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SPECIAL FEATURE: SUSTAINABILITY
30 BY 30: ACHIEVING URBAN FOOD SECURITY IN A CLIMATE CRISIS ERA
30 by 30: Achieving Urban
Food Security in a Climate
Crisis Era
Education on food production
and consumption will be key to
success
Chintan Raveshia
Cities Business Leader,
Southeast Asia
Arup
In this article Chintan shares how Arup's
multi-stakeholder approach with food
producers, distributors, start-ups,
government and academia, coalesced in
the world’s first Urban Food Masterplan
Framework for Singapore in 2019, and
how it may help the city-state meet
its ambitious ’30 by 30’ food security
goals.
Arup’s findings:
• Singapore’s small, highly populated
footprint provides an excellent
testbed and benchmark to explore new
approaches to urban food production.
• Achieving long-term urban food
security requires circular design
principles across systems of energy
use, water, waste, industry, and
employment.
• From high-tech production to
community gardening, changes in
cultural and social behaviour will
be required as new food production
processes come to fruition.
Creating a local and resilient food
supply chain
Singapore is a small and highly
urbanised state that imports 90% of its
food. This reliance on imports makes
it particularly vulnerable to shocks
and stressors such as the Covid-19
pandemic and climate change. However,
this challenge is not faced by Singapore
alone. With 68% of the world’s
population projected to live in urban
areas by 2050, Singapore is already
dealing with problems many other cities
will face in the next 50 years. How can cities match food
requirements with zero-carbon
goals?
“On top of that, agriculture uses 70%
of the world’s fresh water. In a climate
emergency, we must start managing
food more sustainably,” said Chintan
Raveshia, Arup’s Cities Business Leader
in Southeast Asia.
To address the issue, Singapore, in
2018 introduced a target to produce
30% of its nutritional needs locally by
2030. Helping to make this ambition
a reality, Arup has been working with
stakeholders such as food start-
ups, financing entities and venture
capitalists, and government agencies
such as Singapore Food Agency and
Centre for Liveable Cities to understand
the changes needed. The results were
collated in the Urban Food Production
Masterplan Framework Arup released in
2019. Arup set out with an objective
to understand the link between
resilience and food. There is a need
to match resource requirements
around space, water, electricity, and
transport with goals around food
security, city resilience, zero-carbon
and the circular economy. To help
decision makers and city planners
make the transitions needed, the team
developed a framework that included
a series of design interventions,
planning guidelines and policy advice
that is economically, socially, and
environmentally feasible.
“The masterplan is ambitious,” says
Chintan. “It addresses the problem from
a country-wide perspective, looking
at food supply across the spectrum:
from large-scale production to
community farms. But beyond that, it is
a framework designed to be a practical
manual for implementation.” Using
Singapore as a benchmark, the report
highlights how resilience and food
security are deeply entangled globally.
This is where a
country with a strong
start-up environment,
like Singapore, can
bring agricultural
tech, water and energy
specialists together to
solve these problems
and contribute to
changing our food
culture and social
expectations.
Advanced tools can also be used to help
streamline and strengthen processes
in the supply chain. Digital tools for
instance could link up farms and
business to better track shelf life and
strengthen supply chain efficiency.
Using advanced monitoring devices,
urban vertical farms use 70% less water
than conventional farming.
Importantly, the framework identified
that to achieve success, all stakeholders
from high-tech, conventional and
community farmers, distributors,
financing entities, government, and
academia, would need to be part of
the same conversation. It recognised
their requirements, needs and purpose,
and emphasised for all stakeholders to
collaborate.
The success of food resilience in
Singapore does not only depend
on local food production and the
introduction of novel foods, but also on
the sustained consumption of those
products. Novel foods including plant-
based and cultured meats that seek to
replace environmentally intensive foods
like beef could bring huge benefits
for the planet and its ecosystems.
Complementing local agriculture,
these novel foods have the potential to
optimise land use, reduced greenhouse
gas emissions, and have a guilt-free
appeal for the ethically minded. These
cultured meats do, however, require a
lot of water to produce at this juncture.
But social acceptance of local produce
and novel foods still has some ways to
go in the Singapore food story. There
are reservations about new sources
of protein or fibre, as well as the price
and quality of local produce. Fostering
a deeper understanding of what is
required to grow food can help with
making the transition. “There is work
to be done to enable people to take
these changes on board,” Chintan says.
“People will be more willing to give
up year-round access to a seasonal
fruit like apples if they have a better
understanding of the broader context.”
41
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But social acceptance of local produce
and novel foods still has some ways to
go in the Singapore food story. There
are reservations about new sources
of protein or fibre, as well as the price
and quality of local produce. Fostering
a deeper understanding of what is
required to grow food can help with
making the transition. “There is work
to be done to enable people to take
these changes on board,” Chintan says.
“People will be more willing to give
up year-round access to a seasonal
fruit like apples if they have a better
understanding of the broader context.”
On this front, the framework looks at
the importance of enriching people’s
immediate relationship with food
production. It suggests that community
involvement, such as having children
help to water and weed a community
garden alongside their grandparents
could help build an understanding of
food production, while giving social
connection and community spirit a
big boost. It also addresses a global
problem by offering local solutions and
in doing so, helps the city-state meet
selected United Nations’ Sustainable
Development Goals (SDG). This includes
SDG 2: Zero Hunger via sustainable
food production systems and resilient
agriculture, and SDG 12: Responsible
consumption and production, to reduce
food losses along production and
supply chains, including post-harvest
losses.
Singapore can set the benchmark
for other countries looking at food
security
Following testing in Singapore, Arup is
already working to bring the framework
to other cities such as the new capital
of Indonesia. With climate change and
population growth likely to catalyse
global change in land use and food
production, the team ensured that
the framework can also be applied in
less dense countries with more direct
access to land. Vast countries including
Australia, already experiencing a
change in arable land availability, are
expressing interest.
If action is taken now, high-tech,
conventional and community
farmers, distributors, financing
entities, government and academia
can help improve policies and social
perspectives to enable urban food
production before cities reach a crisis
point. Working together as a collective,
there are opportunities to implement
new ways of providing food security,
and in doing so, increase resilience
through a more integrated and circular
approach to water, electricity, and
transport connections.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR ABOUT THE COMPANY
An architect and urban designer, Chintan has worked with govern-
ments to shape and implement national, regional and precinct-lev-
el urban planning and design strategies, and deepened his local
understanding and knowledge across many geographies. In 19 years,
he collaborated on and led some of the most iconic projects around
the world including the Indonesia new capital city, UK's High-Speed 2
and Smart Urban Habitat Masterplan in Singapore. Passionate about
climate action, Chintan is undertaking research that galvanises the
built environment against climate risks while exploring opportunities
in food resilience and active mobility. He is also a World Cities Sum-
mit Young Leader, and a visiting lecturer at the National University of
Singapore. Arup is an independent firm of 15,000 designers, planners, engineers,
architects, consultants and technical specialists, working on projects
across every aspect of the built environment in more than 140 coun-
tries worldwide. With over 50 years of city-shaping excellence in Sin-
gapore, Arup has earned a reputation for our pioneering innovations
and fresh approaches to complex challenges. Our pursuit of quality is
reflected in our award-winning portfolio comprising of the Singapore
Sports Hub, Marina Bay Sands, Downtown Line, Thomson-East Coast
Line, The Helix, and Singapore Flyer. Arup’s success in Singapore is
founded on our delivery of global and local expertise, and we now
have over 400 staff offering a suite of specialist services – helping
our clients to realise exciting ideas as we strive together to shape a
better world. Visit www.arup.com for more.