International Polar Year 2007–2008 - WMO

issues critical to improving long-term international
cooperation in polar research and observation.
Nevertheless, it stressed the need to formulate the
goals and timeframe of the initiative more clearly. The
JC urged WMO to continue working with potential
stakeholders and to run a series of pilot workshops
to identify scientific objectives of IPD and design its
framework that would be appealing to the science
community and funding agencies.
The JC members reviewed short concluding reports
from the Subcommittees on Observations; Data Policy
and Management; Education, Outreach and Communication
and also from major partners in the IPY implementation
process (IASC, SCAR, Antarctic Treaty Conference,
Arctic Council). Unfinished business of the JC
at the completion of its tenure and the closing of IPY
2007–2008 was addressed, following a short presentation
by Igor Krupnik. Some of those unfinished tasks
include: archiving the JC and IPO documentation; making
the minutes of the JC meetings available to interested
researchers; supporting national IPY committees
working on their national IPY reports; assisting in IPY
overview publications and bibliography; and others.
The JC members agreed to include the list of such ‘unfinished
IPY tasks’ in the JC Summary (see Epilogue).
The meeting concluded with the final statements
by JC Co-Chairs Michel Béland and Jerónimo López-
Martínez (who also invited comments from Ian Allison
as former JC Co-Chair), David Carlson (on behalf of IPO),
Dr. Deliang Chen, Executive Director of ICSU (on behalf
of ICSU), and Eduard Sarukhanian (on behalf of WMO).
The speakers thanked the JC members for their service
to the IPY process, from November 2004 till June 2010,
and expressed their hope that new partnerships built
during IPY would be instrumental to its legacy in the
years ahead.
The ICSU/WMO Joint Committee for IPY 2007–2008
was officially terminated on 30 June 2010.
Conclusions: The Functions and
Legacies of the Joint Committee for IPY
2007–2008
It is obvious from this account that the JC played
various roles and had different levels of activity during
its term (January 2005–June 2010). That term
may be divided into three phases: 1) planning for IPY,
from 2005 to March 2007; 2) the IPY observational (research)
period, from March 2007 to February 2009 20 ;
and 3) assessing and securing the legacy of IPY, March
2009 to June 2010. The JC leadership role during the
planning phase in 2005–2007 was epitomized in the
79-page document, The Scope of Science for the International
Polar Year 2007–2008 (Allison et al., 2007).
During the observational period, IPY implementation
was advanced mainly through the efforts of individual
project teams, of the funding agencies and of the
IPO through its many outreach venues, while the JC
increasingly turned its attention to resource mobilization,
in particular for support of operational data management
activity and for securing the IPY legacies.
The invigorated role of the JC during that latter phase
culminated in this current volume prepared by almost
300 contributors.
The JC held nine meetings between March 2005 and
June 2010, which is more than that for the equivalent
steering bodies in earlier IPYs (five meetings for IPY-1,
three for IPY-2, and six for IGY – Chapter 1.1). These 2-3day
semi-annual sessions provided thorough updates
and overviews of IPY activities. The JC was the most
disciplinarily balanced body within the IPY structure
and hence best able to represent the diversity of the
IPY 2007–2008 and to provide equal voice and role to
each of the constituent science fields (“Earth”, “Land”,
“Ocean”, “People”, “Ice”, “Atmosphere” and “Space”).
The role of the JC as the recognized leadership body
and the ultimate authority in IPY was firmly backed by
the IPY sponsors, ICSU and WMO. The primary role of
the JC was to encourage and build multidisciplinary
international polar research under the IPY umbrella
and to assess submitted proposals against the IPY
criteria. Additionally, the JC approved and authorized
the membership and Terms of Reference for its subcommittees;
the establishment of the Eurasian sub-Office
in St. Petersburg, Russia; the Ethical Principles for
the IPY (www.ipy.org/about-ipy, Appendix 8); and the
selection of venues for major IPY conferences. The JC
considered many contentious issues, often in heated
debates and with disagreement among members, 21
however, decisions were always eventually reached by
consensus. Fortunately, the JC was spared any serious
political issues that plagued its predecessor, CSAGI, in
IGY 1957–1958, during an era of political rivalries and
confrontation (Bulkeley, 2008; 2009).
P l a n n I n g a n d I m P l e m e n t I n g I P Y 2 0 0 7–2 0 0 8 109