Eid Mubarak

Today being Eid, I am reminded of an interfaith Ifthar dinner my colleagues and I organised in fall 2004 when I was Regional Director of the Canadian Unity Council / Centre for Research and Information on Canada in collaboration with the UBC Museum of Anthropology (MOA). Since the report is no longer on the MOA website,
Continue reading...

Feeding Asian Cities – Nourrir les villes d’Asie

In 2001, I was asked to edit and write the introduction to a collection of papers presented at a regional seminar in Bangkok in 2000, which I was also engaged in, on the topic of Feeding Asian Cities. The full text can in English can be downloaded here: http://www.cityfarmer.org/FeedingAsianCities.pdf.  La version française est disponible ici:  ftp://ftp.fao.org/docrep/fao/007/y3399f/y3399f00.pdf.
Continue reading...

The Road to Myanmar?

The following article was published by the Canadian International Council’s Open Canada on May 14th, 2014. The text can be found here.  I am also reproducing the full text below. The image is courtesy of Reuters. The recent death of Myanmar’s longest serving political prisoner, Win Tin, and growing awareness of the plight of the country’s minority Muslim Rohingya has
Continue reading...

Urban Agriculture in India: A survey of expertise, capacities and recent experience

“How will South Asian cities be fed?” is an important question demanding attention due to the rapidly growing urban population of the sub-continent. Urban and peri- urban agriculture (UPA) is one set of activities resulting in greater food production, improved livelihood opportunities for urbanites and the enhanced environmental quality of cities. This report provides an
Continue reading...

10 Things I learned at SSHRC

This entry was originally published in late December 2013 by SSHRC in English here and in French here As I prepare to leave SSHRC for a new life in Vancouver, it is an opportune moment for me to look back and reflect on the progress achieved and lessons learned over the past seven years. During my tenure at SSHRC as
Continue reading...