EXPLORING AGRICULTURE, CLIMATE CHANGE AND FOOD PLANNING NEXUS: WHERE DOES TERRITORIAL PLANNING STAND?

. In Portugal, local answers to climate change and food are basically twofold: the approval of a Climate Adaptive Strategy or Plan, which are largely being formulated by Portuguese municipalities and the voluntary signature of the Glasgow Food and Climate Declaration. As both folds are not binding their impact is limited. However, a recent Portuguese framework Law on Climate [2021], aligned with the European Green Deal, imposes that all municipalities must approve a municipal climate action plan before summer 2024. Such a context opens up a window of opportunity to reflect on the lessons learned from the already approved Climate Adaptive Plans and Strategies. Therefore, we explore in this paper the following inter - connected questions: (1) to what extent Climate Adaptive Plans and Strategies include the increase of local food production; (2) Do they consider each step of the food chain or solely food production? (3) To what extent are those measures transcribed into the planning rules and regulations. In order to do so, we analysed 14 Climate Adaptive Strategies or Plans of a selected group of cities that entered the national competition ECO XXI, based on a sustainable framework of multiple dimensions. In 2021, as much as 57 out of the 308 Portuguese municipalities entered the competition. Results suggest that adaptive measures relate to increasing local agriculture, mapping out land availability or highlighting the need for local agroecological practices. Moreover, Climate Adaptive Strategies or Plans, measures and


Introduction
In 2021, the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change sounded the alarm on a looming crisis: Climate Change is generating a "red code for humanity" that requires urgent action (IPCC, 2022).Food systems are deeply entwined with this crisis.In many regions, especially in the developing world, Climate Change has already started to reduce agricultural productivity and disrupt supply food chains.Therefore, putting pressure on the livelihoods and threatening significantly hunger and malnutrition, making adaptation efforts crucially important (IPCC, 2022).Recent estimates indicate that food systems contribute more than one third to Greenhouse Gas (GHG) emissions (E.C., 2020).Addressing the challenges of Climate Change already require a transformation of our food systems, that demands major policy reforms, substantial investment, and an enabling environment that fosters innovation (IPCC, 2022).The urgent need to put food and agriculture at the heart of the global response to the climate emergency is at the core of the Glasgow Food and Climate Declaration, launched in COP26 (2021) and already signed by 114 cities and regions (Nourish Scotland, 2020).Cities are part of the problem but also of the solution.For instance, C40, a network of 96 world cities committed to climate change adaptation and mitigation is recommending to the cities that are part of this network, early consideration of climate hazards and potential responses in order to reduce the risks and protect food supply chains (C40, 2019).The involvement of cities with climate change is in the agenda for the last PAPER ACCEPTED.PREPRINT VERSION decade under the umbrella of the European Commission.In 2013 the European Commission approved it Strategy to Climate Adaptation (European Comission, 2013).This strategy is at the core of both the Mayors Adapt initiative and the Covenant of Mayors Initiative on Climate Change Adaptation.Since its beginning, one key action adopted by the Mayors Adapt signatories was to formulate a comprehensive local adaptation strategy and to integrate adaptation to climate change measures into relevant existing plans.A large number of cities all over Europe, including Portugal, started to formulate such plans and strategies that will be analysed here.
More recently, the European Commission approved in 2020 the European Green Deal (EGD) which is at the forefront of European commitment to tackling climate and environmental-related challenges.One of its major components is the 'Farm to Fork': designing a fair, healthy and environmentally friendly food system strategy (E.C., 2020).Under this strategy several measures on impact and climate change adaption are being considered notably, the reductions of chemical pesticides, fertilisers and antibiotics, or the need to increase organic farming areas.Other measures refer to the need to reduce the environmental impact of the food processing and retail sectors by acting on transport, storage, packaging and food waste.EGD urges as well to increase sustainable food consumption and affordable healthy food for all, in order to reducing the environmental footprint.This is not an easy task as the development of an integrated food policy raises many challenges ahead (Candel and Pereira, 2017;Delgado, 2018Delgado, , 2023)).Within this new European framework, the Portuguese Law on Climate was approved at the end of 2021 (Law n. 98/2021).It recognized that the food chain, including production, fisheries and food consumption is part of a transition towards a more climate neutral society.It is highlighted that local authorities, within the scope of their attributions and competences, should plan and implement climate policies, ensuring their consistency with territorial planning instruments.Those policies, strategies and plans are now mandatory and should be formulated and approved by local authorities before mid-2024, under the Portuguese Law on Climate (Law nº 98/2021).
This new policy window is a unique opportunity to analyse and reflect upon what has been done so far.This paper main aim is to extract lessons from this first round of Climate Adaptive Strategies and Plans developed during the last decade in Portugal, as a tool to advance the forthcoming ones.In order to do this, this paper explores the following research questions: (1) to what extent Climate Adaptive Strategies and Plans include the increase of local food production; (2) Do they consider each step of the food chain or solely food production?(3) To what extent are those measures transcribed into the planning rules and regulations.Our analysis will refer to a selected group of 14 Portuguese municipalities that entered the national competition ECO XXI, based on a sustainable framework of multiple dimensions.All the 14 strategies and plans were developed at municipal level between 2016 and 2020 i.e., previously to the new European Green Deal.
Following the present introduction, section 2 posits the theoretical framework notably the missing conceptual links between agriculture, climate and planning.Section 3 introduces the Portuguese study case and explains the methodology used for investigating it.Section 4 highlights the results from the analysis of 14 selected Climate Adaptative Strategies and Plans focusing on the extent to which they consider food and agricultures as an answer to climate change adaptation.Section 5 discusses the findings, connects back to the theoretical framework and addresses both research questions.The paper concludes upon the relevance of strengthening and deepening investigations on the agriculture, climate change and food planning nexus, in Portugal and beyond.

Theoretical framework -the missing links between planning, food and climate
Urban planning still largely ignores food issues.In general, "food remained a stranger to the field of urban planning' until the early 2000s (Pothukuchi and Kaufman, 2000).A survey concluded that the perceived urban-rural divide was a central reason: food and agriculture were considered a rural topic; 'our city is in an agricultural area, but the city doesn't deal with agriculture or farming issues' PAPER ACCEPTED.PREPRINT VERSION (Pothukuchi and Kaufman, 2000).Some years later, Sonnino (2009) reached a similar conclusion: 'the urban-rural divide has misled planners and policy-makers into looking at urban food supply failure as farm failure, rather than as a failure in the food system.The prevailing sectoral planning and decisionmaking approach, and its lack of a holistic perspective, seems another reason explaining why 'food has been a stranger' to urban planning (Brinkley, 2013;Morgan, 2009;Raja et al., 2008).
Those obstacles did not prevent some pioneers to developed guidelines on how to plan for food.In 2007Pothkuchi (APA, 2007) formulated to the American Planning Association the Policy Guide on Community and Regional Food Planning.In 2011 White and Natelson (2011) published the guidelines Good Planning for Good Food.In 2012 Viljoen et al. (2012) published the book Continuous Productive Urban Landscapes.In 2018 Cabannes and Marocchino (2018) edited Integrating Food into Urban Planning highlighting city-based practices that are reducing these gaps in creative ways and reflecting on progress made world-wide and current obstacles.In 2021 Verzone and Woods published Food Urbanism (2021).Those are some of the examples that show that food is less a stranger to urban planning literature, at least, today than a couple of decades ago.
On the subject of climate change, there are as well several barriers to its inclusion in municipal plans.Ribeiro et al. (2018) identified multiple obstacles and limits, being the most relevant ones: the non-mandatory condition of the climate change agenda, the uncertainty associated with the downscaling of climate change scenarios, the scarce scientific insights on how adaptation can be integrated into planning tools, the inexistence of guidelines from central government, the urban planning tradition that ignore the issue of climate change, a predominant culture of reactive management, insufficient technical skills and financing mechanisms.In addition, the formulation and implementation of food and Climate Change Adaptation Strategies or Plans are both reliant on political will that often change according to political cycle, and this limits as well, their inclusion as part of municipal plans and strategies (Delgado, 2020;Doernberg et al., 2019;Ribeiro et al., 2018).
In Portugal a silent revolution has been taking place, especially from 2019 onwards.Several guidelines on planning and climate change were formulated at national level, such as: (1) The national programme for Territorial Planning Policies (2019) which suggests that master plans (Plano Director Municipal in Portuguese) should include climate change mitigation and adaptation measures; (2) The national agency in charge of spatial planning -"Direção Geral do Território", published a compendium of "Good Practices to Master Plans" (DGT, 2020) with a specific section on the role of food and urban agriculture to address climate change effects; (3) A national Agenda -"Terra Futura 2020-2030" -in line with the EGD and Farm to Fork Strategy identified targets to turn the country climate-neutral by 2050; (4) and, the Portuguese Law on Climate ("Lei de Bases do Clima in Portuguese)" published at the end of 2021 (Law n. 98/2021), which highlights the need for sectoral climate policy instruments among several other issues to take into account, such as the agri-food chain, carbon sequestration strategies, green economy and just transition.Moreover, the Roadmap to Carbon Neutrality in Portugal published within the Portuguese Law on Climate (Law n. 98/2021), clearly states the main vulnerabilities and expected impact of climate change in Portugal such as higher incidence and intensity of rural fires, heat waves, droughts and water shortages, desertification, high temperatures, or extreme precipitation events.The complexity and inter-related expected effects, implies that a comprehensive approach to mitigating and climate change adaptation requires both sectoral and integrated policies.
In addition, and this is clearly a window of opportunity for reflexion, the Portuguese Law on Climate turn compulsory, for each municipality and region, to develop and approve a Climate Adaptive Plan, before mid-2024.By the end of 2020, 271 out of a total of 308 municipalities in mainland Portugal, Azores, and Madeira had adopted at least a municipal, intermunicipal or metropolitan planning instrument (strategy or plan) related to climate change adaptation.
In Portugal the progress towards SDG 13 -Climate Action through the 2015-2021 period has been significant (INE, 2022) but results can be distorted by covid pandemic, which decreased economic activity and transport circulation and therefore less impact on CO2 emission.Despite such encouraging PAPER ACCEPTED.PREPRINT VERSION results, more efforts are needed to meet the 55% GHG reduction target by 2030, when compared to 2005.Moreover, the same INE report (2022) remains silent on data related SDG 12 -Responsible Consumption and Production.More than 50% of the indicators are not being measure so far.In addition, when comparing existing data from 2015 to 2021, a regressive target tendency is observed.We argue that SGDs 12 and 13 (we recognize thar there are other related Food System SDGs that impact climate change, still this point is out of the scope of this paper) need to be considered as part of a holistic approach to meet GHG reduction target defined by the country's signatories of the Paris Agreement and included in the Portuguese Climate Strategies and Plans to come.

Sample and methodology
This paper explores 14 Climate Adaptive Strategies or Plans of a selected group of cities that entered ECO XXI (ECO XXI, 2022) national competition in 2021.The ECO XXI competition is coordinated by ABAE, which is the Portuguese branch of the international Foundation for Environmental Education (Foundation for Environmental Education, 2023).The competition was based on a multi-dimensional framework for sustainability supported embracing 21 categories, such as governance and participation; cooperation with civil society; climate change; or agriculture.The winning municipalities (i.e., those that summed up the highest results in each of the 21 categories) have the right to display a green flag for one year, which acknowledges city sustainable achievements.In 2021, as much as 57 out of the 308 Portuguese municipalities entered the competition: 40 of them had formulated and approved a Climate Adaptive Strategy or Plan, being 16 at municipal level and 24 as part of a broader metropolitan or regional plan.
Out of these 16 municipalities we closely examined 14 of them, for being predominantly urban, defined as with at least 51% of their population living in administratively considered urban areas.Figure 1 highlight their spread all over Portugal continent and islands.Table 1 summarizes relevant information regarding those 14 municipalities.The number of city inhabitants ranges from 30.374 (Lagos, Algarve Region) to 213.608 (Cascais, Lisbon Metropolitan area).The primary economic sector presence (mostly agriculture) ranges from 0,4% (Valongo) to 7,1% (Torres Vedras) being Portugal average 2,9% (Fundaçao Francisco Manuel dos Santos, 2021).
The oldest Climate Change Strategies were approved in 2016 (Braga, Amarante and Funchal) and the most recent one in 2020 (Valongo).Out of the 14, five municipalities (Maia, Águeda, Leiria, Torres Vedras and Lagos) have developed a subsequent Climate Change Adaptative Plan, which represents a step further the strategy.Such plans detail how a specific measure is going to be carried out e.g., which actions are going to be taken, and by which specific actor, e.g., city department, private sector, civil society, etc.These 14 municipal strategies and plans were first analysed in order to find out on the one hand the key-sectors for climate change adaptation that were included, and on the other the extent to which agriculture and planning considered.We then analysed the type of agriculture and food adaptation measures (as part of the strategy) or actions (in the plans) 1 using a double strand approach: food production on the one hand and other stages of the food chain on the other.
Actions or measures that only considered the forest without the agro-forest dimensions were discarded.Water was only considered when directly related to agricultural activities.The last round of examination consisted in a deeper examination of those five cities with a Climate Adaptation Plan -CAP (Cascais, Agueda, Maia, Leiria, Lagos) in order to better understand if and how those cities were foreseeing the integration of their Climate Change adaptation actions into territorial / spatial planning.Finally, we asked for an interview the Planning Department directors of the three cities (Lagos, Maia and Leiria) that 1 Each strategy and plans adopt slightly different designations still usually the strategies refer to measures and plans refer actions, the later one being specific about how and who and eventually which fund could be used.

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Delgado had included food and agriculture actions as part of their Climate Change Adaptative As a result, two semi-structured interviews could be carried out, one with Maia and the second with Leiria.Lagos city preferred to send a clarification note.The online interviews took place in July 2022 and lasted about one hour and mainly focused on the extent to which the planning department collaborated on Climate Adaptative Plans formulation, and how this collaboration is currently maintained.Director's reflections on how and why the selected actions were transposed into planning instruments were welcomed as well.

Results
When analysing the 14 Climate Adaptative Strategies and Plans, 16 different sectors were listed as relevant to climate change (Table 2).Besides Water (although, water, agriculture and climate change being an extremely important nexus to consider, it will not be explored in the present paper) and Health sectors, "Agriculture, forest, and fisheries" appeared as the most frequently referred sectors along with "Biodiversity and landscape" [13 cases out of 14]."Urban planning and cities" came next [10 cases].The only city that did not included agriculture as a relevant sector for climate change was Funchal, on Madeira Island, despite having signed the Milan Urban Food Policy Pact, that expressed their commitment to strengthen their food system.These results tend to illustrate the variety of entries through which climate change is being addressed by these cities, and at the same time the disconnect between those entries.The analysis indicates as well that although 13 out of the 14 considered agriculture as a relevant sector for climate change adaptation, only 10 of them included clear measures and actions directly related to food production or other stages of the food chain.Despite considering agriculture as a relevant sector for climate change, the four remaining ones, Póvoa do Varzim, Trofa, Valongo, and Funchal did not include clear measures and actions.As previously mentioned, Funchal did not considered agriculture as a relevant sector for climate change adaptation.
The 10 remaining strategies and plans analysed summed up the impressive figure of 407 measures and actions for climate change adaption.However, only 44 of them are related to food and agriculture (10.8%).The lowest proportion of measures devoted to food and agriculture refers to Torres Vedras (5,0%) while Maia (14,5%) posits at the other end of the scale.Such an overall surprisingly low Table 3 zooms in the 44 measures and actions related to our major entries: "food production" and "other stages of the food chain".Results indicate that 27 of the 44 are connected with food production.Seven of them (listed in half of the plans) relate to the use of native species adapted to Climate Change; followed by access to land (counting 6) consisting of either mapping idle land, improving access, or preserving land; and then five relate to increasing agroecological production and other related practices.Then, 17 out of the 44 measures and actions refer to different stages of the food chain: water access being the most frequent, either through retention basins or use of treated water.Another important finding of the research is the qualitative wealth of measures and actions, in an extremely low proportion of measures [27 out of 407 that were identified].The next step of the investigation was to better understand if those measures and actions where integrated into territorial instruments primary Master Plans (Plano Diretor Municipal in Portuguese), Detailed Plans and regional Plans that represent the main planning documents in the Portuguese context.
The analysis to the 14 CAPEs reveals that 11 have a chapter on the integration of their measures and actions into territorial planning.However, a closer look to the five municipalities with Climate Adaptation Plans i.e., the ones with detailed actions and an implementation factsheet, indicates that only two of them, Maia and Leiria, included their Climate Change adaptation actions into their municipal territorial plans.This being said, each one of them proposed actions related to agriculture and food: Cascais (5/78); Agueda (6/68); Lagos (15/145); Leiria (5/54); and Maia (9/62).Such finding strongly suggests that the inclusion of food and agriculture's actions into territorial planning is not perceived as a mandatory step by the most advanced Portuguese local governments in relation to Climate change planning.

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the planning instruments.One needs to highlight that Leiria only half of proposed actions are included into planning instruments, while in Maia, all of them are.An interesting finding when examining the inclusion of actions into territorial planning is the lack of consistency from one city to the other and the subjectivity of policy decisions.For instance, Leiria did not transposed to the Master Plan the regeneration of the city cover market, in opposition to Maia that did so.As seen in table 4 how those actions are going to be integrated remains largely unclear, even in the most developed and cutting-edge cases at national level: Maia and Leiria municipalities the inclusion of the Climate Change related actions as part of the master plan chapter.Leiria goes one step further in detailing a positive discrimination and/or fiscal incentives for some of its actions.
Finally, the qualitative results obtained through the interviews with the heads of two municipalities planning departments, indicate that the urban planning departments were not always involved in the strategy or the plan formulation process.For instance, Maia representative participated in the elaboration of the strategy, but not of the plan.Both interviewees expressed some astonishment about food planning relevance, both as a topic per se or a relevant one for climate change related actions, although expressing openness to debating about it.Both agreed that master plans' scope mostly relates to land-uses regimes either for agricultural or urban land.They stressed as well that these measures are the only ones to be considered to integrate agriculture and food into planning instruments.It echoes Lagos municipality position, when rejecting our proposal for interview, upon similar grounds.There is a clear convergence that Master plans cannot consider the development of specific actions such as the formulation of pilot cases, creation of land banks, promotion of agroecological practices.According to the interviewees those actions are outside the planning domain, and even if those actions were included PAPER ACCEPTED.PREPRINT VERSION in their respective Climate Change Plans.These findings highlight the gap between what detailed in the climate plans and what is city planners' perspective.For instance, both interviewees considered that creating land banks for agriculture should be part of Detailed Plans instead of Master Plan.This planning instrument allows to specify actions such as assets preservation, specify locations for agriculture, or allocation of funding.In addition, both agreed that Climate Change Adaptation Plans should be normative and not binding.It resulted clear from the interviews that some of the actions envisioned in the Climate plans notably regarding Leiria, were projects that had been previously approved by the municipality.Such is the case of the Leiria local food market that was included in the Plan, but not as a result of a collaborative effort for the Climate Change Plan.At implementation level, the planning departments in Leiria or Maia have a limited impact, as such projects are led by the Environmental Department, leaving aside Urban Planning.Last but not least, such strategies and plans are nonmandatory, in other words, their implementation relies on political willingness, confirming the silos administrative culture.

Discussion
Back to the leading questions: 1) to what extent Climate Adaptive Plans and Strategies include the increase of local food production as a way to address the effects of climate change; (2) Do they consider each step of the food chain or solely food production; (3) How those measures are transcribed to the planning rules and regulations.
Based on the cases we examined in Portugal one can safely conclude that strategies and plans do include an increase of local food production as a strategy to face Climate Change.However, these measures and action remain limited when compared with the overall number of measures considered (average 10,8% of total number of measures as an average for the 10 cities studied).In conclusion, those numbers substantiate the weak nexus between agriculture, climate change and planning.Such conclusions are in tune with those from different authors (Brinkley, 2013;Morgan, 2009;Raja et al., 2008).Based on this we advocate that efforts and additional practices are needed to illustrate how sectorial issues relating to food could be integrated into Climate Change strategic and operation plans and into Master Plans and sectorial plans in cities.A preliminary way to go might be making data available to planners and policy makers on the impact of food systems on GHG emissions.Unfortunately, these data are limited, and in Portugal alone, metrics regarding SDG 12 (INE, 2021) are only produced for 50 % of the required indicators.In a scenario where more progress is required to meet the 55% GHG reduction by 2030, those metrics are an important tool to have a clear picture of what Food System entail.
Regarding the second question results suggest that indeed food production is being considered, while the other stages of the food chain are less so.Measures related to food loss, waste prevention, food distribution and food consumption are notably missing.Why is this happening?We argue that stakeholders involved in strategies and plans formulation largely miss what Food System entail, and its potential positive impact on Climate Change adaptation.This is a limit that confirms conclusions from various authors (Candel and Pereira, 2017;Delgado, 2023).Both findings are pointing out that more awareness raising is needed on the positive or negative roles that Food Systems, and each stage of the food chain can play on climate change adaptation.The so far weak consideration for the food system positive and negative impact on climate cannot be missed as a new round of Climate Change adaptation strategies and plans coming up.Besides, the European Green Deal ( 2020) is nowadays at the forefront of European commitment to tackling climate and environmental-related challenges and one of its major components is the 'Farm to Fork strategy' which call for a more holistic food systems approach.
Lastly, even if the inclusion of several measures and actions into planning instruments, as identified in the present investigation looks promising, not much seems happening in the field.Several reason might explain such a situation: first, strategies and plans remain normative and in addition are PAPER ACCEPTED.PREPRINT VERSION essentially non-mandatory.This means that their implementation relies primarily on political will; Second, lack of planner's awareness on the subject and, finally an entrenched administrative silo culture often limits communication between agriculture, and planning departments.In short, the findings strongly suggest that the potential role of planning and more precisely food planning in adaptation to Climate Change is not being fully unleashed.Such a consideration is in line with various previous findings in other countries, by authors such as Reckien et al. (2018) or Doernberg et al. (2019) confirming that Portugal is not an exception.
We acknowledge some limitations in our research.Firstly, we don´t clearly know the profile of stakeholders involved on the formulation of the Climate Change adaptation strategies plans, if any, and the technicians involved, besides why they were chosen.Limited information is available on their professional backgrounds, agendas, power, values, and motivations.Further research could somehow complement and nuance our findings.
Secondly, more research is needed to deepen our understanding of the missing links between planning and food.We would like in future research to explore a broader span of municipal urban planners, notably the ones at local level that are in charge of city plan departments.This would eventually introduce additional insights that would complement our findings and help to build an enabling approach to better explore climate change, agriculture, and food planning nexus.

Conclusions
This paper clearly calls for the urgent need to posit food chain as a fundamental part of climate change debate and actions.At this point in time, we need to establish supportive and enabling policy mechanisms that will support the formulation of more integrated local climate change adaptation plans.
What does these changes would mean for municipal planners and food planning as a whole?Firstly, it is important to assure that measures included in strategies and plans will be mirrored in planning instruments.So far, it is not happening.Planners' argument stating that master plans are not the right scale instrument for food and urban agriculture development.
Secondly, in countries such as Portugal without a strong urban planning tradition (in Portugal there is not a specific degree on urban planning.Traditionally planning is being led by geographics, architect, economists), the connection between different disciplines can be an additional challenge as food requires a holistic perspective, often not required in the architecture schools and not present either in planning faculties.This could generate a huge opportunity for some training institutions to lead the way to an emergent topic as food planning.
Thirdly, several guidelines on planning and Climate Change have been formulated at national level.At the same time other mechanisms such as Municipal Fund for Environmental and Urban Sustainability exist since 2015: they could be used as a way to better consider food issues.
In conclusion, there is a need to increase awareness and outreach among planners and other stakeholders.This process should be supported through information campaigns, broad debates and participatory planning and research on the ground.Bridging the gap between an innovative and facilitating legal environment at the national level and planners addressing these topics at the city level.
the thin relation existing at municipal level between planning, agriculture and climate change adaptation.

Table 1 .
Basic profile of the 14 municipalities analysed.

Table 2 .
Key sectors considered on the 14 CAPES.

Table 3 .
Brief description of the measures and actions considered in the 14 Strategies and Plans analysed.

Table 4
lists down each one of the agriculture and food actions envisioned by Leiria and Maia municipal Climate Adaptation Plans.It summarizes as well how they are expected to be integrated into

Table 4 .
Brief description of the related food and agricultural action and their inclusion into planning instruments.
*The CC Leiria Plan doesn't specify for each action how it is translated into urban planning.Table4resulted from author interpretation of a broader list.