TY - JOUR

T1 - A leverage points perspective on Arctic Indigenous food systems research

T2 - a systematic review

AU - Zimmermann, Silja

AU - Dermody, Brian J.

AU - Theunissen, Bert

AU - Wassen, Martin J.

AU - Divine, Lauren M.

AU - Padula, Veronica M.

AU - von Wehrden, Henrik

AU - Dorresteijn, Ine

N1 - The project was funded by the Complex Systems Fund, with special thanks to Peter Koeze. ID was supported by the Talent Program grant VI.VENI.202.098 financed by the Dutch Research Council (NWO). We acknowledge the constructive suggestions of the two reviewers, which have enabled us to improve the manuscript. Publisher Copyright: © 2023, The Author(s).

PY - 2023/5

Y1 - 2023/5

N2 - Arctic food systems are increasingly challenged by rapid climate change, loss of food security and subsequent weakening of food sovereignty, and destabilization of Indigenous practices. Despite growing scientific knowledge on Arctic food systems, Indigenous communities continue to struggle with a plethora of sustainability challenges. To develop a systemic understanding of these challenges, we performed a systematic review of 526 articles published between 1998 and 2021 on Arctic Indigenous food systems. We used the leverage points framework to structure our analysis to understand to what extent the existing Western scientific body of literature provides the necessary knowledge to understand the food system characteristics that give rise to the current sustainability challenges. We combined deductive qualitative and inductive quantitative approaches to identify gaps in the systemic understanding of Arctic Indigenous food systems. We characterized existing research across the four levels of systemic depth—parameters, feedbacks, design, intent—and identified promising directions for future research. Our analyses show that research on food systems is clustered within six main domains, we term environmental contaminants, diet and health, food security, food culture and economy, changing socio-ecological systems and marine and coast. Based on our analysis, we identify three directions for future research that we believe to be of particular importance to enable sustainability transformations of Arctic Indigenous food systems: (i) the decolonization of research practices, (ii) acknowledging the significance of systemic interdependencies across shallow and deep leverage points, and (iii) transdisciplinary action-oriented research collaborations directing transformative system interventions.

AB - Arctic food systems are increasingly challenged by rapid climate change, loss of food security and subsequent weakening of food sovereignty, and destabilization of Indigenous practices. Despite growing scientific knowledge on Arctic food systems, Indigenous communities continue to struggle with a plethora of sustainability challenges. To develop a systemic understanding of these challenges, we performed a systematic review of 526 articles published between 1998 and 2021 on Arctic Indigenous food systems. We used the leverage points framework to structure our analysis to understand to what extent the existing Western scientific body of literature provides the necessary knowledge to understand the food system characteristics that give rise to the current sustainability challenges. We combined deductive qualitative and inductive quantitative approaches to identify gaps in the systemic understanding of Arctic Indigenous food systems. We characterized existing research across the four levels of systemic depth—parameters, feedbacks, design, intent—and identified promising directions for future research. Our analyses show that research on food systems is clustered within six main domains, we term environmental contaminants, diet and health, food security, food culture and economy, changing socio-ecological systems and marine and coast. Based on our analysis, we identify three directions for future research that we believe to be of particular importance to enable sustainability transformations of Arctic Indigenous food systems: (i) the decolonization of research practices, (ii) acknowledging the significance of systemic interdependencies across shallow and deep leverage points, and (iii) transdisciplinary action-oriented research collaborations directing transformative system interventions.

KW - Circumarctic

KW - Food security

KW - Food sovereignty

KW - Sustainability challenges

KW - Transformation

KW - Sustainability sciences, Communication

UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85147127781&partnerID=8YFLogxK

UR - https://www.mendeley.com/catalogue/b6fd9dc9-ce76-3bbb-b3f9-53f2d92c8fac/

U2 - 10.1007/s11625-022-01280-2

DO - 10.1007/s11625-022-01280-2

M3 - Scientific review articles

AN - SCOPUS:85147127781

VL - 18

SP - 1481

EP - 1500

JO - Sustainability Science

JF - Sustainability Science

SN - 1862-4065

IS - 3

ER -