Food Desert challenges the notion that the best way to protect a thriving natural ecosystem is leave those communities alone, with as little human intervention as possible. The project recognizes the network of reciprocity between humans and landscape and humans and other beings, particularly present in indigenous communities, and proposes the rethinking of conservation as the protection of both biological and cultural diversity.

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Within this scheme, food operates as the main network of reciprocity between humans and the landscape. Thus, food sovereignty is the collective goal of the proposed Internationally Protected Area. Questioning the political boundaries that were once superimposed in pre-colonial patterns of settlement dictated by food, the alternative Internationally Protected Area crosses political boundaries to encompass the traditional territory of the Okanagan Nation. It recognizes the cultures developed over millennia that harvested and cultivated these landscapes. The project sees the interconnectedness between ecosystems beyond just the Antelope Shrub Steppe ecosystem as integral to both wildlife and human survival.