SDG 11: Sustainable Cities and Communities

On Thursday, April 26th, I will be speaking the at the R.E.B.B.L.S. (Rising Entrepreneurs in Bio Business and Life Science) Beers with Peers event on Sustainable Cities and Communities (SDG #11). My talk will be about the importance of food within the urban context and how we can strive to improve how we interact with food and use it to solve some of the grand global challenges of our time.

R.E.B.B.L.S. is a Copenhagen-based catalyst for creating the invaluable interdisciplinary network that today’s talents need for building tomorrow’s life science successes.

My talk addressed three different angles from which I have worked with sustainable food production and consumption in the urban context. The main messages from my talk:

• Urban agriculture
  • Grow fast growing and high-value crops in the city like microgreens and salads
  • Slower growing vegetables and root vegetables can accumulate heavy metals
  • Urban agriculture is not just about growing vegetables, it also has a significant social value
• Edible insects
  • Urban production of insects (e.g. black soldier flies) can help to reduce low-grade food waste from being landfilled, especially in low-income countries
  • Insect production for food (e.g. crickets) can provide a high-value product for direct sale to the urban market
• Policy
  • Make friends with policymakers: in the Nordic countries, change in consumption patterns often comes from the bottom-up
  • A shift to more sustainable consumption patterns in the Nordic countries is often lead by urban consumers