Humanity is facing massive sustainability challenges, such as climate change and the associated loss of biodiversity, water scarcity and food insecurity. Capitalist urbanisation drives furthermore profound transformations in rural and urban areas and thus in the agriculture and food systems, presenting both challenges and opportunities. Urban agriculture as a part of a local food system, where food is produced in an urban area and sold to consumers in that area, presents a new food production model, generating innovative tools to lower agricultural land use, improving resource use efficiency and biodiversity. Consequently, great potential can be attributed to a sustainable transformation of the agri-food system through urban agriculture.  Like many cities around the world, Malmö has recognised the need for sustainable development. Therefore, the city of Malmö has been addressing environmental, social and economic challenges for several years and is committed to a holistic and sustainable urban development. Although the city is aware of the benefits of small-scale urban agriculture, there are no policies that enable the upscaling of urban agriculture in the city. Botildenborg, a sustainable urban farm and meeting place in Malmö, on the other hand, has recognised the potential for sustainable business and development through urban agriculture for several years, by setting itself the goal to increase the local and ecologically produced food within the city through this form of agriculture. Botildenborg serves therefore as a case study of this research.  In order to be able to provide indications for policies to shape the transformation steps towards sustainability within the agri-food system in Malmö, structures and patterns, as well as possible drivers and potential obstacles of a sustainable transition, are examined in the course of this research. The empirical results from qualitative and quantitative data are systematically processed using the multi-level perspective in combination with the urban political ecology.  The results indicate that the identified barriers tend to be structural and are predominantly located in the economic and especially the political sphere. It seems that the non-monetary added value from urban agriculture is not perceived to its full potential by the city of Malmö. Botildenborg is stabilising itself mainly through knowledge sharing and network building, and thus will sooner or later be able, through the movement behind the network, to change the dominant agri-food regime. The rapidity of the transformation depends on the political ii willingness of the city of Malmö to explicitly integrate urban agriculture into its policies and regulations.

This thesis is about the tensions faced by communitarian water service providers in peri-urban Cochabamba, Bolivia, in their continued dependence on private water vending businesses, despite efforts to socialize service delivery. Based on fieldwork conducted in Cochabamba from May-July, 2013, this thesis argues that due in part to a lack of government intervention and regulation, many communitarian water associations in Cochabamba are being held captive by private water vendors who exploit the city’s unequal distribution of water resources for profit. It makes this argument by exploring two main points: that communitarian water associations leverage progressive forms of organization to improve service delivery, but are hindered by barriers which lie outside their control; and that small-scale water businesses are able to exploit the failures of the formal state/public and informal communitarian systems by positioning themselves as a necessary operation, in a way which limits the state’s ability to regulate their activities.

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In an ever-moving world, urban governance and infrastructure have to adapt to climate change. In the meantime, people's concerns and engagement towards urban projects which will affect their lives are growing. The climate change adaptation process is inevitable to implement, considering the multiplicity of climate change threats. Hawai'i is no exception, and it has to adapt its infrastructures to stronger and more frequent floods. This master's thesis highlights the case of the Ala Wai risk flood management plan in Hawai'i, the U.S., and the engagement of some Hawaiians in the Protect Our Ala Wai Watershed (POAWW) grassroots movement against the proposed project. The conflict creates the emergence of two paradigms, which are translating two opposing strategies of action. Each paradigm aligns with a specific approach that reflects the interests and value systems of the individuals that constituted it. On the one hand, there is the economic growth paradigm supported by the United States Army Corps of Engineers (USACE), which manages the project and unfolds the resilience strategy by protecting Honolulu's dominant economic interests. On the other hand, there is the environmental justice paradigm, mobilized by the POAWW grassroots movement. This latter one is positioned within the transition strategy and demands the integration of indigenous knowledge into the project. To go beyond this conflictual standoff, the master's thesis argues that a hybrid paradigm, which would move towards a transformation strategy, would be preferable to surpass the current cleavages. This paradigm shift gives keys of actions and could be transferable in a contextualized way to other urban conflicts linked with the climate change adaptation process.