2 Reassessment of Urban Sustainability …
33
The article tries to identify the issue of food security in today’s modern cities. It
delves into how, in the context of COVID-19 situation, the ignorance about urban
agriculture has proved costly for the cities currently facing logistics issues in food
delivery and finally assesses the practical avenues available to achieve self-reliance
and sustainability.
2.2 Covid-19 Situation and the Urban Scenario
Prior to the Corona virus outbreak, in the past decades, several new diseases have
emerged in new geographical areas, with pathogens including Ebola, Zika and Nipah
which has affected the physical and economic well-being of several regions. The
local outbreak of pneumonia from unknown virus was detected in Wuhan, Hubei,
China in December 2019—later identified to be caused by a novel corona virus
creating (SARS-CoV-2) acute respiratory syndrome [63] took the shape of global
pandemic creating an unprecedented disruption. With reports of high cases and infectivity coming in to break the transmission cycle several countries took measures like
temporary restrictions on international and even internal travel, decelerating mobility,
social distancing, etc., with an eye towards slowing the spread of this new disease till
any substantial vaccine production. Stier et al. [51] estimated that there is a positive
relation between city population size and number of COVID cases based on data
collected from US cities and advocated for stricter distancing policies in larger cities
alongside maintaining socio-economic activities. This is also true for metropolitan
cities of India like Mumbai, Chennai, Kolkata, Bengaluru and others. During the
COVID-19 pandemic, the world became very familiar with the concept of ‘lockdown’ or ‘stay-at-home’. By early April 2020, 3.9 billion people worldwide, i.e.
half of the world population, were under some form of lockdown [9]. For India, the
second highest populated country of the world, the lockdown since 25 March, 2020
has been in place with varying stringency, involving 1.3 billion people. Corburn et al.
[13] offered a set of policy suggestions to have more effective containment policies
in the highly populated urban informal settlements like improved medical facilities,application of an immediate moratorium on evictions, where possible,provision
of food assistance, immediate guarantee of payments to the poor, etc. Fernandez [24]
while discussing about economic impacts due to COVID-19, rightly pointed out
that in a strongly connected and integrated world, the impact of COVID-19 would be
way beyond the absolute number of deaths reported,there would be global economic
crisis even recessions for which governments have to prepare contingency plans,
and aid packages to sustain their economies. He argued that due to lockdowns and
shutdowns the service-oriented economies would be worst-hit and the food industry
too shall not be exempted for long.
Even before the pandemic situation, extreme weather conditions indicated that
global food prices could surge soon and COVID-19 amplified the risk of price spike
many times. As the coronavirus crisis unfolded, interruptions in global and local food
supply chains were felt; labour shortages due to morbidity, movement restrictions,
33
The article tries to identify the issue of food security in today’s modern cities. It
delves into how, in the context of COVID-19 situation, the ignorance about urban
agriculture has proved costly for the cities currently facing logistics issues in food
delivery and finally assesses the practical avenues available to achieve self-reliance
and sustainability.
2.2 Covid-19 Situation and the Urban Scenario
Prior to the Corona virus outbreak, in the past decades, several new diseases have
emerged in new geographical areas, with pathogens including Ebola, Zika and Nipah
which has affected the physical and economic well-being of several regions. The
local outbreak of pneumonia from unknown virus was detected in Wuhan, Hubei,
China in December 2019—later identified to be caused by a novel corona virus
creating (SARS-CoV-2) acute respiratory syndrome [63] took the shape of global
pandemic creating an unprecedented disruption. With reports of high cases and infectivity coming in to break the transmission cycle several countries took measures like
temporary restrictions on international and even internal travel, decelerating mobility,
social distancing, etc., with an eye towards slowing the spread of this new disease till
any substantial vaccine production. Stier et al. [51] estimated that there is a positive
relation between city population size and number of COVID cases based on data
collected from US cities and advocated for stricter distancing policies in larger cities
alongside maintaining socio-economic activities. This is also true for metropolitan
cities of India like Mumbai, Chennai, Kolkata, Bengaluru and others. During the
COVID-19 pandemic, the world became very familiar with the concept of ‘lockdown’ or ‘stay-at-home’. By early April 2020, 3.9 billion people worldwide, i.e.
half of the world population, were under some form of lockdown [9]. For India, the
second highest populated country of the world, the lockdown since 25 March, 2020
has been in place with varying stringency, involving 1.3 billion people. Corburn et al.
[13] offered a set of policy suggestions to have more effective containment policies
in the highly populated urban informal settlements like improved medical facilities,application of an immediate moratorium on evictions, where possible,provision
of food assistance, immediate guarantee of payments to the poor, etc. Fernandez [24]
while discussing about economic impacts due to COVID-19, rightly pointed out
that in a strongly connected and integrated world, the impact of COVID-19 would be
way beyond the absolute number of deaths reported,there would be global economic
crisis even recessions for which governments have to prepare contingency plans,
and aid packages to sustain their economies. He argued that due to lockdowns and
shutdowns the service-oriented economies would be worst-hit and the food industry
too shall not be exempted for long.
Even before the pandemic situation, extreme weather conditions indicated that
global food prices could surge soon and COVID-19 amplified the risk of price spike
many times. As the coronavirus crisis unfolded, interruptions in global and local food
supply chains were felt; labour shortages due to morbidity, movement restrictions,