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Taming the Unruly Side of Ethics: Overcoming Challenges of a Bottom-Up Approach to Ethics in the Areas of Food Policy and Climate Change

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Abstract

Here, I investigate the challenges involved in addressing ethical questions related to food policy, food security, and climate change in a public engagement atmosphere where “experts” (e.g., scientists and scholars), policy-makers and laypersons interact. My focus is on the intersection between food and climate in the state of Alaska, located in the circumpolar north. The intersection of food security and climate represents a “wicked problem.” This wicked problem is plagued by “unruliness,” characterized by disruptive mechanisms that can impede how ethical issues in policy-making are broached. Unruliness is exacerbated by conditions of engagement that can be characterized as occurring in a “fog.” In this fog, interlocutors encounter both moral and epistemological conundrums. In considering how to mitigate unruliness, a bottom-up approach is recommended. I discuss “taming” strategies for addressing these ethical concerns; modest suggestions on what should be taken into count when confronting issues of science and ethics within the context of promoting greater deliberative discourse regarding food security issues at more local levels. My recommendations are made in light of developments in food policy in Alaska and may be instructive for other regions pursuing cold climate agricultural expansion, for example.

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Notes

  1. I am grateful to Elisa Graffy for introducing me to this way of conceptualizing problems related to environmental challenges. This term was coined by C. West Churchman in a "Guest Editorial" of Management Science (Vol. 14, No. 4, December 1967). Horst Rittel and Melvin Webber added refinements in their "Dilemmas in a General Theory of Planning," pp. 155–169, Policy Sciences, Vol. 4, Elsevier Scientific Publishing Company, Inc., Amsterdam, 1973. [Reprinted in Cross (1984)].

  2. I am indebted to Dane Scott for helping me understand the nature of a deliberative culture and for helping me conceptualize the deliberative features of an organic or bottom-up approach.

  3. Food security here is defined as “a situation that exists when all people, at all times, have physical, social and economic access to sufficient, safe and nutritious food that meets their dietary needs and food preferences for an active and healthy life (The State of Food Insecurity in the World, Food and Agriculture, 2001). (see also FAO 2009a and FAO 2009b for important discussions on the global dimensions of the two themes raised here).

  4. Briefly, and paraphrasing, the AFPC is an independent organization with members representing different aspects of the food system. The main goals include addressing, through research, education and outreach, food policy and food security issues and providing advisory counsel to state lawmakers responsible for strengthening Alaska’s food system. The Council seeks to provide a platform for coordinated action to improve local and state food systems for the benefit of all within the system, and create partnerships between producers, agencies, researchers, and consumers, covering fields of food safety, emergency planning, health and hunger, production, supply, and traditional use (see http://www.hss.state.ak.us/dph/chronic/nutrition/and http://www.alaskafoodpolicy.blogspot.com/).

  5. At the time of the composition of this article, the AFPC had initiated contact with the University of Alaska Anchorage’s Institute for Social and Economic Research (ISER) to conduct a long overdue statewide food system assessment to help answer this and other related questions.

  6. Slowly but surely, better quantification of the relevant statistics for Alaska is being obtained and recorded. Current data can be found at National Agricultural Statistics Service. See http://www.nass.usda.gov/.

  7. Alaskans spend approximately 2 billion dollars on food annually. They are awakening to the fact that more food needs to be local and grown in urban areas, where most of the people live. That said, there are food deserts all over the state. Currently, the state has about 680 farms and 30 farmers markets. The farms generate approximately $10,000 in yearly revenue. There are only a handful of farms that are relatively big enough to sell to grocery stores.

  8. Meyers Farms in Bethel, Alaska, has been featured as a model sustainable farm for the Arctic. The farm focuses on soil ecosystem management and employs innovative warming techniques, house hoops, and root cellars for ground storage of crops. Farms like the Meyers and those in the Matanuska Valley, can be instructive of the potential for growing and sourcing local foods. It also offers a window into successful small scale business practices.

  9. Fish Camps, as described by cultural anthropologist Karen Evanoff, a member of Alaska’s Dena’ina Athabascan tribe, is like “Christmas, only better…[It is a deep rooted way of life], [a] coming together as family and community and sharing gratitude of putting up (processing) fish (namely, salmon). We’re fulfilling our spirits, mind and emotions and bodies from the same source and practices our ancestors did… It is an ingrained and unconscious movement that is felt… a communion… [which] connects back to water [and nature], it’s bringing relatives home… [it is] a spiritual igniter and restores underlying excitement after a long winter… [it is] a contented labor.” (See the following for audio presentation http://www.alaskapublic.org/2011/11/03/denaina-elena-a-celebration-a-window-into-denaina-culture/).

  10. It should be noted that apart from these challenges to food security, climate change will also bring with it many new opportunities. In fact, some Alaskans may welcome the farming potential as a result of rising temperatures and new weather patterns that may result in a longer growing season and more hospitable growing conditions. Policy-makers should encourage more avenues for participation by rural and indigenous communities in policy-making decisions. Once a year, members of Alaska’s indigenous communities meet during the annual Alaska Federation of Natives meeting. Here is an excellent opportunity for policy-makers at every level of government to continuously probe into how both climate change and food security is impacting rural Alaska and to forge partnerships with individual villages. See http://www.arctichealth.org/ccHumanHealth#fs.

  11. For the state’s Farm Service Agency site see http://www.fsa.usda.gov/FSA/stateoffapp?mystate=ak&area=home&subject=landing&topic=landing.

  12. See Röcklinsberg (2009) for a more in depth philosophical analysis on the moral status of animal agriculture in relation to climate change.

  13. During a press release on September 13, 2011, to launch the bipartisan Oceans Caucus, Republican federal senator from Alaska, Lisa Murkowsi said that, “Without healthy oceans, we do not have a healthy planet.” She will be joined by Alaska’s Democratic federal senator, Mark Begich, to “create better informed and timely policy for America’s coasts, estuaries and open oceans.” According to Murkowsi, “Throw in the Bering Sea and the Chukchi Sea and the Beaufort Sea, and we pay a lot of attention to our oceans as we should. We do so not only for a strong fishing economy but for the subsistence lifestyle of so many Alaskans, and also as a definition and measure of who we are as people up north.” Like Many Alaskans, the issue of sustainable fisheries is no longer merely an economic issue, that ocean, coastal and inland activities, including seafood landings is a matter of balancing science research with governing policies and normative view points; underscoring the notion of ‘risk as political’ above (see full statement at http://murkowski.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?p=PressReleases&ContentRecord_id=67930120-31c0-43a7-8411-2f5e429e8a9c&ContentType_id=b94acc28-404a-4fc6-b143-a9e15bf92da4&Group_id=c01df158-d935-4d7a-895d-f694ddf41624&MonthDisplay=9&YearDisplay=2011).

  14. Vancouver’s Greenest City 2010 is an example of a serious attempt to overcome knowledge hierarchies and their attendant concerns by having a transparent and widespread public forum. See http://vancouver.ca/greenestcity/.

  15. A recent example of both these concerns can be found in the controversial “Pebble Mine”, by Alaska’s salmon rich Bristol Bay.

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Acknowledgments

I am indebted to my colleagues on the AFPC (in particular, Diane Peck, Mark Carper, Craig Gerlach, and Milan Shipka) for their insights and diligent work—which inspired many of the concerns raised here—and to an anonymous reviewer on a previous draft for helpful comments. Omissions and infelicities are solely the responsibility of this author.

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Correspondence to Raymond Anthony.

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I was inspired to write this article after reading Felt et al. (2009). Some of their insights are applied to the case at hand.

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Anthony, R. Taming the Unruly Side of Ethics: Overcoming Challenges of a Bottom-Up Approach to Ethics in the Areas of Food Policy and Climate Change. J Agric Environ Ethics 25, 813–841 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10806-011-9358-7

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