3.6. Climate change impacts & adaptation

3.6. Assessing climate change impacts and adaptations for Eeyou Istchee and Nunavik local food systems

3.6.1. Climate change exposures, sensitivities, and impacts within the local food value chain

Here we adopt the conventions of vulnerability assessment frameworks, widely used in climate change research, that consider climate change exposure and sensitivity as determinants of potential impact, and potential impact and adaptive capacity as determinants of vulnerability [1]. Thus, vulnerability to climate change depends on exposure (i.e., the severity or degree of climate change experienced), sensitivity (i.e., system response per degree of change, including threshold responses), and adaptive capacity (i.e., the capacity to reduce sensitivity and/or exposure). According to these frameworks and conventions, maximum vulnerability to climate change results from a combination of high exposure, high sensitivity, and low adaptive capacity. These concepts and frameworks are all important, collective considerations to the extent that they highlight the complexity of assessing climate change impacts and the reality that realized impacts are not driven just by the magnitude of climate change but by how systems and people change with and respond to climate change. However, the use and misuse of terms like sensitivity and vulnerability in community-based climate research have also been criticized, suggesting these labels over-simplify complex situations and can be potentially disempowering to communities and people, including their agency and autonomy in addressing the challenges they face [2]. Accordingly, while we adopt the conventions of vulnerability frameworks here, we do so with awareness of their limitations and liabilities. As recently suggested by Naylor et al. [3], we recognize local food systems as complex and adaptive systems, comprised of multiple interrelated dimensions and nodes defining overall system function and value. While any given node may have high vulnerability, the system may be characterized by redundancy or capable of adaptive reorganization, which can contain, eliminate, or buffer constituent vulnerabilities to reduce the vulnerability of the system as a whole. Stated more simply and directly, in what follows, we seek to follow the lead of communities in describing the situation and identifying what is being done and needs to be done to protect, restore, and promote northern Quebec’s local food system in an era of rapid environmental and social change.

Within our value chain conception of local food systems (Figure 8, 9 see section 1.5), the primary activities of i) preparation, ii) access, iii) hunting & harvest, iv) process & transport, v) sharing & storing, and vi) preparing & consuming are all subject to climate change exposures and sensitivities. Among these, access has likely received the most attention in communities and in climate change literature, reflective of the directness with which climate change can affect the feasibility and safety of travel on land, water, snow and ice at different times of the year [4, 5, 6, 7]. Nevertheless, even when climate conditions enable access, the ability to successfully hunt, harvest and recover wildlife can be impacted by climate change. For example, seals shot in open water are more likely to sink and not be recovered if they have less blubber [8] or if surface waters have lower salinity [9], and climate change has been shown to impact marine mammal body condition [10] and ocean salinity [11]. Hunting success of geese at spring migration stopover sites can be reduced if warm weather, abundant energy reserves, and/or limited food resources encourage short stopover durations in favour of continued migration to breeding sites [12]. Cold temperatures contribute to hunting success of moose during the autumn [13]. Processing and transportation of harvested wildlife can be sensitive to climate and weather conditions, similar to access constraints. For example, the ability to process, transport, and cool harvested wildlife fast enough to avoid spoilage can be a key determinant of local food value, particularly for large-bodied species like moose, whales, and walruses harvested under warm condition [13, 14]. Although some forms of local food sharing, storage, preparation, and consumption may be made less sensitive to climate change by technologies and infrastructure such as refrigeration, community freezers, and cooking appliances [15], other traditional methods of preservation are documented to be highly sensitive to climate change [16, 17, 18]. Finally, preparation is sensitive to climate change. This sensitivity involves both the short term sense of preparation, in that being well-prepared with the necessary equipment and time can be negated by the increased frequency of extreme and unpredictable weather and harvest conditions [19, 20, 21]. But there is also climate sensitivity in the long term sense of preparation, in that acquiring and possessing the requisite knowledge and experience can be negated by changing and unprecedented conditions [22, 23].

The supporting conditions of ecological production, people, equipment, and institutions are also characterized by exposure and sensitivity to climate change. The potential effects of climate change on ecological production are explored in section 3.5. Figures 32-34 provide a clear example of how patterns and predictions align with the conventions of vulnerability assessment frameworks including the expectation that vulnerability to climate change depends on exposure (i.e., the severity or degree of climate change experienced), sensitivity (i.e., system response per degree of change, including threshold responses), and adaptive capacity (i.e., the capacity to reduce sensitivity and/or exposure).

In Figures 32B-34B, the horizontal arrows running parallel to the average annual temperature axes indicate projected climate change (RCP 8.5 high emissions scenario; 2041-2070 horizon; from Ouranos 2021); these arrows reflect a component of climate change exposure. The slope of the lines in the vicinity of these arrows reflect sensitivity; the expected system response per degree of change. The vertical arrows are expected system responses, as defined by exposure and sensitivity. When we say the absolute and the percentage change in species diversity is expected to be much greater in northern Quebec than in southern Quebec, because: i) climate change (Δ^oC) will be greater in the north than the south, and ii) the slope of the relationship between diversity and climate (# species /^oC) is steeper in the north than in the south, we are saying northern regions are predicted to have more climate change exposure and more climate change sensitivity. When exposure and sensitivity align like this, system responses will be very large in the most exposed and most sensitive locations and muted in less exposed and less sensitive locations. For example, Figure 32B predicts a 86% increase in fish, mammal and bird diversity at the northern edge of Quebec and only a 5% increase in species diversity at the southern edge.

Vulnerability assessment frameworks also emphasize, however, that consideration of exposure and sensitivity serve only as indicators of potential impact; an understanding of adaptive capacity (i.e., the capacity to reduce sensitivity and/or exposure) is required to assess the vulnerability to and impact of anticipated system responses. Furthermore, as suggested by Naylor et al. [3], local food systems are complex and adaptive systems, comprised of multiple interrelated dimensions and nodes defining overall system function and value (Figures 8, 9). While any given node may have high vulnerability, the system may be characterized by redundancy or capable of adaptive reorganization, which can contain, eliminate, or buffer constituent vulnerabilities to reduce the vulnerability or response of the system as a whole. Or, conversely, positive feedbacks from one point of vulnerability in the system to another point of vulnerability could lead to resonating and amplifying vulnerability, which can amplify the negative impacts of climate change.

The following is a simple systems-level consideration of the potential impact of a change in the supporting condition of ecological production on the collective local food system. For example, as suggested by Figures 32B-34B, climate change may lead to increased biodiversity and ecological production, with the extent of change increasing from south to north because high latitudes have higher climate change exposure and sensitivity than lower latitudes. All else being equal, more ecological production should create the opportunity for more local food harvest, more local food consumption, and more local food value. But all else will not be equal. Climate change will also affect the supporting condition of people, just as people will affect the realized impacts of climate change. For example, people may not know how to harvest, like the taste of, or have the necessary relationship with the new forms of ecological production available in a climate change future to benefit from the increase in production. Neelin’s [29] research on the expansion of beaver in Nunavik (see section 3.3.1 Beaver and Char in Nunavik) includes the following local knowledge quotes:

A very different approach - described in Tremblay et al. [30] and section 1.7. Situating communities in species space: a pan-Canadian analysis - reaches a similar conclusion. Analysis of among-community patterns in the types of wildlife species reported consumed local food frequency or food recall surveys highlights the importance of culture in defining what local foods are consumed, and gives pause to the expectation that community harvest practices and food use will simply change as local ecological conditions change.

Climate change will also affect the supporting conditions of equipment and institutions, just as equipment and institutions will affect the realized impacts of climate change. Local food systems are complex and adaptive systems, comprised of multiple interrelated dimensions and nodes that define the overall functioning and value of the system. It is that way now and, both despite and because climate change changes everything, it will be that way in the future.

3.6.2. Nine potential adaptation strategies for local food security under climate change

Here we summarize nine adaptation strategies that have and can continue to help maintain local food security in Nunavik and Eeyou Istchee in an era of dramatic environmental and social change. These strategies have been identified through the process of completing the WECLIFS research project, via the transdisciplinary and knowledge co-production approaches that define the project. These potential adaptation strategies emerge from recognizing that the local food system is a value network and a foundation of food security, from assessing how and where climate change impacts and adaptations intersect with these networks and foundations, and from observing how climate change is impacting the local food system and what local people and regional organizations are doing and prioritizing to minimize and adapt to these impacts.

3.6.2.1. Maintain local food foundations

Similar to a value chain that requires all component parts to be completed and connected for value to be created, the four foundations of local food security – availability, access, adequacy, and use – are inter-related and co-determined. They build on each other. But, again like a value chain, there is a directionality to how they inter-relate. For example, local food can be available but not used, but cannot be used if it is unavailable. There is an order of things. We suggest that order is a stacking of the four dimensions, with availability forming the broad base that is a pre-condition for the other three and with availability on top, necessary to obtain the value of what the other three layers provide. Local food use is essential, so promotion of local food consumption and all the health benefits it offers is good policy now and in a climate change future. But that food has to come from somewhere and be harvested by someone and all those somewheres and someones need to be looked after and promoted too.

Stable things need good foundations, and in times of change, uncertainty, and extremes, the foundations are the basis of things that need to be looked after the most. People need to do new, innovative things to adapt to climate change. But so too do they need to do the traditional things and practice the old ways. Looking after the land and wildlife. Maintaining the rights, opportunities, equipment, and knowledge required to access lands and camps and the offshore. Keeping the land and the water and communities clean and well protected so people feel good and safe about where they live, and hunt, and what they eat. These things are important too. They may not seem as directly relevant to climate change adaptation as new initiatives and action plans, but they form the foundation of strength and opportunity from which other opportunities and solutions arise.

3.6.2.2. Agricultural innovation

Northern agriculture has garnered community and political interest as a potential northern food system innovation and adaptation strategy, given rapid climate change, high rates of food insecurity, and limited availability, accessibility, and adequacy of traditional local foods. Working in association with our WECLIFS project (Figure 6, section 1.4), Seguin et al. [31] used an agricultural innovation systems approach to study the status of agricultural development in Yukon, NWT, Nunavut, Nunavik, and Nunatsiavut. As described by Seguin et al [31], Northern Canada has limited large-scale agricultural potential, due to low temperatures, long winters, underdeveloped soil, and low precipitation. However, long day length and warm conditions in the summer can support rapid plant growth, and agriculture has been practiced discontinuously in northern Canada since its introduction by European settlers during the 17th century. Technologies to successfully mitigate biophysical challenges to northern agriculture include passive solar greenhouses and containerized hydroponic systems, yet the introduction and uptake of these technologies remains inconsistent across northern Canada.

Seguin et al. [31] conducted forty semi-structured interviews focused on constraints to agricultural development in Yukon, NWT, Nunavut, Nunavik, and Nunatsiavut. Interviews were conducted with farmers, teachers, researchers, and representatives of government, private sector, and non-governmental organizations. Constraints identified included biophysical, economic, institutional, political, sociocultural and technological dimensions.

There was considerable regional variation in the status of agriculture and the constraints identified to be limiting agricultural production [31]. Agricultural activity generally declined from west to east, with Yukon being the most agriculturally developed subregion, as evidenced by the relatively large number of stakeholders and the higher prevalence of constraints related to market expansion. The Northwest Territories demonstrated a lower level of agricultural activity although rapid development was underway as the government redirected its support towards commercial agriculture. Nunavut, Nunavik, and Nunatsiavut were characterized by the lowest agricultural activity, most of which was centered on community garden and greenhouse projects.

Participants identified that northern agriculture was most restricted by economic barriers, including limited capital cost recovery, low community buy-in, high operating costs, and limited funding options, but additional constraints were identified to be important in particular regions [31]. Identified biophysical constraints included soil availability and climatic conditions. In Nunavut and Nunavik, there was a need to import soil products from southern distribution centers due to a lack of local resources and in the other subregions there was a lack of local knowledge pertaining to soil building through composting and mixing of local aggregates. Political and sociocultural constraints were most prevalent in Nunavut, Nunavik and Nunatsiavut, which may indicate a general non-readiness for agricultural development within these subregions. Participants in these subregions said that while there was interest in local food production, a greater priority was placed on addressing health inequities, access to housing, food preparation skills, community freezers, and hunter-harvester income support. The Kativik Regional Government in Nunavik listed agriculture as an area of interest although limited funds and capacity have restricted development. In Nunavut and Nunatsiavut, individuals and community groups were the main promoters of local agriculture, with governments playing a smaller role. Sociocultural constraints included low community buy-in, with participants consistently expressing that consumers were interested in local agriculture but ultimately preferred the convenience of purchasing all groceries from a single store, thereby reducing the farmers' client base, and further restricting capital cost recovery. Participation in community greenhouses and gardens was reportedly inconsistent due to conflicts with work, travel and, for Indigenous participants, the prioritization of Indigenous cultural practices. Indigenous participants reported that keeping a small garden interested them but conflicted with fishing, hunting and inter-community gatherings, which took them away from their communities for days at a time. The presence of project champions - someone within the community who actively promotes agricultural activities and has credibility among their peers when introducing new concepts or technologies - was consistently highlighted by participants as a major factor contributing to agricultural development. Most community agricultural initiatives in the study region were volunteer-based and experienced inconsistent participant attendance, resulting in the redelegation of tasks to the project champions and accelerated burnout. The burnout of project champions significantly hinders human capital due to the loss of accumulated expertise. The importance of project champions also relates to community buy-in as confirmed by Avard [32], whose research showed that the failure of multiple circumpolar agricultural initiatives was in part caused by short-term commitment of “outside” project instigators and burnout of project champions.

There was significant concern over agricultural terminology and potential negative impacts of agriculture in Nunavik. Interviews revealed that many terms for agricultural concepts, fruits and vegetables do not exist in the Inuit language, which generated confusion around agricultural projects and restricted community buy-in. Concerns over negative environmental impacts of agriculture may relate to misconceptions about the likely scale of agricultural development in northern regions. Although many circumpolar farmers suggested that circumpolar agriculture would remain relatively small-scale, participants indicated that the general population of the region was concerned that agricultural development would occur at a large scale, without sufficient input from Indigenous peoples and would cause environmental degradation. There is a need to clarify agricultural language and seek community input if agriculture is to develop successfully and garner community support. In the circumpolar context, this requires making information easier to understand for stakeholders who have no technical training in agriculture and possibly finding a way to communicate agricultural concepts in Indigenous languages.

Entry points for innovation identified by Seguin et al. [31] included agricultural training opportunities, the establishment of certified abattoirs and storage facilities, the expansion of financial support and the development of local warehousing options. These entry points could be applied in all subregions, although the status of agricultural development would affect the feasibility of each innovation. In Nunavut, Nunavik and Nunatsiavut, agricultural development is limited and characterized by a high level of uncertainty, suggesting that agricultural innovation should first focus on familiarizing communities with agricultural terminology, practices and potential benefits of local agriculture.

3.6.2.3. Supporting harvesters

Hunter support programs have been established in various northern regions and communities to support traditional harvesting practices and the production and consumption of local food. They are frequently delivered through local Hunters, Fishers, and Trappers Associations (HFTAs). Some support hunters by providing financial resources to cover a salary or daily rate and gas and supplies, while others may supply equipment to use while hunting for the community. Some programs also support land-based activities and provide food for those in need. Other harvester and local food system support initiatives assist with purchases of fishing and hunting equipment, encourage community hunts, and provide access to community freezers.

In northern Quebec, section 29 and 30 of the JBNQA created specific regimes intended to support the hunting and trapping economy, in Eeyou Istchee in the form of the Cree Hunters and Trappers Income Support Program and in Nunavik in the form of the Inuit Hunter Support program. The two programs are funded by Quebec but are administered independently. The Cree program is designed to provide a basic income to every individual who spends at least 120 days on the land, is currently administered by Cree Hunters and Trappers Income Security Board and has recently been renamed the Economic Security Program for Cree Hunters. The Inuit Hunter Support Program was used to support the purchase of gas and hunting equipment and in some instances is used to pay hunters to provide meat for the communal freezers. Currently referred to as the Inuit Hunting, Fishing and Trapping Support Program and administered by Kativik Regional Government, the objective of the program is to favour Inuit harvesting activities as a way of life and ensure a supply of country food for the region’s Inuit communities. Annual reports of the program are available at https://www.krg.ca/en-CA/publications/annual-reports. Kativik Regional Government also administers the Country Food Community Support Program, which aims to increase the quantity of country food available in each community by reducing related purchase and transportation costs. Eligible expenses are 100% of country food transportation costs between Nunavik communities and 50% of country food purchase costs.

Nutrition North Canada is primarily a federal retail subsidy program designed to provide residents in 128 isolated northern communities with reliable, affordable access to nutritious, perishable food [33]. In communities reliant on air freight shipments for perishable food supply, the subsidy is paid directly to retailers who sell eligible foods in local stores. Implemented in 2011, Nutrition North Canada replaced the Food Mail program, a transportation subsidy on northern goods delivered through Canada Post Corporation. Nutrition North Canada also subsidises freight costs for traditional or “country” food, but due to narrow eligibility rules, country food accounted for less than 0.1% of subsidy expenditures annually, over the period 2011–2015 [33]. Given Nutrition North Canada’s intended focus is to improve northern nutrition and food security, and it approached this mandate with nearly exclusive focus on the affordability of store-bought food, northern community and academic criticism of the program frequently identifies its exclusion of support for local food systems as a major limitation [34, 35].

Marking a notable shift in northern food policy direction, Nutrition North Canada’s Harvesters Support Grant is a new program launched in summer 2020, intended to increase access to local foods by providing funding to support traditional hunting, harvesting and food sharing in isolated communities. This program provides $40 million over 5 years, and $8 million per year in ongoing funding to Indigenous governments and organizations representing eligible communities, including support directed to Nunavik through Makivik Corporation. Because each community has unique harvesting needs and priorities, the grant is designed to ensure that Indigenous governments and organizations can decide how best to support their own communities. Recipient organizations receive funding for communities in their region and can create programs or other ways to support the communities and harvesters they represent. The grant supports a wide range of harvesting activities, including but not limited to: transportation and equipment like ATVs, boats and snowmobiles; harvesting equipment; safety and rescue equipment; equipment maintenance and repair; temporary harvesting shelter and outdoor clothing; training, certification and education; transfer of traditional knowledge, practices and techniques; processing, food preparation and storage such as community freezers; maintenance of harvesting sites; innovation in harvesting; community, research, culture and food sharing initiatives.

Although hunter support programs have received relatively little attention in the rapidly expanding literature on northern food security and climate adaptation (but see [36, 37, 38, 39, 40, 41, 42], we believe they represent a critical opportunity and pathway for supporting the continuity and adaptation of local food systems in an era of rapid environmental and societal change. We suspect that they are little studied and rarely examined, not because they are thought to be unimportant, but because these programs are situated in a complicated and contested policy space, centered on support for the local food system and traditional economies, but intersecting with inequalities in local food access, changing food sharing practices and networks, monetization, commodification, and commercialization of local food, social assistance, regional and community autonomy and self-determination, and Indigenous harvest rights of shared wildlife resources.

Understanding impact and adaptation within this harvester support complex will be challenging, but represents a critical adaptation opportunity in a northern mixed-economy context where the costs of hunting and access to a hunter are major barriers to local food security [43, 44]. The time requirements, flexibility, and seasonal windows-of-opportunity involved in harvesting wildlife can be incompatible with full-time and permanent wage employment, and climate change is likely to exacerbate these challenges. It is too often the case that those who have the money and equipment required to harvest local food do not have the time, those that have the time do not have the money, and many that have the money and the time lack experience or opportunity. Well designed and implemented harvester support programs can help eliminate these trade-offs and help to keep local food coming into the community, while supporting continuity and innovation in local food systems through environmental change.

3.6.2.4. Redefining food sharing networks

Local food is meant to be shared. As described by Gombay [40], successful hunters, fishers, or gatherers tend to share food first with their immediate and extended family, then with elders, widows, friends, namesakes, midwives, hunting partners, and those in need (such as those who are ill or lack the equipment or the ability to secure country foods), then excess food may be given to any who ask. When successful harvesters return to community, people may come to greet them and ask for food, or the harvester may send food to people, or make an announcement on the community radio saying that there is food to spare for any who wants it. Similarly, when people need food they may call or come by a harvester’s house and ask for it. If food can be spared, such requests are not denied.

For generations, Indigenous Peoples have depended on food sharing for food security and health [45]. Food sharing practices and networks are a central, practical aspect of Northern life that moderate inevitable variations in harvest success and food supply, minimize the impacts of misfortune affecting individuals, households, or communities, and reduce the consequences of environmental change. Exchanging food and harvest equipment maintains social bonds and unity between families, communities, and regions [46]. Food sharing can also be interpreted as a moral imperative rooted in ideas about community and gifts from the land [47]. In analyzing food security outcomes in 14 Aboriginal communities, Thompson et al. [48] found that traditional food sharing programs were more important to community food security than any other variable.

Despite food sharing, household food insecurity is common in northern communities and inequalities in access to local food are pronounced [49]. Collings et al. [49] report that single person households, in particular, experience limited access to country food, which may explain why single women in northern communities appear to be at particular risk for food insecurity. On the other hand, household crowding, large families, an delimited income are also a recognized contributor to food insecurity [50]. In an analysis of food sharing among 109 households in Kangiqsujuaq, Nunavik, Ready and Power [46] found sharing networks were not well-structured to prioritize sharing towards households with low food availability. Instead, much food sharing reflected reciprocity between high-harvest households, meaning that poor, low-harvest households tend to have less sharing-based social capital than more affluent, high-harvest households and, as a result, may be more vulnerable to disruptions in the availability of country food.

In Eeyou Istchee, in the 1970’s, when current levels of harvesting were last systematically documented [51], 6,649 Eeyouch lived in the territory. If there were 300 traplines and 300 Tallymen at that time, there would have been an average of 22 Eeyouch for every trapline and Tallyman. Today, the population of Eeyou Istchee is 18,000, with more than 50% < 30 years old and more than 20% < 10 years old [52]. With the number of traplines and tallymen remaining more or less constant, there are now an average of 60 Eeyouch (including more than 30 who are < 30 years of age) for every trapline and Tallyman. Population projections anticipate that by 2036 there will be 23,000 people representing 76 Eeyouch per trapline. What proportion of the current Eeyouch population has access to a trapline, to the knowledge of a Tallyman or other experienced land users, and to the wealth of the land? How will that land and local food access decline or improve in the future? Population changes are similarly pronounced in Nunavik, with 3,427 Nunavimmiut living in the region in 1975-80 and 11,800 living there now.

Studies of within community harvest and food sharing patterns point to the emergence of a super-harvester and super-household phenomenon [53, 54, 55], in which the vast proportion of local food harvested by a community is contributed by a small number of committed and successful harvesters and households. Chabot [56], in a study of two Nunavik communities, identified 12 super-hunter households, headed by a male not engaged in the wage economy and who hunted much of the time often with other members of the household. Chabot [56] estimates these 12 households harvested an average of 4,584 kg edible yield of local food per household per year. Ironically, Chabot [56] states in describing these super-harvester households “the male head of household was, in most cases, unemployed at the time of the survey”. How all that local food, harvested by only a few, ends up distributed among many, will be an important determinant of household equalities or inequalities in local food access and security. This sharing pattern also introduces the possibility of many people having the opportunity to consume local food, without the need and the opportunity to be directly involved in harvesting local food. In some ways, within household food sharing, including with elders and children and between women and men, represents the same pattern - the opportunity to eat local food that you have not yourself harvested - but in the case of within-household sharing roles are more likely to reverse at different life stages and for different forms of harvest. Whereas in the case of super-harvesters, division of labour is realized at a community level, with the possibility that many households routinely consume but rarely or never produce local food supply.

Another way in which local food sharing practices are changing or may change involves the sale and purchase of harvested wildlife or prepared local food meals, including through social media. This practice is often both culturally and legally contentious. Cultural contentions relate to the reciprocities and respect embodied in traditional sharing practices and concerns that these will be lost or altered when transactions are monetized. Legal contentions arise from wildlife regulations prohibiting commercial sale of wildlife and wildlife parts (fur sales are a longstanding exception) and the sharing of wildlife harvested under subsistence rights with non-beneficiaries, and ii) food safety regulations that apply to commercial food sales but not informal food sharing. Providing local food to hospitals and nursing homes tends to be less culturally contentious but can encounter regulatory barriers and contradictions. A specific contemporary example of changing food sharing practices within Eeyou Istchee involves the food use of nuisance-trapped beaver; beaver trapped by non-Indigenous contractors to reduce flooding impacts on roads and other infrastructure contribute to the supply of local food.

A final changing pattern of local food sharing discussed here is the increased importance of local food offered, consumed, and often brought home from community feasts, celebrations, and other social events. Traditionally, local food was consumed at home and in camps, day-to-day and with family members. Over time, as meal-included social events and community meetings have become more common, and the serving of local food at these events more prioritized, community event calendars have become increasingly important in defining local food supply as well as demand.

What does this all have to do with adaptation to climate change? As has always been the case, effective food sharing networks can moderate inevitable variations in harvest success and food supply, minimize the impacts of misfortune affecting individuals, households, or communities, and reduce the consequences of environmental change. Northern communities are larger and younger than they used to be, people are spending more time in town and attending more social events, communities and regions are better connected, and people move around more than ever. Opportunities for local food sharing are expanding, from within households to within and among communities, including beneficiaries living in southern urban centres. Nunavik-owned Air Inuit has a policy of transporting local food between communities at no charge [41]. Yet, inequalities in access and consumption of local food appear to be growing rather than diminishing. Maintaining the integrity of the local food system through environmental and social change is a collective opportunity and achievement that requires harvesting enough local food to meet the needs of the people and, critically, sharing available local food in an effective and equitable manner.

3.6.2.5. Land, food, and culture-based learning

What we teach our children defines our culture. In many cultures, the formal education system can be trusted to offer youth a good education in a suitable learning environment, to provide youth with the knowledge, skills, and experience they will need to become independent, to have a good life, to support their family, and to give back to their community. For these cultures, the formal education system embodies their own values, priorities, and knowledge, ensuring children learn what they should know. For many Indigenous People, the formal education system offers, at best, a partial education (the at worst legacies of residential schools, and the lingering cultural colonialism of education in Quebec and Canada need not be emphasized here, but do need to be acknowledged). Indigenous Peoples seeking to offer their youth Indigenous language, culture, knowledge, and worldview know that these will be found mostly outside of, not within, Quebec’s (or any other provinces’) education curriculum. They know that school classrooms do not provide the best or the only learning environment. Important things need to be learned at home and on the land.

It is no surprise that many Indigenous youth struggle in the formal education system and at the same time struggle to acquire and appreciate the language, knowledge, and traditional skills that their parents and grandparents possess. In many cases, their grandparents or great-grandparents were born and raised on the land. Their parents or grandparents were sent away to residential schools or foster families, and have worked hard to relearn many of the things their parents knew. Today’s youth are growing up in a world that is different yet again.

Challenges and opportunities that today’s Indigenous youth face pertain directly to the continuity and integrity of local food systems. By the time Ouranos’ 2040-2071 time horizon has commenced, today’s youth will be the parent’s, the providers, and the teachers of the next generation. What will they know and what will they be able to provide? How will the local food system live on through them?

Opportunities for today’s Indigenous youth are, in many ways, more and better than for previous generations. Formal education systems have advanced, with stronger regional leadership, to include more Indigenous language teachers and culturally-relevant curriculum than ever before. Scientists and science education is coming to realize all that knowledge braiding can offer and that learning something new does not require unlearning another. There is more and better support for land-based learning programs, food literacy initiatives, and traditional skill training. Steering these opportunities and resources in a direction that best supports the integrity and continuity of local food systems is an important climate change adaptation challenge and opportunity. Knowledge and skills take time to learn and require opportunity. But knowledge and awareness also empowers learning and growth.

As an example of a youth and local food focused initiative, WECLIFS PhD student Christine Ha, supervised by Treena Delormier, proposes to work with youth from Whapmagoostui and possibly other Cree communities, using the concept of traditional food literacy to contribute to the understanding of the learning processes that enable youth to have the self-efficacy to navigate the Eeyou Istchee food system and to carry on traditional food practices. There is an opportunity to better understand the methods of learning and teaching that help youth gain knowledge and skills in traditional food practices and to understand what food literacy looks like through Cree ways of knowing. This system of learning is central to and embodied within the local food system. Christine’s project will include interviews with knowledge holders about what is required for youth to increase their self-efficacy in traditional food practices. Reflexive photography will be used to gain insight into youth’s perspectives on the learning processes, and how the youths experiences in acquiring traditional food literacy skills and knowledge influences their self-efficacy to engage in traditional food practices.

3.6.2.6. Adapting harvest calendars and weather responses

The magnitude of climate change projected for this century is scary. The capacity of local knowledge holders to cope with and adapt to that much climate difference and ecological change is uncertain. The changes that are coming have never been experience before. These three statements are all true, and the following analysis and context in no way contradicts them. Nevertheless, when contemplating adaptive responses to climate variation, it may be instructive to consider other situations in which environmental conditions vary and the local food system continues to operate in and around that variation. Figures 32-34 also help to communicate the magnitude of climate change expected during this century. The horizontal arrows in the bottom panels of these figures reflect projected climate change (for the 2040-2071 time horizon and a high emissions scenario) relative to the scale of climate difference from Quebec’s most southerly and northerly points. Quebec is a large province, and southern Quebec and northern Quebec are very different - climatically, ecologically, and culturally. The climate change projection arrows do not extend across the entirety of that climate space, but neither are they a small shift within a large climate space. Figure 35 repeats one of these bottom panels, but situates the climate change projected there within a much larger space of climate variation.

The climate variation included at the bottom of this figure version is restricted observed and recent – the 16 year period from 2003-2018 - and one place –La Grande / Radisson airport selected because of the centrality of its location in northern Eeyou Istchee and not too far south of Nunavik and the availability of meteorological data. The top arrow indicates the 4.7oC of climate variation that separates the coldest year (2018, T_{avg ann}=-4.0^oC) and the warmest year (2010, T_{avg ann}=0.7^oC) recorded at Radisson during the interval. The middle arrow indicates the 36.1^oC of climate variation that separates the coldest month (January, T_{avg daily}=-21.3^oC) and the warmest month (July, T_{avg daily}=14.8^oC) of the year. The bottom arrow indicates the 84.7^oC of climate variation that separates the coldest daily minimum (February 14, 2003, T_hourly=-50.4^oC) and the warmest daily maximum temperature (July 12, 2005, T_hourly=34.3) during the interval.

Eeyouch and Nunavimmiut hunters, land users, and community members experience and understand extraordinary climate and weather variation daily, seasonally, and from year to year. They have already developed their own unique systems to recognize and respond to climatic trends and variability. Over the course of multiple generations living in particular landscapes, Eeyouch and Nunavimmuit have accumulated knowledge about how to travel and hunt, how to look after food and after each other, in every season and in all kinds of weather. They already understand how weather and climate interact with celestial, meteorological, and ecological phenomena. Understanding the patterns, opportunities, and constraints presented by weather and climate has enabled land users to anticipate weather and other seasonal processes, and to coordinate their harvest and subsistence activities.

Presenting 85^oC of weather difference on a plot showing 4^oC of projected climate warming does not contradict the severity of climate change impact, climate is different from weather and directional climate change is different from year to year variability. But it does emphasize the existence and the continued importance of many of the current adaptations being used to adjust to weather and climate variation, like seasonal harvest calendars and weather-dependent travel and harvest decisions. In a climate changed future, climate, weather, and phenological knowledge will need to be revised and recalibrated. Climate change is likely to cause everyone’s clocks to run on different time; the sturgeon may spawn when aspen leaves are the size of muskrat ears or maybe moose ears. Climate change may cause one or more of those species to go extinct or be greatly reduced in abundance. Even if all three persist through a climate changed future, the best time to harvest them may change, and the equipment and techniques required to harvest them well and safely at that time might change too. But most changes will happen gradually, and the same awareness and observation of seasons and weather and the ways of animals and land, that are so important to harvesters now, are likely to be even more then, when things are even more different than the way they are now and the way they were before.

3.6.2.7. Include more harvest of small-bodied species

In northern Quebec, and the rest of North America, local food use increases with body size but availability declines. Because body size is, in turn, correlated with many ecological and life history traits, size-selective harvest relates directly to the sustainability, resilience, and adaptive capacity of local food systems in an era of environmental and social change. Adaptation strategies aimed at maintaining local food security through an era of environmental change and biodiversity decline, might focus on how to successfully harvest smaller-bodied species in greater numbers. Small-bodied animals are, generally, more available than large-bodied animals because the species diversity of small-bodied animals is much greater than the diversity of large-bodied animals. Smaller-bodied species tend to grow and reproduce more quickly on a per gram basis than larger species and thus, relative to larger organisms, tend to live fast and die young. Since smaller species are typically characterized by higher per-capita production, sustainable harvest rates (as a percentage of population size) will generally decline with body size. Furthermore, smaller species will tend to rebound from episodes of over-harvest faster than larger species. However, the population size of smaller local food species will also tend to fluctuate faster and more than the population size of larger species.

3.6.2.8. Managing invasive species

Globally, nationally, within Quebec, and within Eeyou Istchee and Nunavik, warmer climates generally support higher species diversity and more primary and secondary production. As climate change warms northern Quebec, part of the system responses to climate change are likely to involve increased rather than decreased diversity and increased rather than decreased ecological production. To be clear, climate change will lead to species extinctions and declines, these losses and impacts are already occurring and will continue to accelerate as the pace and extent of warming accelerates. But, in addition to these losses, the impacts of climate change on local food systems, particularly in cold climate regions like northern Quebec, are also likely to involve increased productivity of boreal and tundra ecosystems and the appearance of more southern species in these northern systems. Borealization of the arctic, shrubification of the tundra, and expansion of temperate-zone species into northern conifer forests are likely to accelerate over the coming decades. New species of wildlife that are appearing, expanding, and establishing in northern regions are of concern to local communities because of their potential impacts on local ecosystems, traditional food species, food security, and wellness. In Nunavik, community members are concerned about the expansion of several species - including beavers, Atlantic salmon, suckers, black bears, moose and killer whales - and their potential impacts on key local food sources including caribou, char, and beluga. In Eeyou Istchee, community members have noted the presence of winter ticks on moose, white-tailed deer at the southern edge of the territory, and invasive greens in the Eeyou Marine Region. A research, monitoring, and management approach that could be implemented on priority invasive species, which reflects the sequence of approaches employed by Neelin [29] on expanded beaver populations, might i) establish the historical and contemporary distribution of these 'new' species based on local observations and field sampling , ii) investigate limits to their current and future distribution, iii) assess how they are impacting preferred local food species and northern ecosystems, and iv) what can be done to deter their spread, reduce their impacts, and/or adapt to their presence.

3.6.2.9. Supporting wellness

Local food security is a fundamental contributor to the health and well-being of indigenous communities, embodying the life relationships and reciprocities that are central to Indigenous conceptions of being alive well. Healthy wildlife populations contribute to healthy food and lifestyles, which forms the foundation for healthy communities. In turn, healthy communities and people help to ensure that the land and wildlife are well looked after. The Nunavimmiut of Nunavik and the Eeyouch of Eeyou Istchee face many well documented health challenges that communities and regional organizations are working hard to address. Local food is often presented as an opportunity to improve the wellness of people. But so too do steps towards improved wellness of people give back to the local food system.

Adelson [57] quotes Whapmagoostui Cree elder Joseph Masty, Sr. asking “If the land is not healthy, how can we be?”, In Adelson’s interpretation, “the mention of land and its condition signals a broadened perspective of health.” In the same vein, perhaps the question can be turned around to also ask - If we are not healthy, how can the land be? The health of the land, the health of the people, and the health of the local food system co-define one another. Investments in improved health and wellness within the communities of Eeyou Istchee and Nunavik is a key adaptation strategy that will help ensure the land and the local food system are well looked after long into the future.

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