ABSTRACT
Addressing the nutrient-food-waste nexus from a landscape perspective reveals how global urbanisation and evolving rural-urban linkages pose significant challenges for urban food supply and waste management strategies. Municipal solid waste and sludge from wastewater treatment is being generated faster than what urban sanitation services can move safely out of the city, transforming urban areas into vast ‘nutrient sinks’. Better planning of rural-urban linkages and the urban consumption metabolism, as targeted under Sustainable Development Goals 11 and 12, offers opportunities to promote a circular economy in support of nutrient recovery and reuse for agricultural landscapes. Otherwise, nutrients could become locked up in landfills and/or contribute to ecological degradation, especially of water resources. Based on examples from developing countries, opportunities for nutrient-balanced landscapes through resource recovery for reuse are presented. Policies and economic incentives, as seen in India and Ghana, show options for how a landscape approach can support closed loop processes in the interlinked waste and agricultural sectors.
