Urban and Peri-Urban Agriculture as a Nature-Based Solution: A Conceptual Framework for the implementation in Latin America and the Caribbean

Climate change is intensifying the exposure of cities in Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) to extreme events and risks, increasing the need for effective adaptation strategies. Nature-based Solutions (NbS) are recognized as key instruments to cope with climate impacts. Among them, urban and peri-urban agriculture (UPA) stands out for its multifunctionality, providing economic, social, health, and environmental co-benefits such as urban cooling, heat mitigation, improved nutrition, and enhanced well-being. However, the explicit inclusion of UPA within the NbS framework is still recent, and its implementation remains limited, often overlooking interactions among co-benefits and underexploring its contribution to climate adaptation. In this sense, we developed a conceptual framework for implementing UPA as a NbS in LAC, recognizing the importance of doing so in the context of accelerating climate change and the growing need for urban adaptation and resilience. The proposed framework provides guidance for policymakers to integrate UPA into urban planning, supporting more resilient, healthy and adapted cities. The methodology combines a literature review on NbS design and case studies of UPA in LAC cities, ensuring both conceptual understanding and practical application. This approach also allows the identification of challenges, opportunities, and enabling conditions for integrating UPA into urban climate adaptation strategies. The framework highlights the key components of UPA implementation and the interactions between them and is structured in three complementary phases: (i) pre-implementation, focused on planning, stakeholder engagement, and enabling conditions; (ii) implementation, which underpins UPA practices and enhances health, social, economic, and ecological dimensions via multifunctional benefits and co-benefits; and (iii) post-implementation, in which, through a network, the environmental, social, and economic benefits and co-benefits may collectively enhance climate adaptation and urban resilience. Governance and stakeholder engagement are crucial across all stages. Our analysis of UPA initiatives in LAC demonstrates that these practices are highly multifunctional, providing interconnected social, economic, environmental, and health co-benefits. Case studies reveal that, although many projects were initially implemented to address immediate needs such as food security and income generation, they often evolve over time, producing additional benefits including urban cooling, biodiversity enhancement, and community engagement. The proposed conceptual framework captures these dynamics, emphasizing the importance of planning, stakeholder engagement, and enabling conditions during pre-implementation, the delivery of multifunctional benefits during implementation, and long-term monitoring and adaptive management in the post-implementation phase. By integrating UPA into urban planning, the framework highlights how multifunctional NbS can strengthen climate adaptation, enhance urban resilience, and provide cost-effective alternatives to grey infrastructure. This approach also identifies key challenges and opportunities for scaling up UPA in LAC cities, underscoring the need for governance structures, context-specific indicators, and participatory processes to ensure sustainable and equitable outcomes.