International Polar Year 2007–2008 - WMO

Knowledge Exchange (Conferences, Publications, etc.)
69* 6th International Congress of Arctic Social Sciences ICASS-6 Greenland, U.S., Canada, Denmark, Finland, Iceland,
Norway, Russia, Sweden, U.K.
135* Polar Heritage: Protection and preservation of scientific bases in
polar regions – Polar Base Preservation workshop
160 Arctic Change: An Interdisciplinary Dialog Between the Academy,
Northern Peoples, and Policy Makers
Norway, U.S., Australia, U.K.
U.S., Canada, Greenland, Iceland
299 Arctic Energy Summit U.S., Canada, Russia
410* Inuit Voices Exhibit: Observations of Environmental Change U.S., Canada
For this overview, standard questionnaires
were mailed in November 2009 to the leaders of all
international projects in the ‘People’ field and of
several projects in the ‘Education and Outreach’ field.
Altogether, 23 responses were received by April 2010;
information on nine other projects was assessed
via participating in their meetings or tracking their
publications and websites (Table 2.10-1). Chapters 3.10
and 5.4 introduce additional data on eight projects
with a strong community observation/monitoring
component (nos. 46, 157, 162, 166, 187, 247, 399, 408). 2
Basic Features of Social Science and
Humanities Research in IPY 2007–2008
Polar research today is moving rapidly to address
global and local urgencies and to seek strong societal
justification, as requested by many key stakeholders—
the Arctic Council, major science organizations (like
ICSU, WMO, IASC and SCAR), local governments,
funding agencies, environmental groups, indigenous
organizations and polar communities, and the public
at large. All of these constituencies have become
increasingly vocal about social issues, thanks in
part to the massive educational, outreach and
communication efforts during IPY 2007–2008. As the
public is introduced to and engaged in the issues of
polar regions, the stakeholders’ interest in societal
justification continues to drive the growing portion
of polar research and funding, and raises the role of
social, economic and cultural issues in the science
advancement and planning. We may expect more of
these developments continue in the years to come.
The changing nature of polar research and its shift
towards more societal-oriented and societal-justified
scholarship has been in the making during the past
two decades, but was greatly accelerated by IPY 2007–
2008 (Chapter 5.2). It has been observed at various
scales—from national to regional to global. The
transition is particularly visible in the Arctic, in Canada,
(Griffiths, 2009; www.northernstrategy.ca/index-eng.
asp), Iceland, Greenland, but also in the U.S.A. (U.S.
ARC, 2010) and other polar nations that are members
of the Arctic Council. 3
Arctic social scientists have previously participated
in large interdisciplinary initiatives, starting with the
International Biological Programme (IBP) in 1964–
1974, although at smaller scale than today. Even the
IBP, with its strong ‘human component,’ had a much
narrower disciplinary focus than IPY 2007–2008, and its
human studies were primarily in physical adaptation,
nutrition, health and small-population demography
(Sargent, 1965; Milan, 1980; Worthington, 1965), that
is, in the ‘human health’ domain (Chapter 2.11). The
social science and humanities field in IPY 2007–2008
was, by far, the largest and the most diverse program
of its kind by all measurable criteria, including the
number of projects, nations and scientists involved,
and the level of funding. 4 In addition, dedicated
efforts were made to encourage cross-disciplinary
studies linking socio-cultural processes, ecological
diversity, community and ecosystem health (Chapters
5.1, 5.2). For the first time, physical, biological, social
and humanities researchers, and local communitybased
experts were encouraged to join forces under
common multi-disciplinary framework.
To many polar social scientists, the experience
of collaborating with a broad spectrum of other
disciplinary experts—remote sensing specialists,
oceanographers, climate modelers, cryosphere
scientists, biologists, data managers—was also eyeopening.
Several large multi-disciplinary IPY projects
s C I e n C e P r o g r a m 313