Urban Agriculture and Climate Change: Ensuring Household Food Security Through Building Resilience in Bulawayo, Zimbabwe

Urban agriculture is considered a strategy that can bring multiple benefits and help to build resilient urban food systems at the city region level. Cities have an important role to play in climate change mitigation and adaptation and in enhancing the climate resilience capacities of their vulnerable residents. Using a resilience perspective, this case study explores the role of urban agriculture in enhancing the resilience of households against climate shocks in Bulawayo, Zimbabwe. Specifically, it interrogates the implications of climate change on urban agriculture and possible ways of enhancing the urban livelihood resilience against climate variability. Participants reiterated the importance of urban agriculture in improving household food security and purchasing power parity. It emanates from the study that urban farmers perceived and observed significant climatic and related changes that were negatively impacting their farming activities. Observed changes included reduced precipitation levels, increased atmospheric temperature, and diminishing borehole yields. Urban farmers also opined that climate change was reducing not only their yield but also the viability of their livelihood options. Cities, therefore, need to choose the specific types of urban and peri-urban agriculture and forestry that best fit their local socioeconomic, climatic, agronomic, and spatial conditions. Specifically, there is a need to integrate urban food security into climate change adaptation and disaster management strategies. Such a move should be coupled with maintaining and managing agriculture projects as part of the urban and peri-urban green infrastructure.