Urban food security, urban resilience and climate change - weADAPT

In response to the existential threats described above, there are moves to develop newapproaches to building greater resilience in cities. Many of these involve a degree ofre-localisation to reduce dependence on long and possibly vulnerable supply lines forfood, energy, water, finance and waste disposal. In this context, urban agriculture hasre-emerged as a matter of public and policy debate within cities. While for some urbanagriculture is a contradiction in terms, it has long been recognised by city and localgovernments and been subject to regulation. An important aspect of this research hasbeen to review studies of these regulatory regimes and to consider how these operatein practice as supporters of or barriers to the expansion of local food production andprocessing.The research on which this report is based involved two complementary strands. Thefirst comprised a review of the literature: on notions of food security and relatedconcepts such as food sovereignty; on current patterns of urban agriculture and itscontribution to the consumption profile of urban populations; the impact of climatechange on these patterns of urban agriculture and on possible future patterns; and onbroader conceptions of urban resilience and how urban agriculture might contribute tothe strengthening of resilience in cities. The second strand involved a series ofinterviews with practitioners and policy makers in two case study cities in Australia:Melbourne and the Gold Coast. These case study areas were selected to reflectdifferent historical trajectories and patterns of urban growing. They also reflect adifferent set of opportunities and constraints on the potential for urban agriculture toplay a more prominent role in the future.The research found a variety of perspectives, conceptions and practices in both thepublished literature and in the views of our sample of practitioners. While this varietysometimes served to impede productive debate, more often it reflected sinceredifferences of opinion that could be resolved through further dialogue. Although welearnt of some instances of outright hostility to urban agriculture, it was more commonto hear of a more benign antipathy to growing food in cities. Combining a broad scaleview that Australia is a country that always has and likely always will enjoy foodsecurity when seen primarily in terms of aggregate national output, with thecommonplace view that food production takes places only in rural areas, we see theroots of this apathy and complacency. Given the ways in which much debate aboutexistential threats to contemporary ways of life entails accusations of alarmism, it is notsurprising that attempts to present urban agriculture as a plausible and necessarymeasure to promote greater urban food security are met in some quarters withscepticism.The research also revealed that around the world, many cities are taking much moreseriously the various threats to their security posed by climate change, peak oil, globaleconomic instability and armed conflicts. Many are also recognising that because someof these threats are connected, so too should any effective response. Thus, while thenutritional impacts and benefits of backyard and small scale food production in citiesmay be relatively modest at present, they generate a number of other benefits,including the chance to become more aware of the provenance and quality of fresh fruitand vegetables, the opportunity to work with others in producing, processing andsharing local food and the ability to use what would otherwise be waste products thatare costly to dispose of.Urban food security, urban resilience and climate change 4