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By the terms set by international agreements for the conservation of Yukon River salmon, 2009 was a management success. It was a devastating year for many of the Alaska Native communities along the Yukon River, however, especially in up-river communities, where subsistence fishing was closed in order to meet international conservation goals for Chinook salmon. By the end of summer, the smokehouses and freezers of many Alaska Native families remained empty, and Alaska’s Governor Sean Parnell petitioned the US Federal Government to declare a fisheries disaster. This paper reviews the social and ecological dimensions of salmon management in 2009 in an effort to reconcile these differing views regarding success, and the apparently-competing goals of salmon conservation and food security. We report local observations of changes in the Chinook salmon fishery, as well as local descriptions of the impacts of fishing closures on the food system. Three categories of concern emerge from our interviews with rural Alaskan participants in the fishery and with federal and state agency managers: social and ecological impacts of closures; concerns regarding changes to spawning grounds; and a lack of confidence in current management methods and technologies. We show how a breakdown in observation of the Yukon River system undermines effective adaptive management and discuss how sector-based, species-by-species management undermines a goal of food security and contributes to the differential distribution of impacts for communities down and up river. We conclude with a discussion of the merits of a food system and ecosystem-based approach to management, and note existing jurisdictional and paradigmatic challenges to the implementation of such an approach in Alaska

ABSTRACT. Food security is a global societal challenge, and one geographic region where food insecurity is increasing is the North American Arctic and Subarctic. In this paper we synthesize research on food security in this region; important precursors and early work include reports on the impacts of land claims, the cumulative effects of industrial development and environmental change, and the health impacts of the nutrition transition among Indigenous peoples. Building on these foundations, food security research in the North has followed a path similar to that taken in the global food security literature, beginning with nutritional adequacy and security of food supplies and then downscaling to a focus on issues at the livelihood and household level. Our meta-analysis of the peer-reviewed literature reveals many reasons why people are food-insecure: challenges such as remoteness, climate change, and the high costs of food and fuel all play important roles. However, the primary drivers of food insecurity that we identify in this review relate to governance and policy challenges that have been recognized and critiqued for decades. Recommendations for future research include an improved focus on participatory research and food security interventions that acknowledge and focus on supporting the rights of local peoples to pursue food security on their own terms. This paper is relevant in the context of climatic and environmental change because it captures the role of shifting political ecologies as increased geopolitical interests in the North appear to be obscuring the rights and needs of local peoples to access and control their own land and resources.Key words: Alaska Natives; Canada First Nations; climate change; development; food security; food sovereignty; governance; Indigenous peoples; social justice RÉSUMÉ. De par le monde, l'insécurité alimentaire constitue un enjeu du point de vue de la société. L'Arctique et la région subarctique de l'Amérique du Nord sont des régions géographiques où l'insécurité alimentaire prend de l'ampleur. Dans cette communication, nous faisons la synthèse des travaux de recherche effectués au sujet de la sécurité alimentaire dans cette région. Parmi les précurseurs et les premiers travaux importants réalisés à ce sujet, notons des rapports sur les incidences des revendications territoriales, les effets cumulatifs du développement industriel et des changements sur l'environnement, de même que les effets sur la santé découlant de la transition alimentaire chez les peuples indigènes. S'appuyant sur ces assises, les recherches sur la sécurité alimentaire dans le Nord ont été conçues ni plus ni moins comme les autres études en matière de sécurité alimentaire dans le monde. Les recherches ont d'abord porté sur le caractère adéquat de l'alimentation et sur la sécurité des approvisionnements alimentaires, après quoi elles se sont concentrées sur des enjeux plus spécifiques comme ceux propres aux moyens de subsistance et aux ménages. Notre méta-analyse de la documentation révisée par des ...

Export-oriented seafood trade faltered during the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic. In contrast, alternative seafood networks (ASNs) that distribute seafood through local and direct marketing channels were identified as a “bright spot.” In this paper, we draw on multiple lines of quantitative and qualitative evidence to show that ASNs experienced a temporary pandemic “bump” in both the United States and Canada in the wake of supply chain disruptions and government mandated social protections. We use a systemic resilience framework to analyze the factors that enabled ASNs to be resilient during the pandemic as well as challenges. The contrast between ASNs and the broader seafood system during COVID-19 raises important questions about the role that local and regional food systems may play during crises and highlights the need for functional diversity in supply chains.

Global climate change has the potential to substantially alter the production and community structure of marine fisheries and modify the ongoing impacts of fishing. Fish community composition is already changing in some tropical, temperate and polar ecosystems, where local combinations of warming trends and higher environmental variation anticipate the changes likely to occur more widely over coming decades. Using case studies from the Western Indian Ocean, the North Sea and the Bering Sea, we contextualize the direct and indirect effects of climate change on production and biodiversity and, in turn, on the social and economic aspects of marine fisheries. Climate warming is expected to lead to (i) yield and species losses in tropical reef fisheries, driven primarily by habitat loss; (ii) community turnover in temperate fisheries, owing to the arrival and increasing dominance of warm-water species as well as the reduced dominance and departure of cold-water species; and (iii) increased diversity and yield in Arctic fisheries, arising from invasions of southern species and increased primary production resulting from ice-free summer conditions. How societies deal with such changes will depend largely on their capacity to adapt—to plan and implement effective responses to change—a process heavily influenced by social, economic, political and cultural conditions.

Residents of towns and villages in Arctic Alaska live on “the front line of climate change.” Some communities face immediate threats from erosion and flooding associated with thawing permafrost, increasing river flows, and reduced sea ice protection of shorelines. The term climigration, referring to migration caused by climate change, originally was coined for these places. Although initial applications emphasized the need for government relocation policies, it has elsewhere been applied more broadly to encompass unplanned migration as well. Some historical movements have been attributed to climate change, but closer study tends to find multiple causes, making it difficult to quantify the climate contribution. Clearer attribution might come from comparisons of migration rates among places that are similar in most respects, apart from known climatic impacts. We apply this approach using annual 1990–2014 time series on 43 Arctic Alaska towns and villages. Within-community time plots show no indication of enhanced out-migration from the most at-risk communities. More formally, there is no significant difference between net migration rates of at-risk and other places, testing several alternative classifications. Although climigration is not detectable to date, growing risks make either planned or unplanned movements unavoidable in the near future.

In the Arctic, permafrost extends up to 500 m below the ground surface, and it is generally just the top metre that thaws in summer. Lakes, rivers, and wetlands on the arctic landscape are normally not connected with groundwater in the same way that they are in temperate regions. When the surface is frozen in winter, only lakes deeper than 2 m and rivers with significant flow retain liquid water. Surface water is largely abundant in summer, when it serves as a breeding ground for fish, birds, and mammals. In winter, many mammals and birds are forced to migrate out of the Arctic. Fish must seek out lakes or rivers deep enough to provide good overwintering habitat.Humans in the Arctic rely on surface water in many ways. Surface water meets domestic needs such as drinking, cooking, and cleaning as well as subsistence and industrial demands. Indigenous communities depend on sea ice and waterways for transportation across the landscape and access to traditional country foods. The minerals, mining, and oil and gas industries also use large quantities of surface water during winter to build ice roads and maintain infrastructure. As demand for this limited, but heavily-relied-upon resource continues to increase, it is now more critical than ever to understand the impacts of climate change on food and water security in the Arctic.

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