The Changing Dynamics of the Arctic Ecosystem and Food Security: The Case of the Bering Sea Region

Abstract

Climate change is having catastrophic environmental, economic, and cultural impacts, reshaping the Arctic region. Human-induced warming is accelerating sea-ice melt, permafrost collapse, and altering regular species migrations on land and sea. These impacts negatively disrupt not only the finely balanced ecosystems of the Arctic’s flora and fauna, but also both the commercial fishers and Indigenous peoples who depend upon hunting and fishing for survival. This chapter provides a foundational context for my subsequent two chapters in this book that focus on the Arctic region, where sea ice melt is not only causing irreversible distortions in the region but it also significantly contributes to climate change. The rapid melting of the Arctic Sea ice is injecting fresh water into the world’s oceans, thus causing a slowdown of the global ocean currents that circulate the equator waters to the Arctic region which, in turn, are less able to cool the world’s oceans, thus causing atmospheric temperatures to rise. This circulatory slowdown generates erratic weather patterns and a ‘feedback’ loop, thus melting more Arctic Sea ice and creating yet more global warming. This chapter addresses the planet’s complex existential crisis through the lens of the Bering Sea, contextualizing the accelerating changes in one of the richest ecosystems worldwide. The analysis places a human face on the climate threat, while also describing the impacts and actions of advocacy and resiliency by those who live on the front lines of the climate catastrophe. With its focus on St. Lawrence Island, on the Bering Sea, the cascading changes to the Bering’s complex food web and its implications for Arctic coastal communities’ food security reflect the most recent chapter of a 2500-year history in the harsh yet, giving region. Arctic coastal communities, such as those on St. Lawrence Island, depending upon the marine ecosystem for their livelihoods and food, contribute the least to the earth’s global carbon footprint, and, retain the highest level of knowledge on how to maintain balance in the marine ecosystem. This, and the following chapters, reflecting on the depth and breadth of understanding by Arctic’s coastal communities, suggests that the world might look more deeply to the St. Lawrence Island’s Siberian Yupiks, and all Arctic Indigenous Peoples, as a guiding and self-determined force to address the existential threat that is facing humanity.