Page 23 - TU Dresden - StuFoExpo 2024: Book of Abstracts

AgriCultural REvolution
A case study in Bogotá, Colombia

Carrazana Rosales, Gustavo Andrés |
gustavo_andres.carrazana_rosales@mailbox.tu-dresden.de
Internationales Hochschulinstitut (IHI) Zittau, Technische Universität Dresden
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Copyright: Gustavo Andrés Carrazana Rosales
As if climate change wasn't enough, urbanization is here to further stretch some challenges. How
will Earth 2124 be? Dystopia or Utopia? The socio-environmental crisis we live in demands to iden-
tify leverage points for sustainability. Isolated strategies might mitigate some of the impact, but
integrative and (w)holistic approaches must be taken to steer the future into sustainable develop-
ment. Urban and Peri-urban Agriculture (UPA) has been increasingly recognized as a multi-func-
tional tool to address several challenges the world faces. From food security, to climate regulation ZENTRALE EINRICHTUNGEN DER TU DRESDEN
and community building, UPA has revolutionary potential. According to the Food & Agriculture Or-
ganization (FAO) of the United Nations (UN), UPA is critical to the operationalization of linkages
between 8 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Some scholars find direct contributions by UPA
to 12 SDGs, others 14. However, many obstacles are faced. From a lack of institutional home to
better frame and systematize research, to a lack of empirical studies, and an image of being re-
gressive, low-tech, economically inefficient, and most importantly: not modern.

Challenging this narrative, local authorities in Bogotá, Colombia, have institutionalized UPA under
the jurisdiction of the Botanical Garden of Bogota (BGB) with the mandate to scale UPA up. The
BGB has surveyed over 3000 UPA practitioners over cultivation practices, motives and demo-
graphic characteristics. Which bring us to the research question: What is the contribution of UPA
to the urban sustainability of Bogotá, Colombia?

This research constructs a Composite Indicator (CI), through Multivariate Analysis, to have a status-
quo assessment of UPAs in Bogotá. Principal Component Analysis (PCA) is performed to reduce
the dimensionality of the phenomena, while keeping the representation of it. The resulting model
of 16 principal components is matched with a theoretical framework to assess the contribution of
UPA to urban sustainability, and further regression analysis is done to demographic variables.

Results show the contribution to urban sustainability for every UPA practitioner in four pillars: En-
vironmental, Social, Economic, and Institutional. The Environmental pillar is the best performer
with high contribution coming through Climate regulation & Energy balance, and Soil conservation;
the Social pillar follows it with good performance in Community engagement & participation, and
Social interactions; the Economic pillar contributes mostly in terms of Food accessibility and Pre-
paredness for food sovereignty. Regression analysis of demographic characteristics as explanatory
variables indicates that Age, Proximity, Garden area and Socio-economic Status are good predic-
tors of UPA contribution, while Gender hides more information than it gives.

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