Building Community-driven Vertical Gardens- Nigeria

Country

Nigeria

Keyworld

Vertical gardens; participatory development; thermal comfort

Level:

Meso

Meso

Main result

Urban transformation initiative

Title

Building Community-driven Vertical Gardens

Date 2014-2018

Objectives

The main goals of the intervention were to bring both thermal comfort and economic benefits to low-income residents of Agege; to enhance biodiversity in the residential buildings; reduce indoor temperatures and fight humidity and the effects of high outdoor temperature; introduce an innovative responsible approach to vertical gardening that involved locally sourced materials for local people; increase ownership participation by embracing ideas of the community members; preserve the building façade from weathering; and reduce urban heat island effects.

Location /geographical coverage

Agege, Lagos, Nigeria.

Organisation responsible for good practice

University of Cardiff

Stakeholders and partners

The main beneficiaries are the researchers/University of Cardiff, and the skillset

team that was recruited and trained to think and develop these prototypes, such as carpenters, food producers and cultivators, welders, horticulturist, caretakers,

researcher’s assistant and transportation services, and other community members.

Short summary

Agege is one of the 7th most populated low-income communities in Lagos with a total population of around 1,033,064 inhabitants. Climate change in Nigeria led to seasonal droughts and floods, causing pressures in terms of food security as well as high temperature and humidity levels which directly affects the economically disadvantaged population in the slums of Lagos. In 2014 a research team at the University of Cardiff implemented a study on vertical gardens in residential areas with the purpose of alleviating local temperatures and enhancing biodiversity. The implementation started with a study on vertical garden prototypes and was continued with the introduction of practical gardens, and further practical vertical farms maintained by the local community of 3 residential buildings, one in Suru Street, another in Lagos Street in Agege, and a third in Abeokuta Street.

Impact

The implementation of vertical gardens, as well as vertical farms in residential

buildings of the community of Agege has led to some environmental, economic, and socio-cultural impacts. Vertical gardens and farms provided a more naturalistic style of landscape design for urban development, lowered local temperature, and increased the number of species present in the area. Additionally, a skillset team was built to co-design and co-create the solution of both Vertical Green Systems leading to an increase of jobs and generating new income. Therefore, the project brought to the community an increased involvement of locals in the management of green spaces, access to healthy and affordable food, increased sustainability of agriculture practices and increased visibility and opportunity for marginalised groups.

Innovation

In terms of heatwaves management, Vertical Green System (VGS) prototypes were developed by a team of researchers of the University aiming to bring both thermal comfort and economic benefits to the community, as well as to reduce indoor temperatures and the effects of high outdoor temperature. This process was made in collaboration with the community using collaborative methodologies such as co- design and co-creation methods where each opinion was valued thus arousing a sense of ownership of the project within the community. The aim of this project was to develop affordable vertical gardens for the people living in low-income conditions and thus the innovation consisted in adapting otherwise expensive prototypes without compromising its functionality through participatory development with the local community. With the help and suggestions from the community, a second prototype was tested and consisted of vertical farms to grow food and further create a system where vegetables could be sold to generate new income to the community.

Lessons learned

Key lessons for responsible innovation were noted and consist of some important aspects when promoting a project such as this one. Lessons started to point out the importance of understanding local communities as knowledgeable and should never be looked down upon. Involving low-income communities in research is a major challenge as it meets an invisible wall of illiteracy, disinterestedness, wariness towards strangers. Therefore, when co-creating a project with local communities one should bear in mind that a sense of project ownership increases the community participation and their involvement is key to success (i.e., indigenous ideas often proposed by the community often lead to significant financial savings). In line with this, when a community feels engaged and involved, they will always be open to embrace ideas that are affordable and beneficial to them. This project has shown its positive intervention by successfully reducing the heatwaves impact on the community and should further be replicated across other communities.

Sustainability

The solution was developed with a received funding from the European Union’s

Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme which led the research team to have the resources needed to implement it within 2 years (2014-2016).

The intervention adopted a bottom-up approach to low-cost innovation: vertical

green system prototypes were developed by the University researchers in

partnership with the local community of Agege and were a 2-stage initiative.

Community members contributed to every step of the research process with their context-based expertise, sharing decision-making and ownership. In order to better get the attention of the community, the research team appealed to the community leaders.

Phase I consisted in building two initial Vertical Green System prototypes to assess the community acceptability impact on thermal comfort through lowering

temperatures in rooms adjacent to where they were installed. This phase enabled researchers to gauge the pros and cons of the prototypes and to gather new insights for their further development.

Phase II consisted in building two further prototypes to examine the added value of transforming the Vertical Green Systems into vertical farms to cultivate food and medicinal plants (as suggested by the community towards the end of phase I) and test the potential for a sustainable commercial initiative. This phase enabled the researchers to: assess food growth performance; test prototypes' community acceptability; evaluate the potential for developing entrepreneurial competences in the community; and undertake an initial cost/benefit exercise.

Replicability and/or up-scaling

The European Union’s funding will fundamentally work in European countries,

however any other country who has the will to replicate this project can always

explore other funding sources. Furthermore, the co-design and co-creation of

vertical gardens within communities can be easily implemented when getting

together all community members with their knowledge and expertise, having a

dynamic team responsible for the continuity of the project.

Contact details

Cardiff University

https://www.cardiff.ac.uk/

+44 (0)29 2087 4000

Related Web site(s)