Assessing the Impacts of Climate Change on Food Security in the Canadian Arctic

DEFINING THE SCOPE OF THE STUDY – THE CANADIAN NORTH

Food security is an all too common reality in Canadian northern communities. The challenges of sustaining proper nutrition and of accessing sufficient, healthy food robs northern communities of their potential, impacts their development, and places hardships on the most vulnerable community members. Understanding and addressing food security is difficult due to its complex and multidimensional nature. Some factors are local, while others are regional, national, and global. Hence, a part of dialoguing issues and solutions requires the involvement of a range of stakeholders who play various roles at different levels in the process of providing food and food information to a community. Northern communities, however, face more challenges to attaining food security than those faced by more southern and developed communities in Canada. High transportation costs, high food costs, food quality, community remoteness, increasing dependency on southern foods, lack of dietary awareness, lack of economic opportunities and employment, the increasing challenges and costs of wildlife harvesting – these factors and others contribute to increasing concerns over the level of food security in the North. While food security in the North has been a concern to governments, health agencies, and non- government organizations for the past two decades, there are indications that recent developing trends

in both the North and globally are exacerbating the situation and threaten to hasten the erosion of food security in the near future. In order to understand and address this challenge, there is a strong need for stakeholders to move forward to build a strategy and establish action plans to effectively monitor food security and to take steps to increase the access of northern families to sufficient amounts of healthy, appropriate, and secure food sources in the North. In context, food sources for northern communities include both store bought foods and harvested country foods. STUDY OBJECTIVE The objective of this study is to provide a preliminary assessment of the impacts of climate change on food security in the Canadian Arctic, examining the scope of the issue in this region, comparing it with experiences in other vulnerable regions, and providing a baseline for action. The information gathered in the study will provide the background for a workshop on Arctic food security, tentatively proposed for FY 2009–2010, which will bring together different interests in the field of food security to examine the issue in greater detail with the aim of identifying actions to help communities and governments respond to the effects of climate change on food security. The paper aims to address the following three questions regarding the current state of food security in the Canadian Arctic. These questions may also provide the basis for an Arctic Food Security Conference. Where are the gaps in knowledge and action with respect to the challenge that climate change poses for Arctic food security? What needs to be done to ensure a comprehensive, interdisciplinary, and multi- stakeholder approach to achieving food security in the Arctic? What modalities are required for a long-term and sustained approach to addressing food security in the Arctic? • • •

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Inuvialuit Nunavut Nunavik Nunatsiavut

IMPACTS OF CLIMATE CHANGE ON FOOD SECURITY IN THE CANADIAN ARCTIC