18 cities, Young People, Food & Climate policy-making

With the report “Empowering urban youth for food and climate action”, EU DEAR project “FoodWave” draws a panorama of how food and climate policies are developed, together with young people, in 18 cities across Europe. It analyses the role of local community actors in shaping policies and initiatives that strengthen the food-climate nexus. Research showed that climate change is a key part of the cities’ strategies and visions, while food and youth still remain marginal and are not institutionalised themes. 

Over 110 initiatives serve as case studies. Education on sustainability issues, in and outside schools, and waste management stand out as hot topics for both administrations and civil society. Alliances between institutions and community-based actors are an important push towards tailored and place-based policies, whether they regard food, climate or youth. 

Several frameworks are helping to include the people affected by climate and food policies into the policy-making process: ad hoc administrative structures, European projects, initiatives and more. They are helping to integrate new ways of understanding social action into the local administrative mindset. 

Local data are essential for the development of evidence-based policies. They are, however, complicated to gather, due to the lack of common urban monitoring systems on climate and food. The report calls on even greater cooperation to create common indicators, parameters and data collection systems.

The existing local data on youth engagement, activism and food consumption show that cities constitute a privileged observatory in which not only awareness of the interconnections between complex themes is being built, but also their concrete implementation is being experienced.

The report “Empowering urban youth for food and climate action” was developed by Està under the coordination of Mani Tese. It finds that climate and food issues are addressed differently in all of the analysed cities: Almere, Athens, Bruges, Brussels-Molenbeek Saint Jean, Lisbon, London, Madrid, Malmö, Manchester, Maribor, Milan, Murcia, Pest County, Sofia, Turin, Warsaw and Zagreb. 

All FoodWave resources can be found here: https://www.foodwave.eu/library/ 

^{Picture credits: ©van den Biesen}