The 10th ICASS Conference: Traditional food systems in the Arctic in response to the transformation of Social-Ecological System

 

On 16 June 2021, Research professor Kamrul Hossain led a session at the 10th International Congress of Arctic Social Sciences 2021 (ICASS-X) held in Arkhangelsk, Russia. The session was organized by the UArctic Law Thematic Network, in collaboration with the Northern Institute for Environmental and Minority Law (NIEM) of the Arctic Centre of the University of Lapland. The session titled “Traditional food systems in the Arctic in response to the transformation of the Social-Ecological System” attracted five outstanding presentations by scholars from Canada, Finland, and Russia. The substantive core of the session was to explore the traditional food system and the importance of such a system as part of the social-ecological system. A social system generally refers to a system where social values, norms, actions, governance, etcetera are shaped by factors, such as political environment, economy, culture and identity, and interaction between members within the society. However, the system does not function independently. The functioning of the social system integrates natural ecological processes and influences and be influenced by the natural environment. A social system modifies the natural environment. Similarly, the ecological processes contribute to adjusting a social system for a sustainable social-ecological process. On a general level, this interaction is what is referred to as the so-called social-ecological system. Our food system is a part of this social-ecological system, which generally offers two elements – food environment and food chain. While the food environment is about harvesting, ensuring food quality and safety, and promoting food security by ensuring access and proximity, the food chain refers to processing and packaging, storage and distribution, retails, and markets. Then when we talk about the traditional food system, we mean a system where the food production, process, and consumption, heavily included traditionally available resources. However, such a system does not restrict the welcoming of imported foods that are regionally unavailable, such as coffee, tea, or other such food resources that are not produced in the region. These commodities are included within the traditional food systems. The main issues of maintaining or promoting the traditional food system have a number of fundamental reasons. In addition to promoting overall regional food security, which is defined by availability, proximity, access and certainty, the traditional foods provide required nutritious value for healthy diets to maintain the health and wellbeing of people of a given region. Food is a commodity for physical consumption, it is also a cultural issue that promotes the identity of social groups, which eventually also provides mental and psychological sustenance of groups. For the Indigenous communities of the Arctic, many rituals and cultural practices are conducted around food practices. Caring for each other to build a harmonious relationship has traditionally been performed by way of sharing foods amongst these communities. In this connection, the issue of food sovereignty is pertinent to the maintenance of a traditional food system, given that such sovereignty not only ensures Indigenous voices over their food practices but it also offers them a significant role to play concerning the value of food in terms of economic, social, cultural and health perspectives. The specific issues that the session highlighted were as follows: digitalization of reindeer husbandry as a high-tech business in the Russian North as contributory to the promotion of food security; community-led food resilience integrating learning from the Indigenous knowledge-keepers; sustainable harvesting, hunting practices, and sharing of food amongst communities in response to changing societies and landscapes; designating the Arctic as a food laboratory; and the understanding of the food security of the Siberian Indigenous Peoples in response to the impacts of climate change.