International Polar Year 2007–2008 - WMO

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IPY 20 07–20 08
Krupnik and Jolly, 2002; Huntington and Fox, 2005;
Riewe and Oakes, 2006; Krupnik et al., 2010). Arctic residents’
participation in IPY 2007–2008 and their critical
role in many IPY projects in social and human health
fields, marine and terrestrial biology, and environmental
monitoring (Chapters 2.10, 2.11, 3.10) are commonly
viewed as one of the key accomplishments of
IPY 2007–2008. Nevertheless, this momentum in Arctic
residents’ participation in science research created
by IPY has to be preserved and extended to become
a lasting legacy of IPY. To achieve this goal, IPY scientists,
collaborating northern communities and Arctic
indigenous peoples’ organization are developing
new means to strengthen their partnership through
a local and indigenous knowledge exchange network
beyond the IPY 2007–2008 era.
ELOKA (the “Exchange for Local Observations
and Knowledge of the Arctic”), one of IPY 2007–2008
projects (no. 187, http://eloka-arctic.org) launched in
2006 with funding from the Arctic Observing Network
(AON) (National Science Foundation, U.S.) may become
a prime vehicle in such a post-IPY partnership. It
received continuation funding for 2009–2012, also
from the NSF AON program, and will be processing,
sharing and preserving data collected via several
collaborative IPY and associated projects during the
post-IPY decade. The main goal of ELOKA is to play a
role in the creation of a post-IPY network to facilitate
the collection, preservation, exchange and use of local
observations and knowledge of the Arctic by providing
assistance in data management and user support
services. Such an emerging network will serve a wide
range of people, from local citizens in small Arctic
communities, to scientists in universities and educators
in K-12 schools. In particular, it seeks to connect local
and traditional knowledge of Arctic residents with
science, and local experts with scientists, to further the
collective understanding of the Arctic.
A key challenge of local and traditional knowledge
research and community-based monitoring is having
an effective and appropriate means of recording,
storing and managing data and information. Another
challenge is to find an effective means of making such
data available to Arctic residents and researchers, as
well as to other interested groups such as teachers,
students and decision-makers. Without a viable
network and operational data management system to
support LTK and community-based research, a number
of problems have arisen, such as misplacement or loss of
extremely precious data from Elders who have passed
away; lack of awareness of previous studies causing
repetition of research and wasted resources occurring
in the same communities; and a reluctance or inability
to initiate or maintain community-based research
without an available data management system. Thus
there is an urgent need for effective and appropriate
means of recording, preserving and sharing the
information collected in Arctic communities. The
momentum started in the IPY and spearheaded by the
ELOKA project aims to fill this gap.
Building a Knowledge Exchange
At the heart of ELOKA is the development and
implementation of the tools and services needed
to manage, protect, communicate and share LTK and
CBM information. In order to achieve this, ELOKA
began its efforts during the IPY years with two case
study projects: the Sanikiluaq Sea Ice Project (Nunavut,
Canada) and Narwhal Tusk Research (‘Studies of Narwhal
Teeth’, IPY no. 164). The community of Sanikiluaq
has been active for many years in researching and
monitoring the local environment from both Inuit
and scientific perspectives. ELOKA partnered with
Sanikiluaq to provide data management for a small
subset of their work: documenting local observations
and knowledge of recent sea ice change.
The Sanikiluaq data consists of videotaped
interviews with Inuit hunters and map overlays
that hunters used to draw their observations of
sea ice change. These data are typical of many LTK
projects that often use video, audio and mapping
techniques. The tools developed to manage this
information include a video player and maps created
by professional cartographers in collaboration with
community members. Together these tools provide
a unique and customized means to store and present
Sanikiluaq’s LTK research (see Fig. 5.4-6).
Narwhal Tusk Research was an IPY 2007–2008 project
(no. 164) launched in collaboration with the Inuit hunters
and elders from Nunavut, Canada and Northwest
Greenland (see www.narwhal.org/; http://classic.ipy.
org/development/eoi/proposal-details.php?id=164).
Hunters and elders from several communities on Baffin
Island and Greenland have provided key informa-