Gathering wild foods in urban areas – mixed-methods study on ecological and socio-political sustainability of gathering in Vienna, Austria
Abstract
Wild food gathering was repeatedly found to be one of the most popular outdoor activities in Europe and the commercialization of wild foods is increasingly discovered as bearing significant economic potential. Wild foods are marketed as innovative and trendy products bearing exceptional health benefits and unique flavors and about 100 million EU citizens were estimated to consume wild foods. Urban and suburban areas have high potential for commercializing but also sourcing wild foods but concerns of overexploitation of urban green spaces and unsustainable gathering practices has arisen. Such concerns are hardly ever backed up with scientific evidence about the potential and limits for sustainable harvesting in urban areas. This research project aims to counteract this gap of knowledge and aims to understand the ecological and socio-political sustainability of wild food gathering in urban areas. Research is guided by the overarching research question ‘How sustainable is gathering wild foods in urban areas?’, which is investigated through adapting a conceptual framework for sustainable gathering so far used in rural areas of countries in the global south. Investigating sustainable gathering in urban areas in Europe is innovative from the ground up. It fosters the sustainable provision, processing and consumption of local resources, as supported by the concept of bioeconomy, and the attainment of the UN Sustainable development goals 11 and 12. Research is conducted in Vienna, Austria, along a sequential exploratory mixed-methods design. Semi-structured expert interviews with 30 local experts for wild food gathering, are followed-up with several hundred face-to-face surveys with urban gatherers in eight gathering hotspots in urban and suburban green spaces.
keywords Urban non-timber-forest-products Urban green spaces Foraging Ethnobotany Edible cities Superfoods
Publikationen
Project staff
Christoph Schunko
Assoc. Prof. Priv.-Doz. Dipl.-Ing. Dr.nat.techn. Christoph Schunko
christoph.schunko@boku.ac.at
Tel: +43 1 47654-93348
Project Leader
01.02.2019 - 30.06.2021
Anjoulie Brandner
DI.in Anjoulie Brandner B.Sc.
anjoulie.brandner@boku.ac.at
Tel: +43 1 47654-93347
Project Staff
01.02.2019 - 30.06.2021