Future climate and land use changes challenge current dependencies on wild food harvesting by rural indigenous communities

Abstract

Traditional food systems support the livelihoods and well-being of rural Indigenous communities, particularly in remote, asset-poor areas. However, the diversity of wild foods is in global decline under the accelerating impacts of climate and environmental change with major but poorly understood implications for dependent communities. Here, we combine a comprehensive systematic household survey involving 400 households from 18 rural Indigenous settlements across the Republic of Sakha, a vast and climate change sensitive region in the Russian Far East, with species distribution models for 51 food species of animals, plants and fungi to (1) profile current household dependencies on wild food harvesting; (2) project future (2050s) changes in the regional distribution and local availability of wild foods under alternative climate and land use change scenarios; and (3) discuss their combined potential implications. We find that current dependencies, understood as shares of the total food consumed and income by household, are on average relatively low across settlements, albeit with important regional variability. Remote and isolated settlements in the Arctic region of the Republic of Sakha have greater levels of dependency with stronger links to animal products, while those in the southern and central regions, which are better connected and closer to major urban areas, have lower levels of dependency and are dominated by non-animal products (plant-based products and fungi). These dependency patterns contrast with projected changes in the regional distribution and local availability of food species, signaling major turnovers of species with important potential implications for dependent rural livelihoods.