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EU in the Barents region addressed

Leading researches and experts, politicians, representatives from business and authorities are attending the conference “Cooperation in the Barents Euro-Arctic Region in the field of education and research as a resource for regional development”.

The conference is held in the Northern (Arctic) Federal University (NArFU).

The conference yesterday started with the plenary session. Ingvild Broch, Coordinator External Review made a short overview of cooperation in the spheres of education and research in the BEAR and pointed out some future challenges. She touched upon some important historical facts of international cooperation between Russia and Scandinavian countries. Marina Kalinina, Vice-rector of International cooperation, NArFU spoke about “University as a Driving Force of Change” and named the priority goals of the Northern (Arctic) Federal University.

Harry Malinen, Senior expert of the University of Lapland and Lapland University Consortium (Finland) talked about the opportunities for the universities within EU framework. He paid special attention to existing international programs in the Barents region and EU relevant for those who work within research and education area. Anatoly Smirnov, the President of the National Institute for Research of Global Security finished the plenary session with his report about information technologies in the Barents region.

Later this day a new cooperation agreement was signed between NArFU and Finnmark College. Ingvar Hauge, the senior advisor of Finnmark University College and Elena Kudryashova, the Rector of NArFU signed the document that marks the beginning of a new stage in the history of collaboration between two universities. This agreement aims to develop partnership in educational and exchange programs as well as other important issues.

“Murmansk and Arkhangelsk universities are the most important partners for us in Russia. I would like to bring forward cooperation in the fields like language, tourism, economics, social works, management of natural resources. And the most important sight of this cooperation is perhaps student and academic exchange, what I think we can bring forward,” Ingvar Hauge commented.

After a short coffee break the participants of the conference went on parallel sessions that focused on different issues of Barents region cooperation and its connections to cooperation with business and industry, challenges in education, and carrier paths in BEAR for youth.

Consul General of Sweden in St.Petersburg Mr. Jan Nyberg, visited NArFU in the framework of the conference this day as well. During a working meeting with Elena Kydryashova and Marina Kalinina he discussed the issues of cooperation between Russian and Swedish universities. Jan Nyberg also had an excursion around the campus and had a meeting with the students and lecturers from the Institute of Philology and Cross-Cultural Communication, who study Swedish language.

During closing plenary session the participants had a possibility to sum-up the result of intensive sessions’ work and to share their findings and proposals for the new Kirkenes Declaration.

Source

NArFU

November 30, 2012
Barents cooperation stressed at NArFU

Leading researches and experts, politicians, representatives from business and authorities are attending the conference “Cooperation in the Barents Euro-Arctic Region in the field of education and research as a resource for regional development” which began yesterday.

The conference is held in the Northern (Arctic) Federal University (NArFU). In a welcoming address Britt Vigdis Ekelu, vice President of Education in the University of Tromsø said that it was “very interesting for us to discuss our common past.

Fruitful and extensive cooperation in the fields of medicine, education, biology, student exchange has been established between our universities during the years of collaboration,” she said, and stressed close cooperation in the region.

The first plenary session was held later with the framework of the conference. Sverre Stub, Ambassador, Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Norway spoke about “Norway’s views on the Barents cooperation”. Andrej Shalev, Honorary Council of Norway in Archangelsk reviewed the last twenty years of Barents Cooperation.

President UArctic Lars Kullerud held a lecture about “Circumpolar cooperation in higher education and research: University of the Arctic”. Katja Sukuvaara, Senior Advisor, Joint Managing Authority, Kolarctic ENPI CBC Programme spoke about the Kolarctic program.

“Cooperation gave us an opportunity to normalize relationships between the countries in a small amount of time,” Sverre Stub said. “And the most important thing is that this cooperation has been gradually developing and involved more and more people. Contacts between people became the main basis of Barents region cooperation and turned to be the greatest achievement.”

Later a panel discussion was held on the theme “Northern Universities for the development of the region: new realities – new perspectives”. A dialogue between the university community and politicians”. The discussion focused on the issues of Barents region cooperation, new challenges of education and research in the North, the role of universities in the development of international relationships. Special attention was paid to the problems of Barents region, such as population outflow.

The first day of the conference be considered as having been a successful event not only because of the quality of the lectures and but also because of its international character. The participants praised a constructive and motivating atmosphere during the sessions and informal talks, according to the Narfu website.

Source

NArFU

November 28, 2012
Debate goes on in Rio

Debates on a new agreement in the Rio+20 conference continue. Negotiators have agreed a text to be approved this week “to put society on a more sustainable path”.

Environment groups and charities working on poverty issues believe the agreement is far too weak.

“We have reached the best possible equilibrium at this point; I think we have a very good outcome,” said Brazilian Foreign Minister Antonio Patriota to the BBC.

Denmark leads the EU and both are unhappy with “the level of ambition” in the text. BUt the Danish environmental minister believes it will be signed off anyway.

“The EU would have liked to see a much more concrete and ambitious outcome, so in that respect I’m not happy with it,” she said.

“However we managed to get the green economy on the agenda, and so I think we have a strong foundation for this vision that can drive civil society and the private sector to work in the same direction, to understand that environment and the social side must be integrated into the heart of the economy.”

The lad negotiatior for the USA called the draft “a good step forward” and admitted it would not be re-opened for discussions.

More than 100 world leaders are expected in Rio from Wednesday to attend the summit.

Source

BBC

June 20, 2012
Rio 20 coming up

The United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development, also known as Rio 2012 or Rio+20, will start next week.

The conference is a 20-year follow-up to the historic 1992 United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED).

Like its precessor, the conference is held in Rio de Janeiro in Brazil.

The conference will be one of the highlights of the year, and Arctic Portal has written a new feature about the summit.

Click here to read more.

June 15, 2012
Read about IPY 2012 in Montreal

The IPY 2012 conference in Montréal, Canada, was a fitting end to the International Polar Year. Around 3000 people attended the conference in the Palais de Congrés.

Arctic Portal had four representatives in the conference, where our work was presented at various locations.

We also took over 100 photos in Montréal.

Click here to read about the conference and IPY.

May 4, 2012
International Polar Year 2012

Under the auspices of International Polar Year, co – sponsored by the International Council for Science and the World Meteorological Organization, more than 3,000 scientists from all over the world came together during the IPY 2012 ´”From Knowledge to Action” Conference, to greatly contribute to this knowledge sharing and current Arctic problems solving initiative.

International Polar Year (IPY) was initiated as international cooperative research dynamism and first introduced in 1882-1883. Its main objective was and still is, to provide scientific information about the fundamentals of meteorology and geophysics as well as to enhance all people’s knowledge and awareness about Polar Regions and associated, ongoing changes in both, opposite poles.

The initial idea of international cooperative polar research came from an Austro-Hungarian explorer and naval officer Lt. Karl Weyprecht who was a scientist and co-commander of the Austro-Hungarian Polar Expedition of 1872-74. Many of the earth’s unique phenomena, such as circulatory systems for air and water and the Earth’s magnetic field lines reach the surface in the polar areas. In addition, thick glaciers have trapped air and water from ancient times, which makes it easiest to observe these phenomena near the poles.

Weyprecht realized that a comprehensive polar research could not be a task of a one nation only, but should involve a coordinated international effort. He recognized that a time of mere geographical discovery had past and a series of coordinated expeditions dedicated to scientific research should be undertaken to further peoples understanding on fundamentals of meteorology and geophysics.

Unfortunately, he died before the international research became a reality, but his inspiration led to an establishment of the largest coordinated series of scientific expeditions ever undertaken in the Arctic during the 19^th century, or to what is now known as the First International Polar Year.

The first IPY was announced between the years of 1881 – 1883, where eleven nations came together to establish fourteen principal research stations across the Polar Regions.

The Second IPY, which took place in 1932 – 1933, was both proposed and promoted by the International Meteorological Committee. The main objective of the second research initiative was to investigate the global implications of the newly discovered “Jet Stream” and to conduct magnetic, aurora and meteorological observations at a network of research stations in the Arctic and Antarctic. It gathered researchers from more than forty different countries and came out as a great success in terms of scientific contribution.

The third IPY was dedicated to the research on technology and science in the upper atmosphere and it was finally renamed to become International Geophysical Year (IGY).

The fourth IPY took place in 2007 – 2008 and happened to become the gigantic international scientific project with close to 10 000 scientists and 50 000 other participants from over 60 countries. The aim was to significantly increase the scientific knowledge and understanding of the polar areas and to conduct research projects beyond the resources of individual countries.

This year´s event took place in Montreal, Canada between 22^nd and 27^th of April. Main objective of the initiative was bringing the knowledge from former gatherings into action, as suggested by the conference’s theme. IPY 2012 drew attention of more than 3,000 international scientists to the Polar Regions, related ongoing challenges of globalization and climate change plus social and economical issues. Participants included Arctic and Antarctic researchers from all over the world and various fields of expertise such as policy and decision making, law, academia, industry and environment, representatives of non – governmental and non – profit organizations and circumpolar communities, including indigenous peoples from Russia and Northern Canada.

The conference welcomed speakers from various Arctic related disciplines, including experienced professionals, early career scientists and graduate students. They had a chance to perform during parallel sessions and feature presentations on the latest results from the natural, social, indigenous and health research.

Each day of the conference began with a keynote session and the plenary panel discussion. Matters generally touched on current environmental and political changes in the Polar Regions. They were addressed by experienced Polar officials from eight Arctic states and led to promotion of science based decision making process for the Polar Regions as well as cooperation and partnership with international industries, particularly focused on oil and gas exploitation. In addition, keynote sessions succeeded on bringing indigenous matters to the public awareness with the specific focus on environmental, health and social problems.

The integration of scientific research with the indigenous knowledge was the important aspect of this year´s conference. Representatives of the communities from Russia and Northern Canada shared the extensive intimate knowledge about the Arctic ecosystems in which they have lived for millennia. The deep understanding of the indigenous relationship with unique Arctic ecosystem, fate control, culture and spiritualism, greatly contributed to the holistic understanding of the Arctic.

The IPY 2012 invited participants for indigenous knowledge exchange panels as well as offered a space for action forums which brought up interactive discussions on current issues facing the Polar Regions. Discussions combined the knowledge from various disciplines and sectors including industry, policy, civil society, academics and indigenous representatives.

Verity of workshops was available to all participants, concentrating on introducing science to policy makers and vice versa. Implementing current scientific knowledge and adjusting to ongoing changes was the main objective for the workshops organizers. Stimulating talks from Arctic Community members encouraged academics from educational institutions to try new spectrum of activities, experiments and lessons that would be possible to be adapted in their own classrooms. Association of Polar Early Career Scientists held the workshop on career development during the first two days of IPY 2012.

Conference delegates had a chance to complement their active participation in the sessions with a number of different tours, including technical and cultural tours, which were being offered through the whole week and were organized by local, polar – related facilities such as Canadian Space Agency, Ouranos Climate Change Research Consortium, Effigis, and Canadian Meteorological Center. Participants could visit the old port in Montreal, where CCGS Amundsen research icebreaker is currently based and opened for public visitors.

The experience of Inuit culture could be accomplished at the Avataq Museum Reserve, where the collection of close to 2000 Inuit works is placed. McCord Museum, which since 1967 has been promoting the works of artistes from Nunavik in Northern Quebec, presented the Modern Inuit Exhibition.

The IPY 2012 ´´From Knowledge to Action´´ was one of these year´s most important scientific gatherings for polar science and governance, climate change impacts and adaptation. More than 3,000 participants attended the conference which was more that pre – registered.

Please, visit our online gallery to see more pictures from IPY 2012 “From Knowledge to Action”.

Text: Arctic Portal

May 4, 2012
Future for Arctic marine use

On Wednesday, 25^th of April 2012, during the IPY Conference prof. Brigham gave a speech on key drivers and futures for Arctic Marine use.

He stressed globalization, climate change and geopolitics as key drivers of the profound change in the Arctic. For the Arctic Ocean and marine traffic, this change is driven primarily by Arctic natural resource development and marine tourism. This was one of the key findings of work done by the Arctic Marine Shipping Assessment (AMSA) of the Arctic Council during 2005-09. The scenarios creation effort in AMSA indicated that the two most important (and uncertain) drivers, of many, were (A) the level of natural resource development and trade, and (B) governance (the degree of stability of rules and regulations for Arctic marine navigation).

Mr Brigham highlighted, that nowadays we see expanded Arctic marine transport systems evolving in offshore Russia, Norway, Greenland, and potentially in the U.S. maritime Arctic in summer 2012. Existing year-round marine transport to the world’s largest nickel mine (Norilsk Nickel) in Northwest Russia, and seasonally to the world’s largest zinc mine in northwest Alaska (Red Dog) are well established. Plans are being made to link a large, high grade iron ore mine on Baffin Island in Canada to European steel producers. All of these marine systems indicate much greater links of the Arctic to the global economy.

Recent experimental voyages across the Russian maritime Arctic by tankers and bulk carriers confirm plausible, summer marine routes eastbound from northern Norway and the Russian Arctic to markets in China. Cruise ship traffic by medium and large ships continues to increase in western Greenland. Importantly, continued Arctic sea ice retreat creates greater marine access throughout the Arctic Ocean for science and commercial marine operations; longer navigation seasons during the summer are a reality today.

One of the key factors that must be kept in mind is, despite the extraordinary changes in Arctic sea ice thickness, extent and character (moving to a future Arctic Ocean without multi-year ice), the Arctic Ocean will remain fully or partially ice-covered during the winter and much of the spring and autumn. Polar class ships will be required for future operations once a mandatory Polar Code of Navigation is promulgated by the International Maritime Organization.

Action is also being taken by the Arctic Council and the Arctic states to address future Arctic marine use: a new binding Arctic Search and Rescue Agreement gained approval in 2011, and a new Arctic Oil Spill Task Force is developing a second instrument to address this critical issue. There is little doubt globalization of the Arctic and regional climate change are closely coupled, and they will have immense influence over future marine use and the strategies developed to protect Arctic people and the marine environment.

April 25, 2012
A million dollar prize

A new award was introduced today here at the IPY 2012 conference in Montréal, Canada. The new price is for 1 million Canadian Dollars. The price is the Arctic Inspiration prize.

It will be rewarded annually to a group or individual who makes an extraordinary contribution of gathering Arctic knowledge and their plans to implement this knowledge, for the benefit of the Canadian Arctic, its peoples and therefore Canada as a whole.

The award will be given to teams working in the Canadan Arctic, but the teams can be from anywhere in the world. The first prose will be rewarded in December this year.

April 24, 2012
High security at IPY in light of protest

The security at the IPY 2012 conference is very high, especially today. the last few days have been underlain by protesters here in downtown Montreal.

The students are protesting the decision of the government of Québec to raise the tuition fees. The fees will rise of 500 Canadian dollars for the next five years.

Around 100 people have been arrested in the protest which has seen the police using teargas to distribute protesters.

Arctic Portal has learned that the Quebec government has been raising taxes, especially on both the health care system and now education. Together they are around 70% of the income of the government.

The government wants to ensure the quality of the education system and therefore it feels the need to raise the tuition fees.

There are many security guards around the conference, searching bags and ensuring everything is safe. There were great concerns of protesters smuggling in the conference rooms to protest Jean Cherast, the Premier of Québec.

The tensions in the conference room were high but no protest was carried it whilst Cherast made his speech.

April 23, 2012
IPY 2012 – From Knowledge to Action

The International Polar Year – IPY 2007-2008 will be wrapped up for the final time next week 22-27 April in Montréal in the “From Knowledge to Action – IPY 2012 Conference”. The conference will bring together nearly 2300 participants in 4 plenary panels, 156 parallel sessions and 12 high-level action forums on Polar research engaging Arctic and Antarctic researchers, policy- and decision-makers, and a broad range of interested parties from academia, industry, non-government, education and circumpolar communities including indigenous peoples.

International Polar Year (IPY) is an international cooperative research initiative with an objective to provide scientific information about the fundamentals of meteorology and geophysics as well as further people’s knowledge on the Polar Regions.

The First International Polar Year was held between 1881-1883. Eleven nations took part in establishing fourteen principal research stations across the Polar Regions. Twelve research stations were located in the Arctic, along with at least 13 auxiliary stations, and two in the Antarctic. A vast amount of information was gathered between 1881 and 1884, but in the lack of a centralized coordination of analysis and publication of the results, no fundamental discoveries were made as a result of the first IPY. Each state published their observations independently and the International Polar Commission dissolved in the aftermath of the project.

The Second International Polar Year was both proposed and promoted by the International Meteorological Committee. The main objective of the second research initiative was to investigate the global implications of the newly discovered “Jet Stream” and to conduct magnetic, auroral and meteorological observations at a network of research stations in the Arctic and Antarctic. Some 40 countries participated in the establishment of 40 permanent observation stations in both Arctic and Antarctic. Following, the data collected during the two-year period became the foundation of the International Meteorological Organization and promoted further research, such as the International Geophysical Year (IGY), 1957-1958, often called the third International Polar Year, which celebrated the 75th and 25th anniversaries of the First and Second IPYs.

The latest International Polar Year 2007-2008, the one celebrated at the Montréal Conference, was organized through the International Council for Science (ICSU) and the World Meteorological Organization (WMO). It was gigantic international multidisciplinary collaborative with around 10 000 scientists and 50 000 other participants from over 60 countries. Main objectives of this megaproject were to significantly increase the scientific knowledge and understanding of the polar areas, especially the wide-ranging and significant impacts of climate warming in the Arctic and Antarctic, and to conduct research projects beyond the resources of individual countries.

In addition, the Polar Year 2007-2008 aimed at educating a new generation of polar scientists and engineers and raise awareness of the public and policymakers of the importance of the polar areas for the entire planet. The disciplinary breadth of the third IPY far exceeded the previous Polar Years of 1882, 1932 and the 1957 IGY providing more comprehensive picture of the polar areas.

The “IPY 2012 – From Knowledge to Action” Conference will contribute to the translation of new polar scientific findings into an evidence-based agenda for action that will influence global decisions, policies and outcomes over the coming years.

To learn more about the IPY 2007-2008, please page through the ICSU/WMO IPY Joint Committee summary “Understanding Earth’s Polar Challenges: International Polar Year 2007-2008”. The comprehensive, 720p. summary of IPY activities covers the development of IPY 2007–2008 for almost a decade, from 2001 till summer 2010 and demonstrates the extensive and essential contribution made by participating nations and organizations, and provides a prospective blueprint for future polar research.

April 17, 2012