CEU Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2021
| Author | Herath, Kumudu Vinodya |
|---|---|
| Title | Sustaining Urban Home Gardening for Enhancing Food Security: A Study in Sri Lanka during the COVID-19 Pandemic |
| Summary | The COVID-19 pandemic had been a “threat- multiplier 1d; of food security, which had pushed already vulnerable food system to a more vulnerable condition. Urban home gardening has a potential for enhancing food security of communities through improved access to quality and nutritious food, and financial saving. The popularity in urban home gardening, which believed to have occurred during the first wave of COVID-19 pandemic in Sri Lanka, provides an opportunity to study how COVID-19, as an external perturbation, impacted the home gardening practices of urban communities. This research aimed at identifying motives, enablers, barriers, and benefits that the community in Colombo, Sri Lanka experienced with urban home gardening; its impact on household food security; and institutional assistance required to make urban home gardening feasible. The research took a grounded theory approach and is based on a discourse analysis of urban home gardener and expert interviews. The motives for urban home gardening during the pandemic had predominantly led by attributes that reflect the specific conditions and practitioners’ concerns prevailed during the lockdown. The results also reveal how time availability during the lockdown became an enabler to facilitate practitioners’ motives to realize the practice of home gardening. Also, personal traits and physical resources appears to behave either as enablers or barriers for gardeners and non-gardeners. Home gardening delivers both food and non-food benefits, while contributing to household food security through increased access to food and reducing food expenditure. The institutional assistance required includes enhancing awareness and knowledge through facilitation, providing material, networking, and regulatory measures. |
| Supervisor | Pinter, Laszlo |
| Department | Environment Sciences and Policy MSc |
| Full text | https://www.etd.ceu.edu/2021/herath_kumudu.pdf |
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