Urban food security, urban resilience and climate change - weADAPT

and claimed that community gardens can ‘ … improve psychological well-being andsocial relations [and] facilitate healing’ (p. 22). Nasr et al. (2010) examined what itwould take to scale up urban agriculture in Vancouver and in doing so identified anumber of beneficial impacts, including:health benefits from growing and consuming one’s own food;increased employment opportunities for new urban farmers;more food from local sources with attendant reductions in greenhouse gasemissions;more efficient use of municipal organic waste;heightened public awareness of food sources and food quality.While these presumed benefits may well be valid, very few studies have attempted tomeasure with any degree of empirical precision these claims, which remain thereforetypically as statements of the possible.Some more empirical impact studies are however emerging in Australia. Gosh (2011)has estimated the potential contribution of suburban home garden food production andsuggests they could produce between 800–1100kg of produce per annum; enough tomeet a typical household’s requirements for fresh vegetables and produce a smallsurplus of fruit. In a similar vein, Francis (quoted in Ghosh, p. 2) claims that:The lawn space of the suburbs, if put into intensive food production has thepotential to out-produce the yields of commercial agriculture previously practicedon that land and provide most of our fresh food needs.Edwards (2011) reports not only the growth of urban agriculture in Melbourne, Victoria,but also some of the impacts, particularly in relation to community building, thepromotion of healthy diets and the creation of new spaces for people with mental healthproblems and disabilities. These positive impacts extend beyond those of food securityand highlight the many advantages, of urban agriculture, including building greaterresilience among urban populations. Shelton and Frieser (2009) study identifies thepositive impacts of urban agriculture on the Sunshine Coast in Queensland,highlighting the heavy dependence of the current food system on fossil fuels, whichcreates vulnerabilities in the face of a pending ‘peak oil’ crisis and rising fuel costs.Local food systems that are decentralised and less complex are claimed to be a morerobust model for this region that will help mitigate the effects of peak oil and adapt toclimate change, whilst the production of more staple foods within the urban footprintcan help alleviate food shortages in times of transport crisis or other disruptions to thedistribution system.The positive impacts of urban agriculture clearly extend beyond the production of food.For instance, Corkery (2004) found that a community garden at Sydney’s WaterlooPublic Housing Estate presented a wide range of benefits to residents, including socialand cultural expression, community building and informal education about social andenvironmental sustainability. These characteristics might be considered to be some ofthe key ingredients of greater community resilience if society is to respond to some ofthe predicted ‘global shocks’ associated with peak oil and climate change. This againhighlights the complexity of urban agriculture and the impact that collaborative efforts inUrban food security, urban resilience and climate change 27