Arctic Marine Research Agendas: Who Writes the Saga?

Date: 2025-03-20 00:00:00 AM - 2025-03-28 00:00:00 AM
Venue: Fourth International Conference on Arctic Research Planning (ICARP IV) process, Boulder, Colorado

Call for Submissions to ICARP IV (20 – 28 March 2025) Session:

Are you engaged in Arctic research, or curious about the influence of research agendas on Arctic futures? This session explores who sets the priorities in Arctic marine research and how those choices shape governance, resources, and trade outcomes across the region. We invite submissions that delve into the role of both Arctic and non-Arctic states in agenda-setting, with a special focus on the tensions between local and global interests.

This session will explore questions such as:

• How do external research priorities affect Arctic communities and environments?
• What are the differences between natural and social sciences in their impacts and engagement?
• How do funding structures limit or enable diverse and transdisciplinary research?

We’re looking for contributions that provide insight into the challenges and opportunities of multidisciplinary and transdisciplinary research, particularly in engaging Indigenous and local Arctic communities. Whether you’re a natural scientist, social scientist, or policymaker, your perspective is valuable in helping us map out a more inclusive and effective Arctic research future.

Deadline: 30 September 2024 through this link.

You can find the actual call here, where our session is:

3. Understanding the dynamics and resilience of Arctic social-ecological systems to foster sustainable futures

# 3.1.  Arctic Marine Research Agendas: Who writes the Saga?

Arctic Scenario analysis frequently categorises outcomes into four quadrants – along two axes: governance, and resources and trade. Of the four categories, Arctic Saga, Arctic Race, Polar Preserve, and Polar Lows, the first three reflect outcomes that favor different Arctic scales of interests, while Polar Lows is considered undesirable by most if not all stakeholders and rightsholders as providing neither local stability and quality of life nor global extractive benefits. Who’s “in” and who’s “out” in Arctic planning is a longstanding issue affecting within the marine realm, for example, Svalbard’s identity, the Arctic Council structure and its Working Groups (ie CAFF, PAME), the Polar Silk Road, and the Central Arctic Ocean fisheries policy. The challenge also impacts research agendas. In this multidisciplinary session, we discuss how agenda-setting in Arctic research priorities and funding strategies can affect these outcomes, with a particular focus on the role of academic research driven by actors not directly living or working in Arctic states. We anticipate differences in impact from the natural sciences and social sciences that stem from (1) scale of engagement in Arctic communities and environmental changes from local to global; (2) experience and expectations for transdisciplinary research and/or Indigenous engagement and inclusion needs, including longer research timelines and more diverse research outlets and forms; and (3) funding structures that limit such diversity as well as cross-scale research, amongst other distinctions along disciplinary lines. We illustrate with some background analysis of research communities in non-Arctic states, e.g. France, S. Korea, Japan and the UK. 

CONVENERS:

• Melina Kourantidou, University of Western Brittany/University of Southern Denmark
• Brooks Kaiser, University of Southern Denmark

Cover photo credit: Looking over the Arctic Ocean (Tuktoyaktuk, NWT), Ian Mackenzie https://www.flickr.com/photos/67038581@N00/page14

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