ABSTRACT
Can permaculture feed Melbourne?
What kind of degrowth strategies would be necessary to achieve both urban food sustainability and natural biodiversity? This chapter critically reviews recent degrowth and sustainability works focusing on Melbourne as a hypothetical city for applying familiar degrowth permaculture and relocalisation strategies. The chapter summarises the citification–decentralisation debate within the degrowth movement. Secondly, the chapter considers current mainstream environmentalist discussion of a sustainable way forward for food provisioning in Melbourne. Third, the chapter compares this mainstream sustainability assessment with points made in radical degrowth works by permaculture theorists and simpler way proponent Ted Trainer. These authors argue the necessity to decentralise to deal with a low-energy future. Fourth, the chapter makes a detailed assessment of the options for Melbourne with drastically reduced energy use. This thought experiment draws on work in rural Africa, where localised self-sufficiency in food is a necessity. The chapter concludes that it is unlikely that global capital cities such as Melbourne will have the capacity to be sustainable and collectively sufficient in food in a degrowth scenario.
