Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
The impact of frequent and intensifying natural disasters as a result of climate
hange on food security has emerged as a primary concern. The implications of glob-
al warming on natural and human habitats on Paciic SIDS has been aknowledged
at the United Nations (UN) World Food Summit and emphasized by UN-HABITAT
(the UN Human Setlement Programme). he expansion and diversiication of local
food production has been recommended by the UN Food and Agriculture Organ-
ization (FAO, 2009), as a strategy towards sustainable livelihoods, where risk and
vulnerability are managed through limiting dependency on imported goods by in-
creasing local production. Coordinated efforts to integrate rural and urban produc-
tion systems with the natural and urban ecosystems can effect secure livelihoods and
adequate nutrition.
Arguably, South Pacific states are the most vulnerable of the SIDS 'fringe' eco-
nomies, due to the combined effects of (a) remoteness from major markets, (b) sus-
ceptibility to increasing frequency and intensity of natural disasters related to cli-
mate hange, and (c) natural resource limitations and susceptibility to crop diseases
that restrict the potential to produce comparative advantages. Local level responses
to global threats to food security in the south include local food production that in-
corporates urban food production or UPA.
UPA in the Pacific Islands
In Paciic island countries (PICs), urbanization and expanding squater setlements
are important development issues with atributes that are unique to the wider con-
text of the 'global South'. These unique traits include the fact that the development
of towns and cities in the South Pacific islands is quite recent, only emerging from
the post-colonial era of the 1960s. Small island economies are also haracteristically
isolated from large export markets; this constraint is aggravated by the vulnerability
of key sectors, suh as agriculture, to the efects of climate hange. However, devel-
opment discourse tends to incorporate the capacity of SIDS to adapt to Western eco-
nomic models. This view has been criticized as a deterministic understanding of the
Pacific SIDS as 'islands in the ocean', existing on the fringes of the globalized world,
at risk of disruptions to the flow of goods and services, and exposed to price fluctu-
ations (external 'shoks') as determined by global markets. his view is in contrast
to an indigenous interpretation of 'an ocean of islands' (Barnet and Campbell, 2010,
p49), in whih Paciic communities are seen as highly-skilled resource managers, rih
