Urban food security, urban resilience and climate change - weADAPT

well as rural settings. In its short review of food security and climate change policy andpractice in Australia the report there is no mention at all of the urban dimension.In Edwards et al., (2010) discussion paper for NCCARF on food systems, climatechange adaptation and human health in Australia the urban dimension of climatechange impact is recognised as a threat to some current supply chains andacknowledgement that ‘grassroots community responses have begun to emerge inurban areas with householders and communities establishing new forms of productionand distribution’ (p. 24) and that these have the potential to grow.In short, there is widespread recognition that substantial changes to the climate acrossAustralia will have profound impacts on agriculture and hence on current systems andpatterns of food production, distribution and consumption. There is limited recognitionof the urban dimension to this, especially of the likely impacts on the security of foodsupplies to a predominantly urban population.Food production in and around cities will be subject to very similar climatic changesthat affect rural areas, indeed some of these changes may be even more pronouncedin cities that are more susceptible to heat island effects, the effects of flooding and theimpacts of storms. In terms of the impact of more localised systems of food productionwhich are less reliant on synthetic fertilisers on the generation of greenhouse gases,we found very empirical studies and there is clearly scope to develop and extend thisresearch agenda in the future.5.3 The contribution of urban agricultureStudies of the scope and contribution of urban agriculture to improving urban foodsecurity and building urban resilience typically take the form of localised case studieswith an emphasis on advocacy. There are very few large scale, empirical studies of thecontribution that existing forms of urban food production can make to overall urbanfood security and we see a similar set of contrasts between the traditional/macro andcritical/micro perspectives described above.The traditional/macro perspective typically sees primary food production as a ruralactivity although food processing, distribution and consumption may take place in citiesand metropolitan regions. Urban agriculture is essentially a small-scale activity,involving backyard growing for personal consumption alongside community gardens,as well as a range of communal food growing activities (including food swaps, guerrillagardening and permablitzing). While peri-urban market gardening may once havesupplied a significant proportion of food for cities, the loss of peri-urban land tosuburban expansion is accepted as an inevitable consequence of the growth of cities.From this perspective there is little prospect of urban food production making asignificant contribution to overall patterns of urban food consumption or to urban foodsecurity. Yet at the same time, the critical/micro perspective tends to attach greatersignificance to what already takes place under the broad heading of contemporaryurban agriculture and to see greater potential for it to play a much more prominent rolein the future as existing systems struggle to deal with increasing perturbations.Urban food security, urban resilience and climate change 60