At the heart of Panama City, where the daily rhythm of commerce meets the traditions of food and culture, a quiet transformation began.
With catalytic seed funding from the Joint SDG Fund and support of the UN Food Systems Coordination Hub, the United Nations partnered with the Municipality of Panama to reimagine one of the city’s most emblematic spaces: the municipal market network. What began as an initiative to reduce food waste and promote circular economy practices has evolved into something much bigger — a living laboratory for sustainable urban transformation.
Today, Panama’s public markets are emerging not only as places where food is bought and sold, but as engines of environmental innovation, social inclusion, and urban regeneration.
A Market Vendor’s Perspective
For Rosa Martínez, who has sold fruits and vegetables for over twenty years at Mercado San Felipe Neri, the transformation is visible every day.
“Before, we used to throw away a lot of food at the end of the day,” she explains while arranging baskets of mangoes and papayas. “Now the food that can still be eaten goes to families in need, and the rest becomes compost that helps grow more food. Nothing is wasted.”
Through partnerships with organizations such as the Food Rescue Foundation, unsold but still edible food is now redistributed to community kitchens and vulnerable households, while organic waste is processed through composting and circular economy solutions.
“For us vendors, this project changed the way we see our market,” Rosa adds. “It’s not just a place to sell food anymore — it’s a place where we are helping the city take care of the environment and our community.”
Her story reflects a broader shift happening across Panama’s markets: a transformation from waste-generating infrastructure to engines of sustainability and solidarity.
A Living Laboratory for Sustainable Cities
The initiative, Sustainable Transformation of Public Markets: Circular Economy and Zero Waste, piloted new models of food recovery, composting, and biotechnology within municipal markets.
But the innovation went far beyond waste management. Through a regulatory innovation sandbox, the programme brought together government institutions, private companies, market associations, universities, and civil society organizations to test new solutions and unlock systemic change.
The process generated more than 50 potential partnerships and innovation pathways to support circular economy practices within markets.
At the same time, the programme introduced data systems and digital dashboards to strengthen evidence-based management across the municipal market network, enabling city authorities to make real-time operational decisions and improve transparency.
Markets are now increasingly seen not as aging infrastructure but as platforms for innovation where food systems, urban culture, entrepreneurship, and environmental sustainability intersect.
From Pilot to Ecosystem
The project quickly grew into a broad coalition of partners.
Public institutions, including the Municipality of Panama, national ministries, and innovation agencies, joined forces with private-sector actors such as PedidosYa and Grupo Rey, alongside civil society organizations and research institutions, including the Georgia Tech Innovation and Logistics Research Center, UDELAS, and the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute.
Together, these actors transformed the markets into spaces where food waste becomes compost, surplus food feeds communities, and new circular economy enterprises are born.
This collaborative ecosystem demonstrates a key lesson for SDG acceleration: systems change requires platforms where public institutions, communities, businesses, and knowledge institutions work together.
Markets as Anchors of Culture, Tourism, and Identity
The transformation is also helping reposition markets as vibrant centers of culture and gastronomy.
Panama City is recognized as a UNESCO Creative City of Gastronomy, and public markets play a central role in connecting food systems with cultural heritage, tourism, and local entrepreneurship.
Through partnerships with cultural institutions, museums, and gastronomy networks, markets are being revitalized as lively public spaces where residents and visitors alike experience the flavors, traditions, and diversity of Panama.
Crowding in Investment for Scale
Perhaps the clearest sign of success is that the initiative is already generating new investment and replication beyond the pilot phase.
Following the project, Mercado San Felipe Neri and the Municipality of Panama committed nearly $1 million in public investment to continue the transformation — expanding circular economy practices while introducing energy efficiency and sustainable infrastructure improvements.
The model is already spreading.
MercaPanamá, the country’s largest wholesale market supplying the entire province, has begun implementing its own circular economy strategy inspired by the initiative and UN entities are supporting energy sufficiency and cold chain.
Meanwhile, international development banks such as the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) and CAF – Development Bank of Latin America have started exploring opportunities to support the expansion of this model.
These developments illustrate a core function of the Joint SDG Fund: using catalytic seed funding to de-risk innovation and unlock larger investment flows.
The Investment Case: Scaling a Proven Model
The experience in Panama demonstrates that municipal markets are powerful yet underutilized entry points for urban sustainability and food systems transformation.
Markets sit at the intersection of food supply chains, urban livelihoods, waste management, culture, and tourism. Transforming them creates ripple effects across multiple sectors — from reducing food waste and greenhouse gas emissions to supporting small producers and strengthening local economies.
With relatively modest catalytic investment, Panama’s experience shows how markets can evolve into scalable platforms for the circular economy, climate action, and inclusive economic growth.
The next step is replication.
Municipalities across the country — including San Miguelito, one of Panama’s most densely populated districts facing major waste management challenges — are assessing how to replicate the model.
With strategic investment from development partners, Panama’s municipal market transformation could become a regional demonstration of how SDG localization moves from pilot innovation to policy adoption and large-scale financing.
A Catalyst for SDG Localization
What began as a zero-waste experiment has grown into a multi-stakeholder movement.
Public investment is being mobilized. Development banks are exploring financing. Municipalities are requesting replication.
And vendors like Rosa Martínez are proving that global goals can become real — in the markets, neighborhoods, and communities where people live their daily lives.
From waste to value, from pilot to policy, from innovation to investment, Panama’s municipal markets show how local action can drive global transformation.
Note:
All joint programmes of the Joint SDG Fund are led by UN Resident Coordinators and implemented by the agencies, funds, and programmes of the United Nations development system. With sincere appreciation for the contributions from the European Union and Governments of Belgium, Denmark, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, Monaco, the Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, the Republic of Korea, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, Spain, Sweden, and Switzerland for a transformative movement towards achieving the SDGs by 2030.
