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Industrialized nations face the imminent need to transform our food systems in service to climate, biodiversity, and humanity, and inroads to such transformation are arguably already being made in pockets of innovation and activism around the world. However, debates rage over the various technologies and values that ought to drive those transformations. In this essay I argue that we are in the midst of a paradigm shift in how we think about and design our food systems, away from the industrial paradigm and toward an approach informed by the nature and function of living systems. As a part of that ongoing change, I argue we need to develop a new set of language to replace the familiar industrial values and concepts that underpin how we think about solutions—including scalability, standardization, efficiency, and control. I offer suggestions for alternative concepts drawn from emerging work in the areas if regenerative design, Indigenous stewardship, and complex systems, concepts that can reframe how proponents of food system transformation design and evaluate new ideas and approaches that are more healthful, sustainable, and just.

This commentary explores the emergence and potential of PubCasts—abridged and annotated audiobook-style recordings of scholarly work. PubCasts aim to make scholarly work more accessible, engaging, and easily understood by broad audiences. We highlight our motivation for creating PubCasts and discuss our experiences in making and sharing them. We further reflect on the potential of PubCasts to combat misinformation by offering a more intimate and humanized form of science communication. To assist others in adopting PubCasting, we explain the process of creating PubCasts, including required components and hosting options, and conclude with encouragement to other science communicators.

Food security is a global societal challenge, and one geographic region where food insecurity is increasing is the North American Arctic and Subarctic. In this paper we synthesize research on food security in this region; important precursors and early work include reports on the impacts of land claims, the cumulative effects of industrial development and environmental change, and the health impacts of the nutrition transition among Indigenous peoples. Building on these foundations, food security research in the North has followed a path similar to that taken in the global food security literature, beginning with nutritional adequacy and security of food supplies and then downscaling to a focus on issues at the livelihood and household level. Our meta-analysis of the peer-reviewed literature reveals many reasons why people are food-insecure: challenges such as remoteness, climate change, and the high costs of food and fuel all play important roles. However, the primary drivers of food insecurity that we identify in this review relate to governance and policy challenges that have been recognized and critiqued for decades. Recommendations for future research include an improved focus on participatory research and food security interventions that acknowledge and focus on supporting the rights of local peoples to pursue food security on their own terms. This paper is relevant in the context of climatic and environmental change because it captures the role of shifting political ecologies as increased geopolitical interests in the North appear to be obscuring the rights and needs of local peoples to access and control their own land and resources. ; De par le monde, l'insécurité alimentaire constitue un enjeu du point de vue de la société. L'Arctique et la région subarctique de l'Amérique du Nord sont des régions géographiques où l'insécurité alimentaire prend de l'ampleur. Dans cette communication, nous faisons la synthèse des travaux de recherche effectués au sujet de la sécurité alimentaire dans cette région. Parmi les précurseurs et les premiers travaux importants réalisés à ce sujet, notons des rapports sur les incidences des revendications territoriales, les effets cumulatifs du développement industriel et des changements sur l'environnement, de même que les effets sur la santé découlant de la transition alimentaire chez les peuples indigènes. S'appuyant sur ces assises, les recherches sur la sécurité alimentaire dans le Nord ont été conçues ni plus ni moins comme les autres études en matière de sécurité alimentaire dans le monde. Les recherches ont d'abord porté sur le caractère adéquat de l'alimentation et sur la sécurité des approvisionnements alimentaires, après quoi elles se sont concentrées sur des enjeux plus spécifiques comme ceux propres aux moyens de subsistance et aux ménages. Notre méta-analyse de la documentation révisée par des pairs a permis de révéler de nombreuses raisons pour lesquelles les gens sont aux prises avec l'insécurité alimentaire : des difficultés liées à l'éloignement, au changement climatique de même qu'au coût élevé de la nourriture et au carburant jouent toutes un rôle dans l'insécurité alimentaire. Cependant, les principaux facteurs de l'insécurité alimentaire cernés dans le cadre de notre analyse ont trait à la gouvernance et aux politiques, celles-ci faisant l'objet de critiques depuis des dizaines d'années. Les recomman­dations veulent que d'autres travaux de recherche soient davantage centrés sur la recherche participative et sur les interventions en matière de sécurité alimentaire, interventions qui permettent de reconnaître et de favoriser les droits des personnes locales pour qu'elles puissent atteindre la sécurité alimentaire selon leurs propres conditions. Cette communication est pertinente dans le contexte des changements climatiques et environnementaux parce qu'elle saisit le rôle des écologies politiques en pleine évolution au moment où les intérêts géopolitiques dans le Nord semblent obscurcir les droits et les besoins des gens de ces régions en ce qui a trait à l'accès et au contrôle de leurs propres terres et ressources.

Conflicts over natural resources are often misunderstood as being driven primarily by economic concerns or failings of human nature. However, human dimensions research has shown that conflicts are more often driven by problems and shortcomings in institutions for governance and management. In this article, we explore long-standing conflicts over the salmon fisheries of the Kenai River and Upper Cook Inlet region of Southcentral Alaska, fisheries that are embroiled in a long-standing conflict and controversy. We engaged in ethnographic research with participants from commercial, sport, and personal use fisheries in the region to understand their perceptions of these local "salmon wars." We find that these disputes are more nuanced than is captured by existing typologies of natural resource conflicts, and argue that conflicts can take on a life of their own wherein people stop responding to each other and start responding to the conflict itself, or at least the conflict as they understand it. This perspective is helpful for understanding how conflict in the region has escalated to a point of apparent dysfunction via a process known as schismogenesis. We conclude with a discussion that considers this conflict as an indicator of institutional failure from a social justice perspective, and argue that attempts for conflict management and/or resolution in cases such as these must focus first on protecting the human rights of all participants.

Recent increases in the price of fuel in rural Alaska, coupled with high prices of grocery store foods and decreased efficacy of hunting and fishing have led to a food crisis in many regions of rural Alaska. In the summer of 2008 it was predicted that these events would lead to an upswing in the number of individuals migrating to urban areas of Alaska, putting additional stress on the already dwindling resources of food assistance providers. Through discussions with food assistance providers in Fairbanks, Alaska, a research program was designed to assess how well recent migrants were able to meet their food needs. In total 39 individuals were interviewed in November and December 2008, using face‐to‐face, semistructured interviews. This article discusses a smaller subset of the overall interviews, namely the responses of Natives who currently live in Fairbanks, Alaska. Further, this article informs understandings of "crisis" in the global sense, highlighting the importance of placing "crises" into the larger context of cumulative effects which are long‐term and differentially distributed, rather than treating them as discrete and individually mitigatable events.

In Canada, the task of explaining food prices falls to a handful of grey literature reports that shape media coverage and public understanding and carry significant political and policy influence. We performed an in-depth analysis of 51 of these influential reports, including 39 reports by Statistics Canada (including Consumer Price Index reports and other studies) and 12 reports from the Canada Food Price Report (CFPR) series. Our goal was twofold: 1) to identify and classify the various explanations given for food price changes, and 2) to evaluate the scientific rigor of these explanations. We identified 232 total explanations for food price changes, spread across seven thematic categories and 32 sub-categories. We find that most claims made in these reports are scientifically incomplete (only 28.6% of all claims meet established criteria for the completeness of scientific arguments). We also identify a lack of comprehensiveness in the areas of emphasis and the claims being presented and drivers being explored, particularly with respect to a issues presently at the centre of food price discourse in Canada, such as the agency of grocers and other supply chain actors, corporate growth imperatives, and climate change. Considering the importance of food prices and food security to prosperity and well-being in Canada, we conclude with a series of recommendations for strengthening the scientific rigor of these reports, including greater inclusion of supporting evidence, opportunities for peer review, and increased transparency regarding conflicts of interest and funding sources.

Abstract
Climate change is impacting coastal communities in rural Alaska in multiple direct and indirect ways. Here, findings are reported from ethnographic research done with municipal workers, community leaders, and other local experts in the Bristol Bay region of Alaska, where it is found that climate change is interacting with local social and environmental circumstances in ways more nuanced than are generally captured by frameworks for vulnerability analysis. Specifically, the research herein shows the importance of the temporal dimension of vulnerability to environmental change in rural Alaska, both in terms of temporal patterns that emerge from climate-driven stressors and also with respect to how, and under what conditions, people in rural communities may design or manage effective responses to change. There are multiple factors that play into how rural communities will be affected by some climatic or environmental stress; ultimately, the impacts of climatic and environmental stressors will differ depending on where, when, and how frequently they occur. To capture these interactions, two analytical concepts—community capacity and cumulative effects—are discussed and then incorporated into a visual tool for improved planning and vulnerability analysis.

This paper compares two case studies in Alaska, one on commercial fishers of the Bering Sea and Aleutian Islands region and the other on moose hunters of Interior Alaska, to identify how governance arrangements and management strategies enhance or limit people's ability to respond effectively to changing climatic and environmental conditions. The two groups face similar challenges regarding the impacts of a changing climate on wild fish and game, but they tell very different stories regarding how and under what conditions these impacts challenge their harvest activities. In both regions, people describe dramatic changes in weather, land, and seascape conditions, and distributions of fish and game. A key finding is that the "command-and-control" model of governance in the Alaska Interior, as implemented through state and federal management tools such as registration hunts and short open seasons, limits effective local responses to environmental conditions, while the more decentralized model of governance created by the Limited Access Privilege systems of the Bering Sea allows fishers great flexibility to respond. We discuss ways to implement aspects of a decentralized decision-making model in the Interior that would benefit hunters by increasing their adaptability and success, while also improving conservation outcomes. Our findings also demonstrate the usefulness of the diagnostic framework employed here for facilitating comparative crossregional analyses of natural resource use and management. ; Ce document établit une comparaison entre deux études de cas effectuées en Alaska, l'une portant sur les pêcheurs commerciaux de la mer de Béring et de la région des Aléoutiennes et l'autre, sur les chasseurs d'orignaux de l'intérieur de l'Alaska. Cette comparaison avait pour but de déterminer comment les ententes de gouvernance et les stratégies de gestion rehaussent ou restreignent l'aptitude des gens à réagir de manière efficace au changement climatique et aux conditions environnementales. Dans le cas des deux groupes, les défis sont semblables en ce qui a trait aux incidences du changement climatique sur le poisson sauvage et le gibier, mais il n'en reste pas moins que les deux groupes témoignent d'histoires très différentes relativement à la façon dont les incidences influencent leurs activités de chasse ou de pêche, et les circonstances dans lesquelles les incidences présentent des défis à leurs activités de chasse ou de pêche. Dans les deux cas, les individus décrivent des changements dramatiques sur le plan des conditions météorologiques, du paysage terrestre et du paysage marin, ainsi que sur le plan de la répartition du poisson et du gibier. Une des grandes observations ayant émané de cette comparaison, c'est que le modèle de gouvernance consistant à « commander et contrôler » qui est en vigueur dans l'intérieur de l'Alaska, tel qu'imposé par les outils de gestion de l'État et du gouvernement fédéral, et qui se traduit notamment par l'enregistrement des chasses et par des saisons de chasse courtes, se trouve à restreindre l'efficacité des réactions locales vis-à-vis des conditions environnementales, tandis que le mode de gouvernance plus décentralisé créé par les systèmes de privilège à accès limité de la mer de Béring donne aux pêcheurs une plus grande souplesse pour réagir. Nous nous penchons sur diverses façons de mettre en oeuvre les aspects d'un modèle de prise de décisions décentralisé dans l'intérieur de manière à ce que les chasseurs en bénéficient en augmentant leur adaptabilité et leur succès, tout en améliorant les résultats de conservation. Nos constatations démontrent aussi l'utilité du cadre diagnostic employé ici pour faciliter les analyses inter-régionales en matière d'utilisation et de gestion des ressources naturelles.