Inclusive agri-business models are increasingly framed as key drivers of developmental change in Africa. Building on the concept of inclusive growth, the models envision economic develpment and social development objectives as complementary, capable in theory, of lifting marginalized people out of poverty. Key to the success of the models are Kenyan women and men entrepreneurs who are conceived as "champions of development"; they are the ones that can potentially create market growth and lead job creation and innovation, and the creation of cheaper food products. In this PhD research project, we examine these assumptions, in collaboration with NGOs who work in the sector. 

• dr. ir. Janwillem Liebrand

• Lotte-Marie Brouwer
• Griet Steel

Diamonds in the Delta (DiD) is an international research-action network of scholars, water professionals and civil society advocates who are concerned about how climate change compounds problems of flooding and subsidence in delta cities. We – the people in the network – are united in our conviction that the needs, experiences and aspirations of communities that are actually or potentially most affected by these problems should be the focus when designing and implementing solutions. We collaborate with these communities to jointly identify ways to reduce risks, optimize adaptation strategies and create the conditions for sustainable livelihoods now and in the future. 

• dr. Shahnoor Hasan
• dr. ir. Janwillem Liebrand

• Prof. Margreet Zwarteveen
• Dr. Andres Verzijl
• Prof. Richard Sliuzas
• Dr. Annelies Heijmans

Cities in the global South are rapidly growing in size, but many marginalised and vulnerable residents (such as lower-income households, older adults, women and people with disabilities) do not have affordable, safe and accessible public transport, which reduces their ability to have decent work, healthcare and social life. Transport planning largely ignores access inequalities but prioritises efficiency and economic benefits. This project will go beyond traditional engineering approaches by taking a novel, user-centred intersectional approach that recognises how multiple forms of discrimination (e.g. classism, sexism, ageism and ableism) intersect to produce urban mobility inequalities for marginalised groups. The central objective is to develop evidence-based insights for affordable, safe and accessible urban mobility. More specifically, we aim to: 1) explore how physical and social barriers to urban transport are widened by the existing systems and the social and economic implications of such barriers (SDG-11&9), 2) develop and contextualise measures to improve access to work (SDG-8), healthcare (SDG-3) and social life (SDG-10) through improvements in the public transport system, and 3) co-design an inclusive urban mobility evaluative framework that can provide guidelines for inclusive cities. We will apply an innovative multi-sited mixed-methods approach combining visual surveys, GPS-led-geo-narratives and multi-stakeholder hackathons. Inequalities of urban mobility will be studied in Delhi, Bengaluru and Dhaka, as these cities are experiencing major infrastructural changes and have populations with multiple access disparities. Inclusive cities with affordable, safe and accessible low-carbon public transport lead to a reduction of emissions and improvements in public health and wellbeing.

• dr. Marco Helbich
• prof. dr. Ajay Bailey
• prof. dr. ir. Dick Ettema
• Seama Mowri

• Dr Sobin George
• Prof. Sangamitra Roy
• Dr Anindita Datta
• Dr Md. Musleh Uddin Hasan
• Dr Shanawez Hossain

We analyze large-scale farm investments from the business point of view, while investigating how to make production (food, biofuels) more sustainable from the economic, social and environmental point of view. >100.000

This research project provides a critical assessment of collaborations on mixed migration flows between Europe and migrant sending countries. In the context of increasing asylum and migration flows we observe an important policy move towards partnerships between EU countries and sending countries. The focus of this project is on readmission agreements with Turkey, but with new deals in the making the results of this project will be of wider use and value for European policymakers. At its core, the EU Turkey deals aim to reduce irregular migration, decrease smuggling and human right violations and migrant deaths. In exchange, EU Member States promised to increase resettlement of Syrian refugees residing in Turkey, accelerate visa liberalization for Turkish nationals, and boost existing financial support for Turkey’s refugee population. This project will focus on the effects of the deals. How did the deal transform mixed migration flows and people’s reliance on human smugglers therein? What has been the impact of the deal on resettlement from Turkey to Europe? Field research (document analysis and interviews with forced returnees and migrants on the move) will be conducted to come up with evidence based insights on the implementation and the effects of the deal.

This research project provides a critical assessment of collaborations on mixed migration flows between Europe and migrant sending countries. In the context of increasing asylum and migration flows we observe an important policy move towards partnerships between EU countries and sending countries. The focus of this project is on readmission agreements with Turkey, but with new deals in the making the results of this project will be of wider use and value for European policymakers. At its core, the EU Turkey deals aim to reduce irregular migration, decrease smuggling and human right violations and migrant deaths. In exchange, EU Member States promised to increase resettlement of Syrian refugees residing in Turkey, accelerate visa liberalization for Turkish nationals, and boost existing financial support for Turkey’s refugee population. This project will focus on the effects of the deals. How did the deal transform mixed migration flows and people’s reliance on human smugglers therein? What has been the impact of the deal on resettlement from Turkey to Europe? Field research (document analysis and interviews with forced returnees and migrants on the move) will be conducted to come up with evidence based insights on the implementation and the effects of the deal.

The international consortium Welcoming Spaces investigates new ways to merge two policy challenges: how to contribute to the revitalisation of shrinking areas in Europe, while also offering space for the successful integration of non-EU migrants. For this purpose the researchers have selected fifty examples of ‘Welcoming Spaces’ across Europe. A Welcoming Space is a local initiative to attract migrants and revitalize the region.

The aim of ‘Welcoming Spaces’ is to create a platform that makes these examples visible and allows practitioners and researchers to learn from successful and unsuccessful approaches in a wide variety of geographical, political and social contexts. The selected examples will be analysed from different perspectives, varying from representations of the public discourse and media, geographic and institutional contexts and the local-migrant capacity to act.

Welcoming Spaces is coordinated by Prof. Annelies Zoomers (principal investigator) and Dr Karin Geuijen

• Jana Finke MSc
• dr. Bianca Szytniewski
• dr. ir. Marlies Meijer MSc
• dr. Karin Geuijen
• prof. dr. Maggi Leung
• dr. Sara Miellet MSc, MA

Cities and urban regions are key sites and vantage points of societal transitions to circular economies, healthy living, resilience and inclusiveness. One of the key mediators of such transitions are technical infrastructures—socio-technical systems in the provision of energy, water, wastewater, waste, mobility and information and communication services. However, those systems are highly path dependent and are interlaced with the built environments of cities, urban practices of production and use and embedded in a complex web of political interests and epistemic cultures. Our infrastructure choices today set the default for many decades to come. Changing urban infrastructures thus imposes exceptionally high requirements in terms of the transformative knowledge for decision makers. Our ambition with this hub is to develop a platform for new transdisciplinary collaborations on urban sustainability transitions through the lens of urban infrastructures. We will explore and test innovative techniques and practices of urban ‘futuring’, experimentation, co-provision and governance in cities around the world and develop sustainability indicators and assessment tools to understand, evaluate and promote pathways to urban sustainability. The hub will bring together the substantive knowledge of leading researchers at Utrecht University and will work closely together with stakeholders in novel ways to co-create knowledge in ‘city learning labs’ and transdisciplinary workshops, that is both policy relevant and intellectually ambitious.

• prof. dr. ir. B. (Bert) Brunekreef
• prof. dr. Harriet Bulkeley
• dr. ir. J. Colen Ladeia Torrens MSc
• prof. dr. Peter Driessen
• dr. Martijn van den Hurk
• prof. dr. Albert Meijer
• dr. Peter Pelzer
• dr. Shaun Smith
• dr. Vanessa Timmer
• prof. dr. ir. R.C.H. (Roel) Vermeulen
• prof. dr. Jochen Monstadt

• dr. Irina van Aalst

The challenge of feeding a projected 9 billion people by 2050 has triggered a strong influx of foreign investments in African agribusiness. However, it is unclear how these investments in global food supply affect food security at the local level in recipient countries. This complex global-local nexus serves as the starting point of the ‘Follow the Food’ project: how can foreign companies contribute to global food security, while at the same time foster inclusive and sustainable development, including increased food security, for local smallholders and poor populations?

The ‘Follow the Food’ project will assess the effects of foreign investments on local development and food security by comparing a variety of foreign agribusiness investment cases in different crops and business models across Ethiopia, Kenya and Ghana. Focus will be on three local investment effects: impact on the livelihoods of local farmers engaged in the investment project; changes in the use of natural resources (e.g. land and water); and effects on local food markets (i.e. availability and accessibility of food). The key objective of the ‘Follow the Food’ project is to enable stakeholders to make a positive contribution to local food security. For private sector stakeholders this implies enhancing the understanding of agribusiness investors on their local food security impacts as well as awareness raising of local smallholders on inclusive business and how to engage in trade in equitable and food-secure ways.

• dr. Guus van Westen
• dr. James Wangu

• Fair and Sustainable Advisory Services
• Solidaridad the Netherlands
• Solidaridad East and Central Africa Expertise Center
• Solidaridad West Africa
• St. Mary's University Ethiopia

Project goal

Enhance the adaptive capacity to climate change of small-scale farmers and pastoralists in the arid and semi-arid regions of Burkina Faso, Ghana and Kenya. 

About the project

Increasing climate variability is affecting the livelihoods of many communities in developing countries. Policies aimed at climate change adaptation and mitigation are formulated and implemented in many of these countries, but often without much attention to the role that local people can and should play. This project concentrates on the importance of local level involvement in enhancing the resilience of people’s livelihoods. It focuses in particular on improving inclusiveness, participation and conflict-sensitivity of climate change interventions that are directed at farmers and pastoralists. The role of groups, which are marginalized based on distinctions of gender, generation, ethnicity or class, will receive special attention.

Expected contributions

Smart and effective policies build on a thorough awareness of complex realities.  This project brings together different scientific schools of thought to achieve a better understanding of the links between community participation in development, local power and conflict dynamics, climate change interventions and people’s adaptive capacity. As a second step, the project will contribute to the formulation of community-smart climate change adaptation policies and develop applicable tools and outputs for both practitioners and policy makers. All this will be achieved in close connection with the communities, policy-makers and practitioners that participate in the research. The ambition of the team is that, as a result of the research and its capacity building activities, marginalised groups will be better able to define their priorities while higher level policies will be better informed by local realities.

Partners

IDS UU (project leader), CCAFS (CGIAR), INERA (Burkina Faso), CARE International & Ghana, CSIR-SARI (Ghana), and ILEPA (Kenya)

Mission
LANDac, the Netherlands Academy on Land Governance for Equitable and Sustainable Development, aims at bringing together researchers, policy makers and practitioners in the field of land governance and development.

Land Governance for Equitable and Sustainable Development
LANDac is a partnership between several Dutch organisations and their Southern partners involved in development-related research, policy and practice. The partners share a concern for increasing land inequality and new land-related conflicts, and how land governance – rules and practices on access to land – can be used to promote equitable and sustainable development in the Global South.

More information: http://www.landgovernance.org/

• dr. Guus van Westen

This project will obtain, apply and share in-depth knowledge of how International and National-level climate change adaptation policy impacts rural groups (relating to gender, generation, socioeconomics and ethnicity) at the local level in two countries facing significant climate change risks: Cambodia and Lao People?s Democratic Republic (PDR). Main questions are 1) How do International climate change discourses shape National-level climate change policy and 2) How do these policies enhance or undermine local maneuvering space, adaptation strategies and thus resilience? This helps to bridge the gap between discursive dynamics and the local resilience reality for more inclusive climate change policies.