International Polar Year 2007–2008 - WMO

Fig. 5.6-6 The
inclusion of early
career scientists,
teachers, and others
involved in outreach
was one of the major
achievements of
IPY-OSC 2010. Here
some of them are
enjoying themselves
on a cruise on The
Oslo Fjord.
(Photo: Jon-Petter Reinertsen)
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IPY 20 07–20 08
Representative of President of Russian Federation
Artur Chilingarov, and RCN’s Managing Director
Arvid Hallén. Other community leaders that spoke
during the conference included HSH Prince Albert II
of Monaco, Chuck Strahl, Canadian Minister of Indian
Affairs and Northern Development, and Sergey
Kharyuchi, the President of the Russian Association of
Indigenous Peoples of the North (RAIPON – Fig.5.6-5).
Plenary ceremonies during the conference included
the award of Martha T. Muse-price of U.S. $ 100 000
to Prof. Steven Chown (by the Tinker Foundation/
SCAR), and the award of the IASC medal to Prof. Patrick
Webber (by IASC).
Various groups with polar interests held side events
in conjunction with the conference. A workshop on
the IPY legacy was organized by AC and ATCM; it was
chaired by Jan-Gunnar Winther, Director of the Norwegian
Polar Institute. The workshop was attended
by more than 70 representatives of IPY-JC, SCAR,
IASC, AMAP and many national polar scientific and
indigenous organizations. The workshop participants
agreed that it would be critical to maintain the momentum
of the IPY legacy process, and that the organizations,
such as IASC, SCAR, University of the Arctic,
IAI, APECS, ICSU/CODATA that have the capacity and
mandate to further advance the IPY legacy would be
provided with the necessary means and resources to
do so (Winther, 2010). The workshop also recommended
that continued focus on scientific research in the
polar regions in the coming decades should be supported
and that the initiative of the WMO Executive
Council for an International Polar Decade (IPD) should
be further explored and supported as appropriate
(see below). Considerations should be given to find
the mechanisms for working together with the AC and
the ATCM to develop a strategy to sustain polar research,
including the concept of an IPD. National funding
agencies should be encouraged to commit to such
long-term efforts.
Education, Outreach and Communication (EOC)
activities played large part in the Oslo conference
program, just as they had during IPY 2007–2008. A
special EOC-committee was established to supervise
such activities in Oslo, in part based on the IPY-
EOC subcommittee, and chaired by Margarete
Pauls, Germany (media), and Sandy Zicus, Australia
(education). The committee had several meetings and
developed a great variety of public and educational
events that were implemented during the week of
7-12 June 2010 (Fig.5.6-6).
A total of 90 films from 17 countries were nominated
to be shown at the PolarCINEMA. Selection was by four
juries (in Malaysia, Alaska, Netherlands and Norway). A
total of 69 productions were shown, with a total of 40