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The purpose of this study is to investigate the dynamics of youth engagement in urban agriculture, particularly through youth gardens in distressed neighbourhoods of Cape Town. This examination is crucial due to the limited involvement of youth in urban agriculture, which poses a threat to the sustainability of these practices despite their recognised contributions to urban development.

The research employs a qualitative methodology to explore the motivations, challenges and experiences of young urban farmers. Semi-structured interviews with youth participants from selected urban community gardens, complemented by virtual ethnography, form the core of the data collection process. This approach provides an in-depth understanding of the factors influencing youth participation in urban farming.

The study reveals that youth engagement in urban agriculture is motivated by various factors, including entrepreneurial aspirations, environmental justice activism, and a dedication to food justice. These findings suggest that for urban agriculture initiatives to be effective in such settings, they must acknowledge and address the specific motivations and contextual challenges faced by young people.

The study’s findings are context-specific to the distressed neighbourhoods of Cape Town, which may limit their generalisability to other urban settings. Future research could expand the scope to include a comparative analysis with other cities.

The insights gained from this study can inform the design of urban agriculture initiatives that better engage youth, thereby fostering community development and sustainable urban practices.

This research offers novel insights into the underexplored area of youth engagement in urban agriculture within distressed urban environments. By focusing on the voices and experiences of young urban farmers in Cape Town, the study contributes to the development of targeted policies and programmes that aim to promote inclusive and sustainable urban agriculture practices, particularly by enhancing youth involvement.

The purpose of this article is to untangle the influence of Linda Tuhiwai Smith’s Decolonizing Methodologies on botanical gardens, particularly in the context of commemorating 25 years since its publication. By examining the intersections between decolonial theory and botanical practices, this article seeks to elucidate the ways in which Smith’s work has informed and inspired efforts to decolonize botanical research, conservation and education. Through a narrative review and case study analysis, this article highlights key insights, challenges and opportunities for botanical gardens to embrace decolonial practices and foster more equitable and inclusive relationships with Indigenous communities, science and knowledge systems.

The design and methodology of this article involve a narrative literature review and comparative case study analysis (Petticrew and Roberts, 2006; Goodrick, 2014). The review synthesizes scholarly articles, books and reports on decolonizing botanical practices, focusing on literature that stems from Indigenous science, identifies engagement strategies and advocates for systemic change within botanical institutions. Key themes and recommendations are identified and analyzed to provide insights into future directions for decolonizing botanical gardens. This approach allows for a thorough examination of current discourse and best practices in decolonial theory and botanical research, informing actionable recommendations for advancing decolonization within botanical gardens.

The findings reveal that Linda Tuhiwai Smith’s Decolonizing Methodologies has significantly influenced botanical gardens, inspiring efforts to prioritize Indigenous knowledge systems, deepen community engagement and advocate for systemic change. While progress has been made in integrating decolonial practices, challenges persist, including the need for greater institutional commitment, capacity building and accountability. However, opportunities abound for botanical gardens to continue advancing decolonization, particularly through partnerships with Indigenous communities, educational outreach and policy advocacy. Overall, the findings underscore the importance of ongoing reconciliation and action in cultivating more equitable and respectful relationships that advance principles of Indigenous data sovereignty and governance.

While this article offers valuable insights into the influence of Linda Tuhiwai Smith’s Decolonizing Methodologies on botanical gardens, several limitations must be acknowledged. Firstly, the literature review may not document all relevant transformations undertaken by gardens to date if such initiatives are not documented in the public domain, such as institutional websites. Additionally, the review primarily focuses on English-language literature, limiting the exploration of decolonial practices for botanical gardens in non-English-speaking contexts.

This article holds several practical implications for botanical gardens seeking to decolonize. Firstly, by prioritizing Indigenous knowledge and deepening community engagement, botanical gardens can foster more inclusive and respectful relationships with Indigenous communities. Secondly, advocating for systemic change and policy reforms will address institutionalized inequities and recognize Indigenous People’s rights, including biocultural and intellectual property. Additionally, investing in educational outreach and capacity-building initiatives can enhance institutional and public understanding of decolonization. Overall, embracing decolonial practices can contribute to the adoption and advancement of Indigenous Data Sovereignty and the CARE Principles for Indigenous Data Governance within botanical gardens and beyond.

This article highlights the importance of decolonizing botanical gardens for promoting justice and equity. By centering Indigenous rights to data sovereignty, such as attribution of traditional and biocultural knowledge, botanical gardens can contribute to reconciliation efforts and promote respect for Indigenous rights and sovereignty. Additionally, addressing colonial legacies and systemic inequalities within botanical institutions can advance botanical justice and help build more just and equitable societies. Moreover, this transformation also aligns with a growing legal movement recognizing the inherent rights of Nature, including plant relatives collected, stored and stewarded by botanic gardens.

This article contributes to the literature by exploring the intersection of decolonizing methodologies and botanic gardens, particularly in the context of Linda Tuhiwai Smith’s influential work. By synthesizing key insights and offering actionable recommendations, this review provides guidance on future directions botanic gardens can follow to advance their decolonization strategies and initiatives in furtherance of botanical justice.

This study addresses the growing challenges of food security, livelihood generation and sustainable urban living in the context of increasing urbanization in developing countries. As urban populations are projected to rise significantly in the coming decades, urban agriculture emerges as a potential solution to support dietary needs and economic empowerment. However, urban farming practices in developing countries face unique socio-economic, cultural and technological challenges compared to developed nations. This paper aims to analyze global urban agriculture practices, examine success stories from developed countries and propose an adaptable, inclusive urban agriculture model tailored to developing countries.

The research systematically reviews global urban agriculture practices, emphasizing successful implementations in developed nations. The research highlights gaps and areas of opportunity by comparing these practices with the unique socio-economic and cultural contexts of developing countries. Focus group interviews were conducted among urban farmers from India to finalize the key variables of urban agriculture in developing countries. The second phase involves the construction of a context-specific model for developing countries and proposing interventions. A comparative method is devised to identify developed country’s urban agricultural practices and policies to derive an optimal urban agricultural model for developing countries.

The findings from the study reveal that in developed countries, urban agriculture is motivated by the urge to become self-sustainable and to maintain a connection with the community shaped by different socio-economic, environmental and technological factors. In developing countries, the prime motive is to generate a secondary income source and ensure food security. Still, they face limited technological access, insufficient policy support and socio-cultural barriers. Technology-supported urban agricultural infrastructure and support from the government and other stakeholders would be a potential solution in developing countries to implement successful integrative solutions. To support this, adaptive policies in urban agriculture are required to bridge the gap in the current system.

This research offers practical implications for policymakers, urban planners and agricultural stakeholders in developing countries. It emphasizes the importance of designing policies that address resource constraints, such as land availability and financial access and promote sustainable farming techniques. The study recommends creating supportive frameworks to empower urban farmers, including subsidies, training programs and efficient market mechanisms. Integrating urban farming into city planning can foster green spaces, enhance food security and drive economic development. These actionable recommendations aim to facilitate the growth of urban agriculture as a sustainable and inclusive practice in developing countries.

Participation and social cohesiveness aspects of urban agriculture provide beneficial food accessibility with the concept of food for all, ensuring socio-cultural equality in accessing quality food. This study highlights the role of urban agriculture in addressing socio-economic inequalities, particularly in developing countries. By engaging communities in sustainable farming practices, urban agriculture can create collaborative networks, promote healthier lifestyles and improve access to fresh produce. The study also underscores the importance of empowering urban populations through targeted interventions in urban farming. These social implications reinforce the value of urban agriculture in enhancing the overall quality of urban life.

This study makes a unique contribution by focusing on the contextual adaptation of urban agriculture models for developing countries. While urban farming has been extensively studied in developed nations, limited research addresses developing regions’ specific challenges and opportunities. By proposing a comprehensive and inclusive model that bridges socio-economic and cultural gaps, this research provides a novel framework for integrating urban farming into the urban planning and policy landscape of developing countries. The originality lies in its comparative approach, leveraging global best practices while tailoring solutions to local contexts, thereby advancing the discourse on sustainable urban agriculture.

This research aims to introduce the concept of information snowballing, which shows the process of how individuals with a specific interest in food sustainability acquire information about and remain abreast of sustainability-related information in everyday life and food practices.

This study employed constructivist grounded theory to investigate the information acquisition practices of consumers of sustainable food around topics related to sustainability. The author collected data through pre-screening phone calls, photo diaries and in-depth semi-structured interviews by using theoretical sampling with nine sustainable food consumers; analyzed data through constant comparison and memoing; and validated findings via methodological jotting, data triangulation and peer-debriefing throughout the process.

The findings identify three stages of information snowballing: (a) learning by lifelong exposure and serendipitous information encountering; (b) constructing information landscapes; and (c) snowballing or gradually accumulating information.

This concept advocates for spreading sustainability-related information and awareness outside the context of formal education.

This study originates the concept of “information snowballing,” which evolves from the idea of snowball sampling, a common strategy for participant recruitment. Both of these terms lean on the idea that a snowball rolling downhill picks up more and more momentum and more and more snow as it travels; recruitment and information gathering show the same process of accretion through building momentum. Information snowballing highlights the individual’s agency in seeking relevant information sources, expressing one’s interests, constructing information landscapes—all activities that precede the serendipitous encountering and snowballing of information based on a particular interest. It also connects everyday information practices to information landscapes within the context of everyday food practices.

Food insecurity is a major public health concern, especially for refugee families. Despite the growing population of refugee families in the USA and the harmful effects on youth’s health and well-being, there are limited qualitative studies exploring food insecurity among US refugee adolescents. The use of community-based participatory research and photovoice can highlight the strength of gathering and sharing underrepresented and disadvantaged group experiences. The purpose of this study was to understand adolescent refugee's food insecurity perspectives and experiences, with a nutrition and food access focus. Three main themes and nine subthemes emerged around the role that food security plays in a healthy, thriving community. The main themes included food must be more accessible in school; importance of food access in one’s community; and food access and creating a vibrant community. Implications regarding how to apply these results with community and school-based food programs are discussed.

This study followed a phenomenological research approach to understand the experiences of refugee youth and what constitutes healthy food access in a community. Data analysis was conducted using Braun and Clarke’s (2006) thematic analysis to ensure that data saturation was met (Guest et al., 2006).

The thematic analysis of the photovoice methodological approach revealed three main themes and nine subthemes around the role that food security plays in a healthy and thriving community. These themes are as follows: food must be more accessible in school; importance of food access in one’s community; and food access and creating a vibrant community.

Funding resources limited the duration of meeting in which we could meet and discuss the photo’s students were taking. Second, consistent with phenomenological studies, the sample size was small. However, common sample size for studies using a phenomenological approach ranged from 5 to 25 (Creswell et al., 2007), which is in alignment with this study. Next, while participants did receive training in the SHOWeD method, the photography training was limited to only one hour. Despite the limited training, participants felt they had sufficient knowledge and skills to take the necessary pictures.

This study provides important policy implications for school-based food programs, such as food pantries and free or reduced school meals, and how it plays an important role in refugee youth’s well-being and education. Based on feedback from the study participants, many school-based food programs were considered not available or easily accessible, and that youth and their families were often unaware of programs available to them. This study revealed the important role schools can play in ensuring food security among refugee youth and their families as well as for refugee youth to reach their full potential equitably.

This study used a creative research approach that integrates photovoice as a means to elevate the voices of a marginalized populations. This approach has been identified as one of the most culturally appropriate method when working with refugee children and youth (Pieloch et al., 2016). Second, the study included having multiple meetings, that recruited from previously established partnerships. This form of community building and activism elevates participants voices (Catalani and Minkler, 2009). Finally, this study used a cycle of photography and discussion and held a final public photo exhibition for both the participant’s community and its influential leaders (Catalani and Minkler, 2009; Evans-Agnew and Rosemberg, 2016). The results of this study have important policy implications for schools and communities.

Canadian diets are unsustainable, and perceptions of sustainable diets among Canadians are not well-understood. The purpose of this study was therefore to explore perceptions of sustainable diets among Canadians.

The study sample comprised 30 Canadians aged 18–35 years (33% male; 3% gender diverse, 27% rural and 27% who did not attend university) who were recruited using online advertisements, posters, snowball sampling and word-of-mouth. Semi-structured online interview transcripts were analysed using thematic analysis.

The study themes included: understanding of sustainable diets, sustainable diet behaviours, willingness to change, barriers to sustainable diets and strategies to support sustainable diets. Participants associated sustainable diets with health and nutrition, environmental protection, ethics and economics. The mean willingness to change eating habits to be more sustainable was 8.2 (1 = not at all willing; 10 = very willing). Barriers included a lack of food affordability, accessibility and availability, low food literacy, food systems distrust, food-related values, beliefs and norms, and dietary preferences and restrictions. Strategies to support sustainable diets included intrapersonal approaches related to improving food literacy, interpersonal factors such as shifting norms, community-based and institutional approaches to increase food accessibility and government actions such as subsidies for producers and consumers.

This study builds upon previous research by exploring perceptions of sustainable diets among a diverse sample of Canadians using in-depth interviews. Findings can inform public health messaging, behaviour change interventions and policy approaches to support the adoption of sustainable diets.

Service-learning (SL) shows potential to respond to the global policy agenda of education for sustainable development (ESD) by increasing pro-sustainability competences through direct involvement of students in projects that satisfy identified community needs. Nevertheless, there is a scarcity of studies that attempt to measure the impact of SL on students’ sustainability competences, especially the action competence. This study aims to address this gap by examining the experiences of higher education students.

A pre-post survey design based on the Self-Perceived Action Competence for Sustainability Questionnaire was conducted on an interdisciplinary group of 219 students of two courses (Sustainable Development and Ecology) in Medellin, Colombia, half of which (109) participated in SL projects.

Sufficient empirical evidence was found to suggest that SL boosts the impact of academic courses regarding action competences in students (specially their willingness to act).

The statistical analysis shows some contradictions that should be addressed in further research.

These results can encourage more educators and universities to implement strategies such as SL to move forward with ESD and thus help overcome the current socioecological crisis.

This paper not only discusses the theoretical potential of SL but also contrasts theory with empirical observations of 13 SL projects assessed in terms of self-perceived action competence for sustainability.

Due to the influence of complex and intersecting factors, self-governed public open spaces (POSs) (managed by local communities) are subject to collective action dilemmas such as tragedy of the commons (overexploitation), free-riding, underinvestment and mismanagement. This review paper adopts a multi-dimensional and multi-tier social-ecological system (SES) framework proposed by McGinnis and Ostrom, drawing on collective action theory to explore the key institutional-social-ecological factors that impact POS self-governance.

In this paper, Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analysis (PRISMA) was utilized to systematically screen and review the relevant literature for the period from 2000 to 2023 in three databases: Web of Science, Scopus and Google Scholar. A total of 57 papers were chosen for in-depth analysis.

The literature review identified and categorized several variables associated with the self-organizing system of POS; consequently, an SES-based POS management framework was developed for the first time, consisting of 114 institutional-social-ecological sub-variables from different dimensions and three levels. Compared to ecological factors, among others, governance organizations, property-rights systems, socioeconomic attributes and actors' knowledge of SES have been commonly and primarily studied.

There is still room for the refinement of the conceptual SES-based POS collective action framework over the time (by adding in new factors), and indefinitely empirical research validating those identified factors is also worth to be undertaken, particularly testing how SES factors and interaction variables affect the POS quality (collective action).

The findings of this study can provide local policy insights and POS management strategies based on the identification of specific SES factors for relevant managers. Moreover, this research makes significant theoretical contributions to the integration of the SES framework and collective action theory with POS governance studies.

The purpose of this study is to investigate the gendered ideas and ideals attached to an imagined ideal Entrepreneur in a post-industrial rural community in Sweden. While research has not yet clearly explained how the ideal entrepreneur is constructed, the result, i.e. the gendered representations of entrepreneurs, is well-researched. Previous results indicate a prevalent portrayal of entrepreneurship as a predominantly masculine construct characterised by qualities such as self-made success, confidence and assertiveness.

Ethnographic fieldwork was conducted in a community that is attempting to re-brand itself through garden tourism. Through inductive reasoning, this study analyses the gendered ideas and ideals regarding the community’s imagined ideal Entrepreneur who is to help the community solve its problems.

This study finds that the community forges the Entrepreneur into an imagined masculine ideal as holy, a saviour and a god and is replacing its historical masculine ironmaster with a masculine Entrepreneur. This study develops forging as a metaphor for the construction of the masculine ideal Entrepreneur, giving the community, rather than the entrepreneur himself, a voice as constructors. From social constructionism, this study emphasises how gendered ideas and ideals are shaped not only by the individual realities but more so in the reciprocal process by the realities of others.

The metaphor of forging adds an innovative theoretical dimension to the feminist constructionist approach and suggests focusing on how the “maleness” of entrepreneurship is produced and reproduced in the local. Previously, light has been shed on how male entrepreneurs perform their identities collectively; the focus of this study is on the social construction of this envisioned Entrepreneur within a rural community. The development of forging thus contributes as a way of analysing entrepreneurship in place. The choice of an ethnographic study allowed the authors to be a part of the real-life world of community members, providing rich data to explore entrepreneurship and gender.