1 / 18

Climate change, food security and Inuit

Climate change, food security and Inuit. Kirt Ejesiak Vice president, ICC Canada. ICC: Who we are. ICC Chukotka (Russia). ICC Alaska (USA). ICC Greenland. ICC Canada.

evette
Download Presentation

Climate change, food security and Inuit

An Image/Link below is provided (as is) to download presentation Download Policy: Content on the Website is provided to you AS IS for your information and personal use and may not be sold / licensed / shared on other websites without getting consent from its author. Content is provided to you AS IS for your information and personal use only. Download presentation by click this link. While downloading, if for some reason you are not able to download a presentation, the publisher may have deleted the file from their server. During download, if you can't get a presentation, the file might be deleted by the publisher.

E N D

Presentation Transcript

  1. Climate change, food security and Inuit Kirt Ejesiak Vice president, ICC Canada

  2. ICC: Who we are ICC Chukotka (Russia) ICC Alaska (USA) ICC Greenland ICC Canada 155,000 Inuit live in the Arctic spread across Greenland, Canada, Alaska (USA) and Chukotka (Russia). The Inuit Circumpolar Council advocates for Inuit rights internationally.

  3. ICC: What we do • Climate Change • Food security • Wildlife (Biodiversity) • Contaminants • Trade • Language • Traditional Knowledge • Research and policy

  4. Inuit of Canada

  5. Food security, therefore, could be deemed the most important issue of our time. Following the 2009 World Summit on Food Security in Rome, a myriad of projects emerged on food security. Questions were asked as to how to frame what was food security, how could we define it, what were the causes, what adaptive strategies would be required to mitigate the negative impacts, what could the policy options be to address food security? These are all important questions and the projects before and since 2009 have added valuable knowledge to the collective wisdom. In October 2010, the Committee on World Food Security met and determined there was a need for, “A tool to map food security actions at country level is needed to provide national governments and other users with an improved capacity to make better-informed decisions about how best to design and national and regional policies, strategies and programmes and to allocate resources to achieve food security and nutrition objectives.” (Rome, October 2010). • The Economics of Climate Change, “Climate change will have a wide range of effects on the environment, which could have knock-on consequences for food production. The combined effect of several factors could be very damaging.” Sir Nicholas Stern, 2007

  6. Arctic Climate Impact Assessment 2005 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) 4th Assessment 2007 Vulnerability and Adaptation to Climate Change Workshop (VACCA) 2008

  7. 2009 World Summit on Food Security in Rome, Declaration “…undertake all necessary actions required at national, regional and global levels and by all States and Governments to halt immediately the increase in – and to significantly reduce – the number of people suffering from hunger, malnutrition and food insecurity. We will reinforce all our efforts to meet by 2015 the targets of Millennium Development Goal 1 and the World Food Summits. We commit to take action towards sustainably eradicating hunger at the earliest possible date.” .

  8. Climate Change • Arctic is receiving more attention • Climate Change is not new to Inuit • Changes have been observed for decades • Media filled with stories of climate change – not enough about the people who live in remote regions like Arctic

  9. There are four accepted dimensions to food security: Availabilityor adequacy of food supply Accessibility to food or affordability (traditionally harvested or store bought/market) Use of food, the quality and safety of food (nutritional value, zoonotics, contaminants –biological and chemical and cultural) Stability or sustainability of food supply

  10. It is generally accepted that the term ‘food security’ means, in simplest terms, “access to nutritious food.” The health and well-being of Northerners, and especially of Inuit and other Arctic indigenous peoples, are directly linked to food security and in particular, our relationship to customary ‘country food’ which encompasses community sharing, cultural continuity, and intergenerational communication.

  11. CC and Food Security • Food in Arctic Canada consists of country, locally produced and store-bought food. • Inuit rely on the waters, ice, land and animals for country food • CC is affecting food security for Inuit (access, quality, quantity) and the ability for Inuit to access food

  12. High cost of store food $200.00 Turkey in Arctic Bay, Nunavut

  13. CC and Food Security • Challenges: • Inuit have to travel further to access food sources, or not at all due to weather, income or food availability • Increased costs to access country food sources, and store bought food • Remote communities rely on store bought food to supplement diet – high costs, quality low, transportation challenges

  14. ACIA states that warming is likely to disrupt or even destroy the Inuit hunting and food sharing culture • Reliance on store bought food and reduced quality of food sources carries risk of increased diabetes, obesity and other cardiovascular disease

  15. Qujannamiik!

More Related