international – Cabot Institute for the Environment blog

Arctic Circle – the largest international gathering on Arctic issues. Image by Kate Hendry

The Arctic is one of the most rapidly changing regions on Earth. Its lands and oceans are undergoing unprecedented transitions, from permafrost melting to sea ice thinning, and its people are vulnerable to the knock-on effects of climate change.

At the same time, Arctic governments (state, regional and local) are looking towards the future of economic development, broadened participation and connectivity, and improved health and education. All of these socioeconomic and environmental challenges are going on against the background of a complex governance structure and heightened geopolitical pressures.

Harpa, Reykjavik, the location of the Arctic Circle Assembly

Unlike the Antarctic, there is no one treaty or agreement that underpins Arctic governance, which is instead reliant on the Arctic Council and a plethora of bilateral and multilateral agreements.

The Arctic Circle is a not-for-profit organisation that forms the largest “network of international dialogue and cooperation on the future of the Arctic”, with the ambitious aim to promote open discussion between state and non-state players, including the private sector, universities, think tanks, environmental and conservation associations, Indigenous communities, and interested members of the public.

L-R: Henry Burgess, Head of the UK Arctic Office; Rosa Degerman, UK Science and Innovation Network in Finland; and Tatiana Iakovleva UK Science and Innovation Network in Russia

As part of a PolicyBristol project, joint with the UK Arctic Office (under the Natural Environment Research Council) and UK Science and Innovation, I was fortunate to attend the Arctic Circle Assembly in Reykjavik this October. I was thrust into a steep learning curve of Arctic governance and policy strategies from representatives of governments (from Arctic states, to non-Arctic countries such as Switzerland, Singapore and Japan), devolved authorities (including the first ever panel discussion with Greenland’s first generation of representative diplomats, and the announcement of Scotland’s Arctic policy document), and NGOs.

All of these policy announcements and discussions were focused around the dual themes of sustainable development and environmental protection, with the ever present shadow of rapid climatic change.

Private sector representatives with an interest in the Arctic included companies promoting their climate change solutions, from renewables to climate altering technologies (or geoengineering), from manipulating glaciers, to restoring Arctic sea ice, to fixing carbon dioxide in rocks.

There were also powerful and inspiring talks from Indigenous peoples’ representatives, emphasising the desire for self-determination (“Nothing about us without us”) and the essential need to co-produce strategies towards sustainable development and scientific endeavours, embracing full collaboration with Indigenous rights holders and respecting their cultural heritage.

And scientists can play their part. The IPPC special report on the oceans and cryosphere in a changing climate (SROCC published in September 2019) brought together thousands of peer-reviewed publications across natural and social sciences, highlighting the current threats to the polar regions. The SROCC featured heavily in the Assembly – mentioned by most policy makers’ presentations – and a focus of a dedicated discussion session with the leading authors of the polar regions chapter.

However, one of the challenges faced by the report authors was the limitation within the IPCC framework of using only peer-reviewed materials. The vast majority of Indigenous Knowledge (IK) is not written in peer-reviewed journal articles, leaving us with the question of how these vital approaches can be incorporated in the future.

The changing Arctic will have profound impacts not only on the ecosystems and communities of the Arctic states, but will be felt globally through climate teleconnections and an growing global economy. The solutions to climatic change are complex, and need multiple strategies, unified international cooperation, co-production with local communities, evidence-based policy decisions, and scientific diplomacy.

However, different stakeholders and rights holders have different governance structure and different priorities. Forums such as the Arctic Circle Assembly can start to bring everyone together to the debating table, but there is still a need to make sure that the good intentions are followed through with substantive action.

——————————–
This blog was written by Cabot Institute member Kate Hendry, an Associate Professor in Geochemistry at the University of Bristol, School of Earth Sciences, and member of the UK Arctic and Antarctic Partnership. With thanks to Henry Burgess (UK Arctic Office) and Michael Meredith (British Antarctic Survey). This blog was republished with kind permission from PolicyBristol. View the original blog.

As plant science PhD students, we feel it is vital to share our research with other scientists to generate new ideas for collaborative projects. For this reason we decided to organise the ‘Innovations in Plant Science to Feed a Changing World’ workshop, which was held in the University of Bristol Biological Sciences department in February 2017. The delegates included early-career scientists from Kyoto University, Heidelberg University and of course the University of Bristol.

Figure 1. The Conference Poster

The University of Bristol has a long-standing partnership with Kyoto University and more recently, Heidelberg University, as our plant science groups share overlapping research areas. The main aim of the workshop was to encourage novel collaboration opportunities between the plant science groups, which would give rise to future projects, publications and ultimately funding.

Last year, Kyoto University hosted a highly engaging and productive workshop (see Sarah Jose’s blog post last year) for early-career scientists from the three universities in this coalition. Following from the success of this workshop, we decided to organise the second workshop, where participants could build upon the partnerships forged at the last meeting, form new links and present their results in a friendly environment. So, for the past six months, a team of PhD students and post-docs has been busy organising the meeting that took place in February.

As it turns out, organizing a three-day conference, even a relatively small one, is quite a lot of work. Getting venues, transfers, catering, accommodation and social activities booked all presented their own particular challenges. However, perhaps the most challenging task was designing the program for the workshop, which was set out into different themes to encompass the participants’ different subject areas.

All the organisation paid off when the visitors arrived, slightly (very) jet lagged from their long flights. Once the workshop had started, we were delighted with how smoothly the sessions ran and how engaging the talks were. Following the talks there were many discussions over coffee, during the poster session and break-out session. We also included a careers talk from Prof Tokitaka Oyama from Kyoto University, who shared his insights on how to succeed as a plant scientist. Another highlight was the keynote talk from Professor Keith Lindsey (University of Durham), who shared his fascinating work on modeling plant developmental biology.

In amongst all the science, we had time for an excursion to the University of Bristol Botanical Gardens where Nick Wray gave a fascinating tour, which was very enjoyable. We also visited the Wills memorial building tower and even had a go at ringing the bell!

Figure 2. Nick Wray (far right) led a fascinating tour of the University’s Botanic Garden for the visitors.

Although organising the workshop was a lot of work, it was definitely worth it. Our organisation, leadership and project management skills were trained and tested in the run-up to the workshop, but in the end, it went very well indeed. All the delegates thoroughly enjoyed their participation and a comment that was heard a few times was that delegates were impressed, not just with the quality of the science being presented, but also the quality of the scientific discussion particularly given that English was not the first language for the majority of the participants.

We hope that the links formed at the workshop will continue to develop into novel collaborative projects. – I (Donald) definitely benefited as the post-doc Massaki Okada even stayed on a few days to teach me some techniques.

We would like to thank our funders, the Bristol Centre for Agricultural Innovation and the New Phytologist Trust for their support. We’d also like to thank the other members of the organising committee whose hard work made this workshop so successful: Fiona Belbin, Deirdre McLachlan, Tsuyoshi Aoyama and Antony Dodd.

Figure 3. Group Photo

Blog post by Donald Fraser & Katie Tomlinson

Tag: international

UK science policy in a changing Arctic: The Arctic Circle Assembly 2019

What happens when you let PhD students and post-docs organise a meeting?