Measuring Food and Nutrition Security in Circumpolar Communities

Abstract

The issue of food and nutrition security (FNS) brings together concerns over a range of environmental, economic, social, and cultural changes which taken together influence the diets and health of the population. There have been many attempts to capture specific overlapping dimensions of food and nutrition security in circumpolar territories. None of them, however, has resulted in the elaboration of a comprehensive set of parameters which could reflect the entire complexity of transforming food consumption patterns in indigenous communities, strengthening of human pressure on the environment, and progressing climate change in the Arctic. To bridge the gap, the author employed a two-stage survey of international experts and promoted a set of eighteen measures along the availability, accessibility, utilization, and stability pillars. Introduction of a parameter rating scale allowed measuring and comparing food and nutrition statuses of indigenous communities on the per pillar basis. The key outcome of the study is the establishment of the FNS status scoring system which may become one of the potential solutions to the existing problem of effective translation of discrepant international and national parameters into a unified measurement applicable across circumpolar territories in Arctic countries.