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International Polar Year 2007–2008 - WMO

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ials (including cultural objects and human remains)<br />

that become available through land and environmental<br />

change triggered by climate warming in the Arctic<br />

(no. 425)<br />

• Engaging northern residents in communicating,<br />

monitoring and managing new food safety risks due<br />

to climate and economic change by using traditional<br />

and modern methods and techniques (no. 186)<br />

• Collaboration of scientists and indigenous knowledge<br />

experts in combining data from various science<br />

fields (anatomy, genetics, physiology, morphology,<br />

acoustics) and traditional ecological knowledge for<br />

in-depth study of narwhal (NTR, no. 163)<br />

• First experience of a community-driven regional<br />

observational network crossing international<br />

boundaries and run by indigenous organizations,<br />

with the purpose to document quantitative and<br />

qualitative observations by local experts in nomadic<br />

and/or remote indigenous communities (BSSN,<br />

no.247; EALAT, no. 399)<br />

• First-ever data management and user support service<br />

established for local and traditional knowledge data<br />

and community based research/monitoring, with<br />

the prospect of emerging into a circumpolar network<br />

(ELOKA, no. 187)<br />

• Visual, educational and public presentation of the<br />

experiences of Inuit communities facing impacts of<br />

climate change through the words and stories of the<br />

people who live there (Silavut, no. 410).<br />

more. 8 Indigenous participants were particularly<br />

active in studies investigating community response<br />

and adaptation to rapid environmental and socioeconomic<br />

changes (nos. 46, 157, 247, 335, 399). Many<br />

polar communities joined the IPY monitoring efforts<br />

to collect, exchange and document data on changes<br />

in sea ice, biota and climate (Chapter 3.10). All of these<br />

themes were new to the IPY program.<br />

Major achievements (Box 1). As in the case of other IPY<br />

fields, the complete picture of research activities in the<br />

social science and humanities disciplines may not be<br />

available until 2011 or even 2012. Nonetheless, we were<br />

able to generate a list of ‘first-ever’ achievements—<br />

in research, observation, data collection, and<br />

management—based upon the responses from the<br />

leaders of 23 implemented projects. This is, of course,<br />

a preliminary inventory of major advances, since<br />

many IPY projects were cluster initiatives of several<br />

local and national efforts, and the results of several<br />

implemented projects are yet to be accounted.<br />

The ‘pulse’ of social science and humanities research<br />

during the IPY years produced a steady stream of<br />

tangible products, such as scientific and popular<br />

papers and books, observational data, conference<br />

and project reports, maps, museum exhibits, websites<br />

and other online materials, as well as new explanatory<br />

models and research practices. Only a fraction of these<br />

results (‘products’) can be assessed at this early stage.<br />

No estimate exists yet of the total number of new<br />

papers in the social science and humanities fields,<br />

out of the overall number of some 3900 publications<br />

reported in the general IPY publication database as<br />

of May 2010 (http://nes.biblioline.com/scripts/login.<br />

dll - Chapter 4.4). A more ‘user-friendly’ Canadian IPY<br />

database (www.aina.ucalgary.ca/ipy/), which lists<br />

about 1900 entries related to Canadian IPY research<br />

only, counts more than 1100 social and human science<br />

entries, including 398 on ‘indigenous people’, 357 on<br />

‘government and socio-economic conditions’, 141 on<br />

‘history’, and 192 on ‘human health’. The overall list of<br />

papers produced by IPY projects in the social sciences<br />

and humanities is certain to grow into many thousand.<br />

It is worth noting that IPY data were collected and<br />

disseminated in several indigenous languages of the<br />

Arctic, such as Sámi, Inuit (Inuktitut, Kalaallit, Inupiaq),<br />

Yupik/Yup’ik, Chukchi, Nenets, Sakha and others.<br />

s C I e n C e P r o g r a m 317

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