198 CHRISTINE FUREDY
(see Blumenthal et al., 1989, 2001; Khouri et al., 1994). This approach has not yet
been applied, however, to the reuse of the organic wastes from municipal refuse.
In the late 1980s, a ‘food security’ perspective on development emerged. The Interna-
tional Institute for Environment and Development was the first group to emphasise
recycling and reuse as a basic principle for sustainable development, and this theme,
integrated into the Brundtland Report (World Commission on Environment and
Development, 1987), is particularly emphasised in relation to food production (Mitlin
and Satterthwaite, 1994; van der Bliek, 1992; Koc, McRae, Mougeot and Welsh,
1999; Hardoy et al., 2001).
Geographers have been interested in urban agriculture for several decades (Yeung,
1985). This field is now interdisciplinary and has broad bilateral and international
agency support, as evidenced by the establishment of the Cities Feeding People
programme at the International Development Research Centre (Canada) and the
collaborative Centre for Research on Urban Agriculture and Forestry (Netherlands
and Canada), as well as networks such as City Farmer and The Urban Agriculture
Network (Mougeot, 1999).
While early writing about urban agriculture made little reference to the use of urban
organic wastes as inputs, in the past ten years, more scholars have recognised links
between urban solid waste management and the reuse of organic wastes in urban and
periurban agriculture (Allison and Harriss, 1996). Two aspects are stressed: that urban
organic wastes largely derive from resources removed from near-urban and rural areas
which could be returned to the production cycle, and that reuse can benefit urban waste
management by reducing some disposal costs and curtailing toxic, infectious and
unaesthetic residues (van der Bliek, 1992; Furedy, 1995; Smit et al., 1996).
From the mid 1990s there have been initiatives aimed at bringing together the interest
in food production and urban solid waste management. This was one aim of the Urban
Waste Expertise Programme funded by the Dutch government, which has supported a
number of projects in composting (see ’t Hart and Pluijmers, 1996; van der Klundert
et al., 2001). The International Water Management Institute of the UN Food and Agri-
culture Organisation is supporting research on waste composting for urban and
peri-urban agriculture (Drechsel and Kunze, 2001). Recently the British DFID
program on natural resource systems has integrated the perspective of peri-urban
stakeholders in Hubli-Dharwad, India and Kumasi, Ghana (Nunan, 2000; Brook and
Davila, 2000). Nutrient flow analysis has emerged as a sub-topic in urban and
peri-urban resource systems (Belevi et al., 2000; Drechsel and Kunze, 2001), and
waste-to-energy in the urban context is again being explored (Grover et al, 2002;
Dunnet, 1998).