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TOOLS AND KNOW-HOW

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Guide: URBAL: A Method to Help Better Understand an Innovation and Its Contribution to a Sustainable Food System

Ekolo Mundo does not control the feasibility or viability of the proposed solutions

Structure : CIRAD

France

Montpellier

Solution proposed by : CIRAD

Difficulty level :

# evaluate # impact # sustainability

Description

 

Urbal is a multi-step method designed to help you better understand the impacts of your innovation on the sustainability of food systems. 

Using tools to map how social innovations in the field of sustainable food drive change and have an impact over time, Urbal can highlight key barriers and catalysts for sustainability and provide important insights to community members, practitioners, policymakers, and researchers working to improve food systems.

This guide explains how to use the Urbal approach. It provides detailed information on how to map the changes and impacts of your activities on food system sustainability, and how to identify the catalysts and barriers to these changes and impacts. Urbal also offers the ability to compare, evaluate, and track the sustainability of innovations.

WHAT IS URBAL FOR?

  • Urbal is a free, open-access, adaptable, and easy-to-use tool that enables the assessment of the impact of social food innovations on sustainability, thereby facilitating decision-making and planning.
  • Urbal helps you identify and map how an innovation drives changes and generates impacts on the sustainability of food systems.
  • Urbal helps you identify the barriers and drivers for these changes toward more sustainable food systems.
  • Urbal shows how innovations contribute to transforming sustainable food systems by being replicated, networked, scaled up, supported, and/or disseminated across multiple scales.
  • Urbal allows, in an optional step, for the identification and selection of evaluation indicators.

WHO IS URBAL FOR?

Urbal is designed to support public and private practitioners, including innovators, policymakers, and funders, who wish to reflect on their actions with a view to improving the sustainability of food systems.

HOW DOES URBAL WORK?

Through freely accessible and customizable online resources, Urbal enables:

  • The participation of multiple stakeholders and their collaborative learning.
  • A reflective exercise to map pathways to change and their impact.
  • An assessment of the various components of sustainability.

 

Valette E., Blay-Palmer A., Lepiller O., Intoppa B., Roudelle O., Di Battista A., Perignon M., 2023. Urbal Methodological Guide, CIRAD/Wilfrid Laurier University/Institut Agro/Està, 41 p. 

ETHICS 

The sale of Urbal as a product is not permitted. The sale of Urbal as a service is permitted, provided that:

  • explicitly referencing the Urbal Guide and the original content
  • explicitly cite and name the Urbal method to your clients/users
  • explicitly commit to upholding Urbal’s ethical values.

To claim use of the Urbal method, you must comply with the ethical commitments listed in the table below.

To certify your use of Urbal, you must declare that you have made every effort to comply with these ethical commitments, list the elements demonstrating your compliance with these commitments, and make this declaration public to the Urbal user community.

Valette E., Blay-Palmer A., Lepiller O., Intoppa B., Roudelle O., Di Battista A., Perignon M., 2023. Urbal Methodological Guide, CIRAD/Wilfrid Laurier University/Institut Agro/Està, 41 p.

Download the PDF file
urbal-sustainablefood.guide

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