Exploring urban food justice

The Food Foundation is holding a series of webinars on Food Justice in partnership with Milan Urban Food Policy Pact (MUFPP) and Birmingham City Council.

The MUFPP Fellowship Programme aims to enable Milan Pact Award-winning cities to promote its innovations, knowledge and experience – as well as offering the opportunity to learn from other successful experiences.

There is no one universal framework for addressing food justice as the concept is highly contextual and varies depending on factors such as geographic location, cultural norms, and historical and political contexts.

The Fellowship provides an opportunity for participants to learn about the principles of food justice using case studies from a variety of contexts.

The first of a four webinars explored the principles of food justice across African, Asian, North American and South American regional contexts.

The aim is to accelerate the global movement to ensure all people have access to healthy, nutritious, and culturally appropriate food, regardless of their race, income or geographic location.

The first webinars took place on Friday, December 15 and focused on African innovations and experiences.

Speakers included:

• Busiso Moyo, Regional Policy and Research Specialist at School of Public Health at the University of the Western Cape
• Elizabeth Kimani, Public Health & Nutrition Specialist, leading the Nutrition & Food Systems Unit at the African Population and Health Research Centre (APHRC)
• Representatives from two MUFPP Award winning cities – Nairobi and Durban – who will share insights and experience from their trailblazing projects in the area of Social and Economic Equity

The webinar was facilitated by Stuart Gillespie, Non-Resident Senior Fellow in the Nutrition, Diets, and Health Unit at International Food Policy Research Institute and Leticija Petrovic, Local Food Policy Lead at the Food Foundation.

Watch in full below 👇

This exciting learning opportunity builds on the Global Food Justice Pledge, launched at the 2021 MUFPP Global Forum in Barcelona.

The pledge recognises that access to healthy food is a basic human right. Cities committed to the pledge seek to address the systemic inequalities in the food system that contribute to food insecurity and poor nutrition in marginalised communities including those that work to produce food for others.

In October 2023, Birmingham City Council launched the Food Justice Toolkit, suite of resources comprising examples of strategies, policies and interventions that have been implemented worldwide to tackle issues of food injustice in the area of Social and Economic Equity.

Birmingham is a Secretariat member city of MUFPP and is committed through the Global Food Justice Pledge to collaborate and support cities across the world to further embed the principles of food justice in their plans for urban food system transformation.