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International Polar Year 2007–2008 - WMO

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Table 2.10-2.<br />

Recommended<br />

‘Small’ Set of Arctic<br />

Social Indicators<br />

for Tracking Human<br />

Development in the<br />

Arctic.<br />

(Larsen et al., 2010)<br />

320<br />

IPY 20 07–20 08<br />

Indicator Domains<br />

1. Infant Mortality Health/Population<br />

2. Net-migration Health/Population and Material<br />

Well-being<br />

3. Consumption/harvest of Closeness to Nature and Material<br />

local foods<br />

Well-being<br />

4. Per capita household income Material Well-being<br />

5. Ratio of students<br />

successfully completing postsecondary<br />

education<br />

Education<br />

6. Language retention Cultural well-being<br />

7. Fate Control Index Fate control<br />

example of how scientific understanding may<br />

be expanded by indigenous knowledge. The<br />

EALÁT project (no. 399, Chapter 3.10) was aimed at<br />

documenting indigenous herders’ interpretations<br />

of weather and climate change they observe and at<br />

articulating the difference with the scientists’ views<br />

dominated by the concepts, such as ‘regime shift’,<br />

‘tipping point’, ‘multiple feedbacks’ and the like.<br />

As Sámi herders argue, “We have some knowledge<br />

about how to live in a changing environment. The<br />

term “stability” is a foreign word in our language.<br />

Our search for adaptation strategies is therefore<br />

not connected to “stability” in any form, but is<br />

instead focused on constant adaptation to changing<br />

conditions” (Johan Mathis Turi, in: Oskal et al., 2009).<br />

Whereas environmental scientists point to the<br />

increased vulnerability of polar ecosystems due to<br />

the warming climate, to the herders, the key factors<br />

in their response to rapid change are the overall range<br />

of their used territories and the freedom of movement<br />

across its constituent habitats. Therefore, the herders’<br />

prime concern continues to be about the diminishing<br />

size of Arctic pastures under the pressure of industrial<br />

development, government land rights and nature<br />

preservation policies, which are now increasingly<br />

coupling with the impact of climate change.<br />

Anthropologists and biologists working closely with<br />

communities had been long aware of this situation,<br />

but it took the momentum of IPY to bring this point<br />

across to a broader audience.<br />

Field and Institutional growth<br />

New Arctic-Antarctic Connection and the Emergence<br />

of Antarctic social sciences. IPY social science studies<br />

covered all eight Arctic nations (Canada, Denmark/<br />

Greenland, Finland, Iceland, Norway, Russia, Sweden<br />

and U.S.A.) and most of the IPY social and humanities<br />

projects focused on the Arctic region. No international<br />

proposals were originally submitted in 2004–2006<br />

from the Southern hemisphere nations and only four<br />

proposals (nos. 10, 27, 100 and 135) were designed as<br />

‘bipolar’ initiatives, with two (nos. 10 and 342) centered<br />

on Antarctica, albeit with strong participation by<br />

Arctic social science and policy experts. Nonetheless,<br />

IPY <strong>2007–2008</strong> has given rise to a number of social<br />

science and humanities studies in the southern polar<br />

regions: history of polar explorations, law and policy,<br />

governance and tourism. Eventually, ‘Antarctic social<br />

sciences’ emerged as a new and expanding field<br />

thanks to IPY <strong>2007–2008</strong>.<br />

A vocal and growing community of Antarctic social<br />

science and humanities researchers first anchored at<br />

the ‘History of Science’ Action Group established by<br />

the Scientific Committee of Antarctic Research (SCAR)<br />

in 2004 (no. 27, www.scar.org/about/history). The<br />

group held five workshops in 2005–2009 and produced<br />

numerous reports, publications and a summary<br />

edited volume (Barr and Lüdecke, 2010). This new level<br />

of awareness of societal issues in southern hemisphere<br />

research, with a growing number of interdisciplinary<br />

projects and system-based approaches stimulated<br />

SCAR to support the establishment of a new Social Sciences<br />

Action Group in 2009 (www.scar.org/researchgroups/via/).<br />

The new group focuses its activities on<br />

the topic of “Values in Antarctica: Human Connections<br />

to a Continent” and will use the Social Sciences and Humanities<br />

Antarctic Research Exchange (SHARE) network<br />

(www.share-antarctica.org/index.php/about-share) to<br />

improve the profile of Antarctic social studies. It also<br />

aspires to take on the role that the <strong>International</strong> Arctic<br />

Social Sciences Association (IASSA) plays for the Arctic<br />

social sciences. During the Oslo IPY conference, the<br />

new SCAR Social Sciences Action group/SHARE team<br />

held its first joint meeting with a large group of Arctic<br />

social science researchers, which was viewed as a<br />

key step in new bipolar cooperation in social science<br />

and humanities research. Thus IPY was instrumental in

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