Food and Nutrition Security as a Measure of Resilience in the Barents Region

Abstract

Food and nutrition security builds resilience in a society when people have access to safe and nutritious foods. The Barents region, covering the Northern parts of Finland, Norway, and Sweden, and the North-western part of Russia, seeks common goals that include the well-being of the region's inhabitants by ensuring preservation of local culture and social and environmental sustainability. This paper reviews existing literature on food and nutrition security in relation to building resilience and promoting well-being in the region. Amongst the local communities, traditional foods have served as a major source of healthy diet that ensures food security. Access to secure, nutritious, and healthy food is one of the aspects offering greater human security and societal stability. Traditional food has served as a major source of healthy diet, in particular, in the remote sparsely populated Barents region and amongst the local communities of the region. However, there is concern about global climate change and its effect on the region and pollution from human activities, such as the extractive industrial activities, that are detrimental to safe and secure food supply chain. In this paper, I highlight the contribution of traditional foods to food security in the Barents region. In addition, the paper emphasized that value addition to these traditional foods will help to stimulate the economy by creating new jobs. Ultimately, ensuring food and nutrition security in a sustainable way within the region will help to build resilience and promote culture and ecology with a view to offering greater human and societal security.

Improving Hunted Wild Boar Carcass Hygiene: Roles of Different Factors Involved in the Harvest Phase

“…Eating game meat is common worldwide and, apart from food security issues linked with specific territories where hunting is a relevant and resilient practice [ 1 , 2 ], is increasing in Europe and other industrialized regions [ 3 , 4 ]. This type of meat is in line with modern consumers’ demand for its unique characteristics, not only from a nutritional and sensory point of view, but also in relation to sustainability, the avoidance of chemicals, and animal welfare [ 5 , 6 , 7 , 8 , 9 ].…”

Impacts of climate change and its mitigation in the Barents region

“…This can be an opportunity the Barents region can grasp, should an appropriate understanding of the future development trends and the ability to enter the markets be in place. On the other hand, when climate change weakens the potential of local people to live on traditional livelihoods, they become increasingly dependent on global economy, and thereby more vulnerable (Raheem, 2018). For example, warming affects travelling on sea ice, which can compromise food security by reducing possibilities for hunting (Raheem, 2018).…”

Leuit and prohibition forest: Indigenous knowledge of an Urug community resilience

“…Meaning that they stock, especially paddy, is still full in storage, but they obtain new food stock. The old stock is ready for a person without reducing the stock, one resilient indication when an individual can reach security food (Raheem, 2018). Indigenous people like Urug have provided food through saving paddy grain rather than rice in traditional storage.…”