# Food System Digitalization as a Means to Promote Food and Nutrition Security in the Barents Region
## 2 Impacts of Human Activities and Climate Change in the Barents Region  
The Barents region is characterized by its remoteness, high latitude, harsh climate, and varied ecosystems with the Scandinavian mountain chains in the west, the Arctic tundra in the Kola Peninsula, and the Nenets Area and Novaja Zemlja in the east [18]. The midnight sun may persist up to 24 h a day from May to July. Despite the harsh landscape, it is characterized by boreal forest, thousands of lakes, mountains and fells; this provides the region with an abundance of natural food, made available through hunting, gathering, harvesting and fishing. As a sparsely populated region with pristine environmental characteristics but rich in natural resources such as oil and gas, it attracts human activities that are related to marine areas or inland mining and mineral activities [19; 20]. Human activities have significant impacts on food security in the Barents region; they were reported to be detrimental to the environment of the region [20]. Many towns in Northwest Russia often depend on a single industry that causes pollution that can be a major source of contaminant in their food supply. At the Norwegian-Russian border in Nickel and Zapolyamy, nickel smelters release harmful emissions of sulfur dioxide into the environment [21]. Such emissions can end up in the local food system if not accurately monitored. [PERSON] et al. [22] reported on the toxic metal levels in local foods such as fish, berries, mushrooms, and game in the Pechenga district. In Finnish and Swedish Lapland, mining activities are also a cause for concern to the environment as potential risks to food safety [21]. With growing international tourism in the region, there will be more waste generated and it will be important that such waste does not result in environmental pollution. Encouraging industrial symbiosis (where small and medium enterprises find ways to use the waste from one enterprise as raw materials for another at local levels) in the region will help to avoid unnecessary waste and encourage a circular economy. The Finnish Innovation Fund (SITRA) in its current roadmap to a circular economy highlighted industrial symbiosis as a means to tackle the challenges of climate change, depletion of natural resources and to minimize the waste of food resources [23]. Shifting to a circular model for food can have economic, health and environmental benefits in the Barents region. The Barents region is an area where the impact of climate change is most pronounced, with an average rise in temperature twice that of the global average temperature [24; 25]. Digitalization of processes within the food system will help to mitigate the impacts of climate, with generated data. As a result of the warming climate, there will be changes in ocean and atmospheric contaminant transport, which may increase the movement of organohalogens and mercury from lower latitudes to the higher latitudes of the Arctic Barents region [26]. As the water in freshwater lakes gets warmer, tundra ponds and streams are likely to be affected by greater bacterial methylation of mercury and mercury released from thawing permafrost [27]. This will present some challenges for the terrestrial and aquatic food resources in the region. The environmental impacts of climate warming, anthropogenic contaminants and zoonotic disease in subsistence food species and rural drinking water can lead to infections and toxic effects in rural communities [28]. Plant, insect and animal species will be able to expand further north as the climate gets warmer, thus bringing new zoonotic diseases with them. \"Higher winter temperatures in the Arctic was noted to likely increase the level of microbes, and consequently, the winter survival of infected animals, raising the risk of hunter and consumer exposure\" [29] (p. 3). The warming climate may drive changes in the forage resources of subsistence species, their health, and abundance.