Steering the Nexus: iZindaba Zokudla and Governing for Sustainability

Naudé Malan

doi:10.3389/fsufs.2021.705045

Abstract

“iZindaba Zokudla” means we talk about the food that we eat. iZindaba Zokudla is a public innovation lab that uses stakeholder-engagement methods to create “opportunities for urban agriculture in a sustainable food system.” iZindaba Zokudla is presented as an extra-institutional means to govern the water, land, energy, and waste nexus. This reflective essay critically describes iZindaba Zokudla and applies this to the design of institutional steering mechanisms to govern the food, water, land, and energy nexus towards sustainability. Governance is an intersubjective and interactive process between the subjects of governance and governance itself. Sustainability, as an interactive process, implies the creation of autocatalytic and symbiotic communities in society that integrates diverse actors and stakeholders, inclusive of scientific and lay actors, and ecosystems. iZindaba Zokudla is a means to govern and create such communities, and this article describes and reflects on how iZindaba Zokudla has created and managed such symbiotic communities or autocatalytic networks in the food system. The article generalises how the activities conducted in iZindaba Zokudla can be used to govern the water, land, energy, and waste nexus for sustainability. The article shows how iZindaba Zokudla has realised a progressive governance through the facilitation of its Farmers' Lab and website; how it has created opportunities for participation; and how it enables critical reflection in society.

Highlights

IZindaba Zokudla1is a multi-stakeholder engagement project that aims to create opportunities for urban agriculture in a sustainable food system. iZindaba Zokudla emerged from a research project in participatory technology design (Malan and Campbell, 2014; Campbell and Malan, 2018; Malan, 2020a)
Economic activity and businesses are “brokers between producers and consumers [that can] create new socioecological relations” (Pereira et al, 2020: 1327) and these “Entrepreneuring” (Bruton et al, 2013; Tobias et al, 2013; Lynde, 2020) or “institutional entrepreneurship” (Sidibé et al, 2018: 95) or “infrastructuring” (Nogueira et al, 2020) opportunities are a form of governance that can create sustainable enterprises and transform the food system. iZindaba Zokudla is an open, voluntary forum located in academia and civil society that aims at creating enterprises based-on new relationships between actorentrepreneurs/activists and stakeholders, who have an interest in the sustainability of such enterprises
Actors have made available opportunities in these labs, and these include offers and requests for land, for training, for new technology and new business opportunities. Recording and diarising these events enables the author to comment on a wide range of issues relevant to food systems change, and in this article these insights are generalised to governance and the idea that we could govern through a public innovation lab

Summary

INTRODUCTION

IZINDABA ZOKUDLA AS EXTRA-INSTITUTIONAL GOVERNANCE iZindaba Zokudla1is a multi-stakeholder engagement project that aims to create opportunities for urban agriculture in a sustainable food system. iZindaba Zokudla emerged from a research project in participatory technology design (Malan and Campbell, 2014; Campbell and Malan, 2018; Malan, 2020a). To allow governance to adapt and address new or novel issues and changes (Roosendaal et al, 2020: 110; Termeer et al, 2018: 86) it needs to “improvise” groups in society that cross-cut current divisions, so that they can produce “symbiotic” enterprises, nested in activist, educational, and other communities These can create economic and social benefits based-on the conservation and productivity of the environment. Actors have made available opportunities in these labs, and these include offers and requests for land, for training, for new technology and new business opportunities Recording and diarising these events enables the author to comment on a wide range of issues relevant to food systems change, and in this article these insights are generalised to governance and the idea that we could govern through a public innovation lab. This thick description allows us to comment on how progressive governance of the nexus can proceed

BACKGROUND

CONCLUSION

ETHICS STATEMENT