RUNRES: The rural-urban nexus: Establishing a nutrient loop to improve city region food system resilience is a four-year development project funded by the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC). The purpose of RUNRES is to address two critical development challenges facing rapidly urbanizing countries across Sub-Saharan Africa: the provision of dignified and sustainable basic sanitation; and the sustainable and equitable production of food. Currently, both the sanitation and agricultural sectors are dominated by linear solutions that are heavily dependent on resource intensive inputs. These approaches are obsolete and have led to radical nutrient imbalances within rural-urban interfaces across the world. In rural areas, long-term nutrient mining has created a downward trend of agricultural productivity, which harms livelihoods and exacerbates food insecurity. Simultaneously, rapidly growing urban areas suffer from an accumulation of nutrients; the insufficient collection and disposal of organic green waste, food waste, and human waste presents a critical environmental and human health risk in cities across lower income countries.

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