Urban food security, urban resilience and climate change - weADAPT

government; and that trying to get people to talk about complex issues who didn’thave clear lines of responsibility was very difficult. You can get thoseconversations happening at officer level, and maybe at manager level, but it’svery hard to get real openness to people above that [level] thinking outside thebox [Former state government employee, Melbourne].In Queensland, the Newman government has commissioned an inquiry into the state’sagricultural and resource industries, and this focuses primarily on identifying andremoving unnecessary regulatory barriers, and there is little recognition of land useconflicts except in relation to tensions between famers and miners in, for example, theDarling Downs.At the local government planning level there also seem to be a general lack ofawareness and a complacency around food, translating into a barrier to the greaterexpansion of urban and peri-urban agriculture; and more broadly to the construction ofa sustainable and resilient food system:There is a lack of awareness of the importance that food can play in communitydevelopment, within the system that’s making the decisions. Food’s always beenat the heart of community development, it was at the basis of human communitydevelopment, 8,000 years ago when [agriculture and civilisation] first emerged.But it’s something that’s relatively [absent] from planning schemes and language,in that whole sector of planning and community development, it hasn’t quiteemerged as a priority. That’s one of the main drivers behind [food insecurity], thatfood doesn’t have a place at the table when major decisions are being made… Itgoes to this assumption that our food system will always come from somewhereelse. That seems to be a story that’s guaranteed by government, or privateindustry, which says that we’ll always be able to go elsewhere to source our food.But that’s not a tested theory. It’s just an assumption that’s been made [Localgovernment employee, Melbourne].Adding another dimension to the lack of political support for urban agriculture are theexisting regulatory regimes and policies that provide on the ground obstacles to therealisation and expansion of urban agriculture practises across Australia. On the GoldCoast for example, much attention has been placed on the Council’s commitment tohave 100 community gardens by 2020, but, as expressed by some interviewees, thattarget will struggle to come to fruition based on their own experience of dealing withCouncil and its policies:We started [the Ashmore community garden project] in 2010… However, overthat time the specifications for what we needed to achieve to be eligible to get thegarden had changed… [Then, council told us] it’s probably better to look at thecommunity gardens starting kit, but I don’t think that’s the current process anywaybecause we keep being told that there are new processes being developed andnew procedures ... Like in the past we’ve worked to what council tells us and thenthey change their mind once you’ve done it [saying] ‘oh that’s great but youshouldn’t have done it’ [Community gardener, Gold Coast].In an attempt to address the lack of guidance and the confusing nature of communitygarden planning presented above, the newly elected Gold Coast City Council hasUrban food security, urban resilience and climate change 134