About Us

EQUITABLE RESILIENT NOURISHING REVITALIZING URBAN FOOD SYSTEMS

Urban Thottam is a platform that promotes urban farming to build resilience to climate change and create healthy, self-reliant societies by improving food security and livelihoods, especially among the urban poor in Chennai city. Urban Thottam is a Chennai Resilience Centre initiative, supported by Adrienne Arsht – Rockefeller Foundation Resilience Center.

The Chennai Resilience Centre (CRC) was established with the aim to promote resilience in individuals, communities and institutions to address the challenges posed by rapid urbanization and climate change in Chennai. CRC, through a multi-stakeholder process, developed a Resilience Strategy for Chennai as part of the 100 Resilient Cities program. This strategy was endorsed by the Greater Chennai Corporation (GCC), the civic body for urban governance. One of the flagship projects envisioned as part of the resilience strategy was the Chennai Urban Farming Initiative (CUFI) – a program aimed at greatly reducing the vulnerability of 2.5 million people to climate change through local food production on rooftops and in community spaces.

CRC, currently instituted as a unit of the Care Earth Trust, fostered by the Atlantic Council’s Adrienne Arsht – Rockefeller Foundation Resilience Center (AARFRC) and the Resilient Cities Network (RCN), is facilitating the implementation of the CUFI through launching the Urban Thottam platform. This is part of an effort to utilize 1000s of acres of rooftops and vacant urban spaces to scale-up vegetable gardening through a citywide strategy. The intent is to develop a more sustainable and local food supply system that will improve overall access to healthy food for Chennai citizens, ensure participation and economic benefits for low-income neighbourhoods, while simultaneously cooling and greening the city.

Background

Chennai emerged from a cluster of fishing villages in the 16th century. Now, as the fourth most populous urban agglomeration in India, it boasts a strong manufacturing and services hub with automobile and auto-spare parts industry, information technology, health care and financial services. However, the transformation has invited a range of challenges including uneven and unsustainable development which has aggravated risks faced by vulnerable communities, rapid and unplanned growth encroaching on natural habitats, increasing exposure to natural disasters and climate extremes (floods and droughts), and un-coordinated governance systems.

The COVID-19 pandemic has further exposed many fault lines in sustainability and resilience of several urban centres across the world, particularly with respect to urban food systems. The pandemic has resulted in food being wasted while people are going hungry and it has disrupted food networks and supply chains, restricting accessibility of safe and nutritious food to only a privileged few. It has also disrupted livelihoods and jobs, especially the daily wage earner and women from low income communities, aggravating the vulnerabilities and injustices this population group normally faces.

These complex, yet, intertwined issues of unsustainable development, poverty, food and job insecurity necessitates the need to reimagine food supply chains that move towards a more sustainable, inclusive and local food system.

Sharan Thandalam

Vision

The overall vision of CRC’s Urban Thottam is to foster a revitalised urban food system that is more local, sustainable, equitable and nourishing. A food system that also helps provide access to livelihood opportunities to the urban poor and makes Chennai cooler and greener.

Objectives

Recognising the need for adapting to a world with a pandemic, and for building back better post COVID-19, Urban Thottam is focused on the following objectives:

Improving food and nutritional security amongst children from low-income communities;

Improving food security amongst low- and middle-income households;

Providing green livelihood opportunities via Makkal Thottams (Community farms) for women and youth from low-income neighbourhoods through targeted skill development and training programs focused on gardening, food processing and marketing;

Facilitating development of a city-wide, revitalised, urban food system by involving RWAs and corporate partners in the initiative;

Promoting Patchaimadi Thottams (Green Roof Gardens) to middle and upper middle income localities to help mitigate the effects of climate change, reduce urban heat, conserve water, move towards zero waste and reduce pollution.

THE 2030 GOAL

Promote urban farming in the city of Chennai and influence the lives of

2.5

Million Citizens

1336

ICDS Centres
(Anganwadis)

281

Government Schools
(83,000 children)

Homeless Shelters

414

Community Farms
(2,125 acres Open Space)

700

Private Schools

606

Corporates

2,30,000

Households
(20% citywide adoption)

Partners & Stakeholders

Implementation of the Initiative will involve multiple stakeholders, the groundwork for which is a work in progress by the Chennai Resilience Center. These stakeholders include:

Government departments

Greater Chennai Corporation (who run the public schools and manage all local parks including those in lower income neighbourhoods)
Tamil Nadu Department of Horticulture and Plantation Crops (already running an urban gardening program that offers do-it-yourself kits for interested citizens)
Tamil Nadu Slum Clearance Board (in-charge of the resettlement colonies)
Tamil Nadu Corporation for the Development of Women (focused on empowering women)
Tamil Nadu Skills Development Corporation (with primary focus on offering a range of skills-based training).

Non-governmental partners

Adrienne Arsht–Rockefeller Foundation Resilience Center (AARFRC)
Resilient Cities Network (RCN)
CUBE, a Centre of Excellence of Indian Institute of Technology Madras and Government of Tamil Nadu formulated to address the practical challenges faced by the urban built environment
Care Earth Trust
Okapi Research and Advisory
Sempulam Sustainable Solutions
Information and Resource Centre for the Deprived Urban Communities (IRCDUC)
Pudiyador
Rain Center (Akash Ganga Mission)
The Madras Chamber of Commerce and Industry
Private sector partners including leading IT companies with corporate offices across the city

Policy Linkages

The local, state and central governments have recognised the potential of urban farming and released strategies to encourage its adoption. GCC released its first urban resilience strategy for the city of Chennai in June 2019. In this strategy it has identified the urban horticulture programme as a priority action to be implemented as soon as possible, because of its potential impact on building city resilience.

Additionally, this project aligns directly with the State Government of Tamil Nadu’s recently announced programme to set up vegetable gardens in 10,024 nutritious meal centres across Tamil Nadu.

At a national level, the proposed programme aligns very closely with the National Guidelines for School (Kitchen) Gardens 2019 which aims to grow kitchen gardens in schools to address nutrition deficiency among children, give them a first-hand experience with nature and enhance their knowledge on the importance of nutritious food.

Urban Thottam also aligns with the National Mission on Sustainable Habitat 2011, and the national and state Climate Change Action Plans which seek to improve resilience of cities and increase adaptation options for its residents.