Urban food security, urban resilience and climate change - weADAPT

…by 2050… food production will have to double on possibly about half the arableland available…will the unfounded reluctance to embrace the geneticmodification of food crops retard the necessary research that is required to yieldproductive crops in a changing climate environment?’ (Australian Academy ofScience, 2010:16).The Australian Government’s scientific body, the Commonwealth Scientific andIndustrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) is also concerned with global food security,making the following statement on their website: ‘The global challenge will be toincrease food production through raising agricultural productivity efficiently, whilstdecreasing our environmental footprint’ (CSIRO, 2010). The CSIRO has been a majorproponent of GM food, partnering with industry to invest in research and developmentof GM crops. Whilst environmental sustainability is clearly a component of governmentpolicy responses to food security, the social dimensions, such as global powerrelations, poverty, inequality and the negative aspects of the corporatisation of theglobal food system are glaringly absent (Schanbacher, 2010).The policy dominance of this technological framing at the Federal policy level leaveslittle opportunity to critique the broader causes of food inequality at the scale where thiswould be most appropriate. Somewhat ironically, the detrimental effects of thechemical-based techno-fixes from the post war era onwards are now being used topromote genetically modified food crops – based on claims that genetically modifiedplants can be engineered to resist pests, hence reducing the volume of chemical inputsneeded to grow food. Importantly, and in the context of climate change, a number ofagri-chemical and seed companies, including Monsanto, are in the midst ofcommercialising a number of ‘Climate Ready’ crop varieties, which will, according totheir promoters, be designed to better withstand the vagaries of climate change,including increased salinity and drought. Whilst such innovations have been largelyviewed by the scientific community as offering a silver-bullet to the problem of foodproduction, it has the potential to replace chemical pollution with biological pollution inthe form of genetically modified organisms, something that has alarmed many due toits irreversibility and potential effects on wider ecosystems. The urgency with which thisargument is mounted also relegates concerns of environmental and health impacts ofthe GM approach to food security behind somewhat dubious claim that GM can ‘feedthe world’. However, this approach further concentrates the control of the food systeminto the hands of fewer and fewer corporations, which in itself has been cited as amajor cause of food insecurity. Framing the issue as a problem for science to solvemarginalises attempts to question the problem of wealth and food distribution globally.It may well be that science holds some of the answers to a food secure future,however, these should be augmented with a world view that understands andincorporates ‘the social’ into a critical and holistic view of food security.This critical and holistic approach argues for a reconceptualisation of food security intofood sovereignty, as outlined above. The food sovereignty approach addresses notonly the availability of and access to food, but also raises questions about theownership and control of food systems, criticising the increasingly concentratedcorporate ownership of food production, distribution and retail as well as of biologicalmaterial such as seeds. The food sovereignty approach also advocates placing greatercontrol of food production among a wider range of institutions including communitybasedand not-for-profit organisations.Development agencies including those of the United Nations, have long-observed thatthe increased production of food using chemical fertilisers and pesticides and GMseeds, does not necessarily result in a reduction in hunger worldwide, or to universalfood security. Recently, the UN Special Rapporteur on the right to food, Olivier DeSchutter, proffered a food sovereignty approach to food security by identifying peasant-Urban food security, urban resilience and climate change 79