5. Recommendations and Future Directions

In the midst of past, present, and proposed resource development in northern Quebec, climate change has affected, is affecting, and will affect the terrestrial, coastal, and marine regions of Eeyou Istchee and Nunavik. Pronounced climate change, in combination of other forms of environmental and social change, creates a shifting baseline of environmental conditions, natural resources, and the manner in which people use and protect natural resources. The local food system, in its recent, contemporary, and future form, reflects all of these impacts and adaptations, and is thus a sensitive and highly integrated indicator of cumulative impacts and adaptive capacity.

Research on local food systems cannot be merely interdisciplinary. Incorporating natural, health, and social science dimensions into local food systems research is necessary but not sufficient. Local food systems research needs to achieve or at least aspire towards dissolving the disciplinary assumption that the natural world, the social world, and the health of people can be conceived of and studied as separable entities. The conventions, measurements, models, and language of science create recurrent and recalcitrant obstacles to recognition of a fundamental reality: people and nature, health and culture, and wildlife and the environment are all one in the same. Everything that matters is not fixed, quantifiable, or separable, but is instead dynamic, intangible, and relational. Assigning a number or a value to these dynamic, intangible, and relational entities is difficult, which makes the process of doing and understanding as important, or more important, than the data that can be shared and communicated at the end.

Working effectively across disciplinary silos within academia is challenging, but a more formidable challenge and opportunity is situated at the intersection of academic approaches and the knowledge that arises from the life experience and lifeways of Indigenous Peoples. The biodiversity and environmental change knowledge possessed by local and Indigenous Peoples improves understanding of climate change impacts and adaptation by filling gaps in scientific understanding, offering multiple lines of evidence, providing context for interpreting results, and enhancing community support for and involvement in wildlife science. Despite these many advantages, local knowledge inclusion and community partner involvement in environmental sciences remains limited. The how-to challenge of including local knowledge in scientific approaches or blending science with local understanding remains a nascent area of academic research. As the natural sciences seek to become both more quantitative and more inclusive of diverse knowledges this how-to challenge becomes more difficult and more important. Approaches described to respect, honour, and empower multiple forms of knowledges include ethical space (Ermine 2000), Two Row Wampum (McGregor 2008), two-eyed seeing (Bartlett et al., 2012), and knowledge braiding (Kimmerer, 2013). Community-based participatory research and knowledge co-production approaches have been suggested to make research in and with Indigenous communities more beneficial and relevant to its participants, and to begin dismantling the extractive and colonial legacy of scientific research in these communities (Castleden et al. 2012). However, community-involvement in research does not, in and of itself, create equitable relationships between researchers and Indigenous communities; in many instances the community helps participatory research more than the participatory research benefits the community (Flaherty 1995). Knowledge co-production offers a more collaborative alternative, defined by Armitage et al. (2011) as “the collaborative process of bringing a plurality of knowledge sources and types together to address a defined problem and build an integrated or systems-oriented understanding of that problem”. A recent review of knowledge co-production in support of sustainability research (Norström et al. 2020) suggests the approach can be successful if it is “i) context-based, by situating the process in a particular context, place, or issue, ii) pluralistic, by explicitly recognizing multiple ways of knowing and doing, iii) goal-oriented, by articulating clearly defined, shared and meaningful goals that are related to the challenge at hand, and iv) interactive, by allowing for ongoing learning among actors, active engagement and frequent interactions.” Whatever collaborative or participatory approach is employed, presumed-to-be collaborative research and knowledge co-production requires reflexive, critical examination of the researcher-partner and researcher-participant relationship. No research is value free, all research is affected by positionality and dimensions of power and politics.

Climate change impacts and adaptations are situated within a socio-ecological context. Attempting to isolate or emphasize a climate change focus above and beyond other impacts and adaptations ignores this reality. Just as people cannot be conceived as separate from nature, or science thought of as distinct from knowledge, climate change impacts and adaptations are embedded within a multi-dimensional and multi-stressor context. Climate change science is also filled with uncertainty and incomplete information. Climate projections and climate envelope models provide general predictions about what the future could look like, yet species-specific and community-based research repeatedly identify the importance of indirect interactions, lagged effects, and overall system complexity. Community-based climate change research needs to find the right balance between emphasizing generality without ignoring complexity, communicating the strength of the evidence but also our uncertainty, advocating for immediate action while also championing the need for better information, supporting the veracity of expert opinion while also embracing humility and skepticism, and clearly communicating the severity of the climate crisis and its negative impacts on Indigenous communities while avoiding presumptive, superficial, and othering labels like vulnerable or victim. Climate data and climate projections are improving across Quebec, but information about socio-ecological impacts of climate change is lagging behind. The challenge is that these impacts and adaptations are relational and include physical, biological, and social dimensions. If we monitor one or a few components of these relational systems, we risk detecting change but not the reason for the change or some aspects of change but not their ultimate and most important impacts. This challenge is not easily remedied, but focusing first and most on the physical attributes of climate, then somewhat later and less on the biological components, then somewhat later and less again on social and societal dimensions might well be going the wrong way. A better place to start might be by focusing first and foremost on the people and their well-being, what matters most to them, and what they know and want to be true. This starting point and perspective might offer a clearer view of the most important things we need to know about biological and physical systems, and their varied responses to climate change.

A key knowledge priority is more and better information about the local food system over time, across different regions and communities, among different households, and across the full intersectionality of gender, age, and cultural diversity present in northern communities. This could be achieved through more consistent harvest monitoring and dietary surveys. However, an important barrier to acquiring more and better local harvest and food use data relate to important and often under-considered why, how, and who questions. Why and for what purpose is this information being collected? How will the information be useful and used? Who stands to benefit from this information? What exactly will be the benefits? And what might be the risks? Who will collect the data? Who will have access to the information after it is collected? How will the information be collected? How can participation, consistency, and quality control be assured? How can the information be well-used but also well-protected? Although the need for better information seems obvious, less obvious is how to ensure that this information is collected, protected, shared, and applied in a way that benefits Indigenous Peoples and their local food system. If these questions could be answered and these conditions met, then better information about the local food system and better outcomes for the local food system are much more likely to be realized.

Key future knowledge priorities and opportunities include a better understanding of the adaptation initiatives able to maintain and strengthen the local food system in a time of accelerating environmental and social change. We need to know more about these adaptation initiatives and how they collectively contribute to an adaptive network, including more information about specific adaptation initiatives, who is involved in their design and support, whether they are envisioned, attempted, or implemented, how successful and sustainable they are, important barriers to their success, and the adaptation gaps that remain beyond identified initiatives.