David Olivier takes top honours at World Symposium

GCI Postdoc David Olivier, the only African delegate at the World Symposium on Sustainability Science and Research, wins Best Paper Award.

David Olivier of the Global Change Institute won the Best Paper Award at the World Symposium on Sustainability Science and Research in Manchester, United Kingdom (5-7 April 2017).

Hosted by Manchester Metropolitan University, the three-day symposium focused on implementing the 2030 United Nations Agenda for Sustainable Development and welcomed high-level academics and specialists from around the world.

The paper David presented at the conference was entitled ¡°Urban Agriculture in Cape Town: Building Sustainable Livelihoods¡±. David argues that urban agriculture practitioners must adopt the holistic sustainable livelihoods approach to urban agriculture in poor areas, rather than focus on the economic gains alone.

Delegates at the conference included government officials, consultants and researchers from countries such as Sweden, Germany, the United Kingdom, the USA and Canada, to name a few.

David says he noticed early on that Brazil was the only other country from the Southern Hemisphere represented at the symposium. ¡°I was proud to be the only delegate representing Africa¡±, says David. He adds, ¡°I found that many of the development solutions proposed are not easily transferrable to the South African context. It is a pity that developing countries are so poorly represented in these policy-shaping events, which is all the more reason to be thrilled at winning with a case study from the South African context.¡±

David graduated with a PhD in Sociology from Stellenbosch University in 2015. His thesis, ¡°The Physical and Social Benefits of Urban Agriculture Projects Run by Non-Governmental Organisations in Cape Town¡± argues that urban agriculture provides important social benefits in poor communities.