused by consumption patterns, agricultural production, new industrial and residential developments, and social, economic and political crises.

Through a series of participatory events, awareness was raised among actors from across the food system, and a multi-stakeholder platform, the Agro-Food Pact of Quito (PAQ), was formed in 2017. In 2018, a Food Charter was signed, and PAQ proposed an action plan for a sustainable food system that included the development of a food policy for the city and promoting changes in the way food is produced, processed, transported, and consumed, and how waste is managed. In 2019, the Municipality of Quito adopted the PAQ’s proposed action plan which, together with the framework for action of the Milan Urban Food Policy Pact, informed development of the Quito Agro-Food Strategy.

The current challenges are, firstly, for the strategy to receive recognition as an ordinance; and secondly, for the PAQ to be consolidated as a food council. With the support of the Water Land and Ecosystems Progamme of CGIAR and RUAF, a follow-up vulnerability analysis of the local food system was conducted in 2019. This assessment led the city to acknowledge the need for a dedicated Resilience Strategy for the Quito Food System that addressed multiple scales (from the neighbourhood to the global), took an integrated approach to the various dimensions of food security and links within the food system, and identified weaknesses that needed to be addressed to build resilience. This strategy is currently being finalised, prior to being validated by PAQ.

The COVID-19 response

The initiatives outlined above were pivotal in ensuring a rapid, effective response to food system challenges resulting from COVID-19.

The action of strengthening AGRUPAR within the Resilience Strategy of the Metropolitan District of Quito meant that resources were available to address food challenges, despite budgetary constraints faced by the municipality as a whole.

The geographical information system (GIS) map produced during the CRFS pilot project was valuable in visualising the COVID-related food crisis, and formed the basis for maps that enabled the municipality to target assistance where it was most needed. The multi-scale approach to resilience meant AGRUPAR management was able to re-think the commercialisation of produce, with urban farmers’ markets focussing on neighbourhood or home deliveries.

Alexandra Rodríguez is a Research Partner and Manager of the participatory urban agriculture project AGRUPAR within the Economic Development Agency CONQUITO.arodriguez@conquito.org.ec. From Urban Agriculture Magazine 38.