Changing diets and traditional lifestyle of Siberian Arctic Indigenous Peoples and effects on health and well-being

Siberian environmental change: Synthesis of recent studies and opportunities for networking

“…Summary of examples (not exhaustive) from the Ambio Special Issue on Siberian Environmental Change (eds. Callaghan, Shaduyko and Kirpotin) Topic Focus Diversity Environmental Change Implications References People and settlements Ethnicity Indigenous Peoples Settlers Changes in diet and health Changes in life styles Abandonment of agricultural land and small villages Andronov et al ( 2021 ) Andronov et al ( 2021 ) Main text Minayeva et al ( 2021 ) Shift workers Increasing opportunities as access to resources increases Cities and settlements Large, modern cities Small settlements Nomads’ villages Need for sustainability Orttung et al ( 2021 ) Need for infrastructure improvement, e.g. access routes Rakhmanova et al ( 2021 ) Changes in grazing and hunting areas Lavrillier and Gobychev ( 2021 ) Interactions with the environment Higher level of formal education in cities Greater awareness of global environmental change by city dwellers Rakhmanova et al ( 2021 ) Greater contact with nature in nomads villages and small settlements More accurate perceptions of environmental change by small settlement dwellers Rakhmanova et al ( 2021 ) Landscapes Topography Mountains Loss of glacier mass Increase in glacier forefields Volkov et al ( 2021 ) Callaghan et al ( 2021 ) Plains …”

“…Thematically, the studies focus on Societal issues such as the sustainability of Arctic cities (Orttung et al 2021 ), changing diet and health of Indigenous People (Andronov et al 2021 ), varying perceptions of climate change (Rakhmanova et al 2021 ) and Indigenous knowledge (Lavrillier and Gabyshev 2021 ); biodiversity changes throughout Siberia (Kirpotin et al 2021a ), in the forests (Kharuk et al 2021 ) and in the southern mountains (Volkov et al 2021 ; Volkova et al 2021 ); historical development of peatlands, peatland ecosystem function, and carbon storage (Pascual et al 2021 ; Tsyganov et al 2021 ; Kirpotin et al 2021b ). thawing permafrost and carbon emissions (Anisimov and Zimov 2021 ); management of ecosystem services (Minayeva et al 2021 ).…”

The Impact of Climate Change on the Food (In)security of the Siberian Indigenous Peoples in the Arctic: Environmental and Health Risks

“…Therefore, as expected, "the Spearman rank-order correlation revealed a strong negative association between the prevalence of arterial hypertension and the consumption of reindeer products" (Table 5; Figures 10-12). The results of our previous study showed that there was a dramatic decrease of almost 50% in the consumption of reindeer products by the Indigenous and non-Indigenous Peoples in the YNAO, and only one-third of the studied population still ate venison once or twice daily [65]. This shift threatens their health because a diet rich in venison significantly increases antiatherogenic blood lipid fractions, contributes to the maintenance of normal body weight, and improves microcirculation, tissue fluid exchange and antioxidant protection against free radicals; these effects may explain the high prophylactic activity of venison [62] and its strong positive effects on adapting to cold stress [66] and geomagnetic activity in the Arctic [67].…”

“…The dynamics of the reindeer livestock population will likely have an impact on the food security of Arctic Indigenous Peoples because of the increased availability of reindeer products. We assessed the correlation between the reindeer population and consumption of the most important [65] reindeer products (reindeer meat, liver and blood). A total of 1280 Indigenous inhabitants of the Arctic zone of Western Siberia participated in the study (Table 2).…”

“…However, reindeer meat is a rich source of protein, minerals and essential fatty acids, and its consumption is culturally acceptable in these Arctic communities [55]. The loss of this food source increases the prevalence of chronic bronchitis [56,57], overweight [58] and arterial hypertension [59,60] because consuming reindeer meat, blood and liver helps to prevent these diseases [61][62][63][64] and increases the ability of the Indigenous population to adapt to the harsh Arctic living conditions [65][66][67][68]. The maintenance of a traditional diet is closely related to the maintenance of the traditional food system [69,70], which is "tightly interwoven with the culturally, socially and environmentally embedded practices of reindeer herding.…”