Our Activities

ICLEI led a consortium of partners, which developed the Berliner Nachhaltigkeitsprofil on behalf of the city. The main tasks in the project were:
Coordination of the activities of the project consortium;
Advise the city administration on strategic questions regarding local sustainability strategies;
Analyze key strategic documents of urban development in the city in order to identify cross-cutting approaches;
Conduct interviews with selected experts and individuals regarding sustainability in Berlin;
Identify three unique pathways to sustainability in Berlin. Those so called profile areas are the Enabling Berlin, the Productive Berlin, the Accessible Berlin;
Identify lighthouse projects to illustrate and showcase the previously identified profile areas;
Organize feedback loops for the development of the Berliner Nachhaltigkeitsprofil. Those are 1) a scientific advisory council, 2) a online consultation process, 3) a workshop with key stakeholders;
Create a publication package including a detailed final report, a short summary (German/ English) and a power point presentation (German/ English).

ICLEI was responsible on international policy processes. Through desk research, interviews and direct participation, ICLEI identified relevant political dynamics and processes regarding the rural-urban nexus in the context of HABITAT III (preparation and implementation) and the implementation of the SDGs. The aim is to identify ways through which the German federal government, and especially the Ministry for Environment and Building, can influence these processes in order to foster a global sustainable rural-urban nexus.
Part of the problem is that there is a limited understanding of the interconnections and hence development potential between urban and peri-urban areas due to an insufficient data base and lack of suitable indicators. That's why ICLEI collected fitting indicators out of a pool of (inter)national indicator sets and – in a second step – developed relevant indicators where needed. The indicators developed in the RUN project can serve as a starting point to better un-derstand these linkages and identify the most relevant data needed.

This research will take place over five semi-concurrent phases:
1. Literature analysis undertaken by researchers to understand existing and previous research topics and approaches.
2. Initial engagement & interviews in each city using narrative collection and documentation, and photographic expression to explore food production, processing, and distribution systems.
3. Co-production around food and social infrastructures will be undertaken at a workshop in which narratives will be presented, and stakeholders will be invited to co-produce theory about their food systems based on these findings and their experience.
4. Visualising socio-technical infrastructures using photographic expression.
5. The second workshop will expand the co-production of theory from food to other infrastructure systems, based on the outcomes of phase 2, the continued research of phase 1, and phase 3’s community-produced expressions, and express how this theory supports future development imaginaries and planning.

CITYFOOD accelerates local and regional government action on sustainable and resilient city-region food systems by combining networking with technical expertise through training and policy guidance and facilitating local and regional engagement in international discourse.

The network promotes food security, social inclusion, economic development and environmental resource management by combining networking with training, policy guidance and technical expertise on city-region food systems worldwide.