Exploring the Current and Future Potential of Urban Agriculture in Growing Urban Sprawls of India: Strengths and Challenges

Abstract

The last century has been largely characterised by (among many other things) increasing urbanisation, with cities across the world (including India) expanding in both number and size. Infrastructure growth, expansion of cities and consumption pattern of urban inhabitants are significant having enormous impact on ecosystems and natural resources (especially land, water and biodiversity) within cities as well as far beyond the city boundaries. Growing challenges with respect to sustainability of growing urban sprawls of India and how nutritional security are going to be affected in coming decade has been highlighted in the paper. Urban agriculture (UA) is an important Nature-based Solution that can help the urban locals of growing urban sprawls of the country to reduce pressure on rural and periurban areas for sustainable growth of urban areas. UA is decentralised, local food production system for enhancing urban food production to achieve urban food selfsufficiency. UA framework in Indian context depends on physicaland socio-economic factors responsible for current and future potential of UA. UA has to play a pivotal role in future in urban food security. However, the key challenge is to quantify the current and future potential of UA in sustainable growth of mega-cities. Study highlights knowledge gap and need of proactive policy planning for promoting UA to localise and realise Sustainable development goals, especially SDG 2 and 11.