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Urban food security, urban resilience and climate change - weADAPT

Urban food security, urban resilience and climate change - weADAPT

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IntroductionGlobally, <strong>and</strong> in Australia, cities are growing. Demonstrating this, built-up areas in theworld cover an estimated 4.75 million km 2 , <strong>and</strong> the spread of <strong>urban</strong> areas is growing ata rate of approximately 2040,000 km 2 each year. In Australia, three quarters of thepopulation live in major cities (defined by the Commonwealth Government’s MajorCities Unit as settlements of at least 100,000 people). According to Davis (2005), thisrapid <strong>urban</strong> growth signifies a new epoch for the planet; for the first time in history,more people live in cities than rural areas. This poses significant challenges <strong>and</strong>opportunities for ensuring national <strong>and</strong> international <strong>food</strong> <strong>security</strong>, <strong>and</strong> suchcircumstances are exacerbated in the context of <strong>climate</strong> <strong>change</strong>.According to renowned <strong>food</strong> writer Julian Cribb <strong>urban</strong> expansion is occurring almostentirely on the world’s best farml<strong>and</strong>. However, he also notes that it is not only citiesthat consume farml<strong>and</strong>, but the ‘pleasant but nutritionally unproductive’ recreationalpursuits such as golf courses <strong>and</strong> theme parks enjoyed by city dwellers in peri-<strong>urban</strong>areas (Cribb, 2008, p. 58). Australia’s <strong>urban</strong>ization is also associated with growingdependence on centralized or integrated infrastructure to deliver power, water <strong>and</strong>waste management services <strong>and</strong> on increasingly complex distribution networks,although there is increasing recognition of the merits of decentralised systems (e.g.Cook et al., 2009).While cities grow <strong>and</strong> exp<strong>and</strong> their footprint, they are also inextricably linked to <strong>climate</strong><strong>change</strong>, both as the generators of significant proportions of greenhouse gas emissions<strong>and</strong> as places substantially impacted by current <strong>and</strong> future <strong>change</strong>s to <strong>climate</strong>s. Thecapacity of cities to secure the range of resources, including <strong>food</strong>, necessary for theircontinued existence in the face of significant <strong>climate</strong> <strong>change</strong> remains the subject ofextensive research <strong>and</strong> policy debate (e.g. Australian Government, 2010).In this review, we critically examine the intersections between Australia’s growing<strong>urban</strong>isation, the need to respond to <strong>climate</strong> <strong>change</strong> <strong>and</strong> the prospects of <strong>and</strong>challenges for ensuring greater <strong>food</strong> <strong>security</strong>.Historically, towns <strong>and</strong> cities have been places that have offered greater <strong>security</strong>(including <strong>food</strong> <strong>security</strong>) <strong>and</strong> opportunity than other places, which have typically beenmuch smaller settlements in rural areas. Security <strong>and</strong> opportunity are products,primarily, of scale <strong>and</strong> density. Larger numbers of people, living closer together found iteasier to defend themselves against external threats <strong>and</strong> also to provide each otherwith individual <strong>and</strong> social services. Recent work by Glaeser (2011) <strong>and</strong> Saunders(2010) <strong>and</strong> others has highlighted the contemporary benefits of cities <strong>and</strong> <strong>urban</strong> life,especially to migrants from rural areas. <strong>Urban</strong> scale <strong>and</strong> density also, perhapsparadoxically, provide opportunities for processes of radical social <strong>and</strong> political <strong>change</strong>as well as for <strong>security</strong> <strong>and</strong> continuity. It is no coincidence that the various uprisings ofthe so-called Arab Spring have occurred in the cities of Egypt, Libya, Syria <strong>and</strong> Tunisia.But cities also, <strong>and</strong> at the same time, create threats to individual <strong>and</strong> social <strong>security</strong>:diseases can spread more rapidly in densely populated areas; natural <strong>and</strong> humanmadedisasters can have more devastating effects in such areas, <strong>and</strong> <strong>urban</strong>populations become more dependent on broad scale systems of production,distribution <strong>and</strong> consumption. Rural populations are not necessarily any less vulnerableoverall to disease <strong>and</strong> disaster than <strong>urban</strong> populations, but the nature <strong>and</strong> scale of theirvulnerability is often profoundly different.<strong>Urban</strong> populations derive their relative <strong>security</strong> <strong>and</strong> opportunity from more extensive<strong>and</strong> complex social <strong>and</strong> <strong>urban</strong> systems, but at the same time these can be sources ofvulnerability. Food <strong>security</strong> is a case in point. The relationship between <strong>food</strong> production<strong>and</strong> <strong>urban</strong>isation is both profound <strong>and</strong> long st<strong>and</strong>ing <strong>and</strong> as Mumford (1961) observed,the foundations of <strong>urban</strong>ism lie in Neolithic period when the domestication of plants <strong>and</strong><strong>Urban</strong> <strong>food</strong> <strong>security</strong>, <strong>urban</strong> <strong>resilience</strong> <strong>and</strong> <strong>climate</strong> <strong>change</strong> 73

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