Urban food security, urban resilience and climate change - weADAPT

level in local government. VicHealth made a major strategic intervention in this fieldwith the launch in 2005 of Food for All, which adopted the FAO’s definition of foodsecurity, with the added element that individuals should not have to depend onemergency food sources in order to gain access to adequate amounts of food. As oneof the managers associated with the Food for All project described:From the VicHealth perspective, food security is more about inclusiveness, socialconnectedness. The understanding is of having secure access for all to adequateamounts of culturally appropriate and safe food, and not from emergencysources. Regular food to stay well, good quality food, from regular sources, notfrom food banks and soup kitchens [VicHealth Former Employee, Melbourne].The emphasis on non-emergency sources is important because many people withinthe Victorian Department of Health and in many other government entities frame theproblem of food security in terms of the provision of emergency food relief to a verysmall minority, or only under extreme conditions.For some ‘food security’ is to blame for the lack of action and understanding withingovernment. A former VicHealth employee explained that there was considerableresistance to using the term food security:They said, nobody knows what that is, you’re giving the wrong information. Whydon’t you call it food tucker, or adequate food, or something like that? Peopledon’t like the term ‘food security’, they think it’s to do with terrorism. I firmlybelieved we needed to keep the term food security, because it’s international. Ifyou change it, you can’t compare it, you can’t use the literature [VicHealth FormerEmployee, Melbourne].This resistance to the term ‘food security’ was further articulated by anotherinterviewee, with considerable experience working at state and local governmentlevels, suggesting that political reasons prevent food security from being used anddebated publicly as it may attract ‘unwelcome attention’:[Politicians] hate the word food security, because it’s something that they don’twant to have to deal with. They don’t like it, because if people are worried aboutfood security, it implies that the governments are not doing their job. It’sunwelcome attention [Independent researcher, Melbourne].An academic researcher also expressed her views about the terminology of foodsecurity used by governmental agencies. She pointed out that the term was beingappropriated by the State Government to justify the expansion of a particular form ofagriculture and not to improve food security in a holistic sense, thus she justified theneed to better define what is meant and expected by food security:Terminology is important. As a movement, we need to define better concepts,that are more broadly accessible to people. At the moment, I don’t think we…aredoing the best job of that…the way we define things is quite important. It’s allabout how you frame things [Academic researcher].Similar comments were made by others in the community sector. Comments such as:‘food security sounds very official, and a lot of people don’t relate to that’; or ‘foodsecurity can put some people off – people understand growing your own, beingUrban food security, urban resilience and climate change 109