Feeding cities: food security and ecosystem support in an urbanizing world

Summary

This is a chapter which is part of the book Urbanization, Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services: Challenges and Opportunities.

In this chapter we take a complex systems approach to exploring the linkages among the phenomenon of urbanization, the changing value systems and world perspectives of urban dwellers, the sometimes distant connections to the food production systems that support cities, and the often invisible ecosystem services that support food production and in turn are affected by food production.

After we explore the relationship between a range of ecosystem services and their relationship to food production, we present three cases of economically developed cities that secure their food from global sources. The wealthy urban populations in all our three case cities adhere to the highly commoditized systems of industrial production based on energy- and material-intensive external inputs for the bulk of their food provision. Fully integrated into the global market, trade enables these cities to both consume and produce what their consumers desire without regard to the local capacity of ecosystems in the regions around the cities. Although each city is secure under prevailing economic and trade conditions, they are exposed to a range of socio-economic and ecosystem vulnerabilities that arise from the conventional “productivist" food production paradigm upon which they are based.

We conclude by proposing a number of scenarios describing plausible trajectories for the evolution of food systems in the twenty-first century as humanity becomes increasingly urbanized. Fundamentally, the ecologically integrated system approach, especially the urban garden component, would go a long way towards reconnecting urban dwellers with the biosphere, with potential positive effects on biodiversity.

Information

Link to centre authors: Deutsch, Lisa
Publication info: Deutsch, L, Dyball, R, Steffen, W. 2013. Feeding cities: food security and ecosystem support in an urbanizing world. In Elmqvist, T, Fragkias, M, Goodness, J, Güneralp, B, Marcotullio, PJ, McDonald, RI Parnell, S, Schewenius, M, Sendstad, M, Seto, KC, Wilkinson, C. (Eds.) Urbanization, Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services: Challenges and Opportunities. Springer, Dordrecht.

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