Local foods are critical to the food security and health of Indigenous peoples around the world, but the importance—both monetary and environmental—of local “informal” economies is often not visible to policymakers. Here, we combine data from multiple sources and use Bayesian inference techniques to estimate the carbon emissions that would be produced by market replacements for local food in the Inuvialuit Settlement Region, Canada. We show that Inuit harvesting is more carbon efficient than importing market substitutes, in addition to being less reliant on vulnerable supply chains. These findings highlight the importance of place-based and culturally-informed approaches to climate policy for remote and Indigenous communities.

Indigenous communities in the North American Arctic are characterized by mixed economies that feature hunting, fishing, gathering, and trapping activities—and associated sharing practices—alongside the formal wage economy. The region is also undergoing rapid social, economic, and climate changes, including, in Canada, carbon taxation, which is impacting the cost of fuel used in local food harvesting. Because of the importance of local foods to nutrition, health, and well-being in Arctic Indigenous communities, there is an urgent need to better understand the sensitivity of Arctic food systems to social, economic, and climate changes and to develop plans for mitigating potential adverse effects. Here, we develop a Bayesian model to calculate the substitution value and carbon emissions of market replacements for local food harvests in the Inuvialuit Settlement Region, Canada. Our estimates suggest that under plausible scenarios, replacing locally harvested foods with imported market substitutes would cost over 3.1 million Canadian dollars per year and emit over 1,000 tons of CO2-equivalent emissions per year, regardless of the shipping scenario. In contrast, we estimate that gasoline inputs to harvesting cost approximately $295,000 and result in 315 to 497 tons of emissions. These results indicate that climate change policies that fail to account for local food production may undermine emissions targets and adversely impact food security and health in Arctic Indigenous communities, who already experience a high cost of living and high rates of food insecurity.