NEWS Two professors at Umeå University, Peter Sköld and Birgitta Evengård, are part of a group of the experts behind the EU-PolarNet White Papers. The five white papers touch upon the most pressing issues in the Polar Regions.
Peter Sköld and Birgitta Evengård are two of the experts behind the EU-PolarNet White Papers which is a product of the EU-PolarNet; a project funded under Horizon2020 for five years, involving a consortium covering a vast range of European expertise in both Antarctic and Arctic Research.
EU-PolarNet includes natural and social scientists, providers of polar logistics and infrastructures, and key stakeholders. EU-PolarNet works with the European Commission on many aspects related to the Polar Regions, identifying and developing, most often jointly with stake-holders, the research needs and opportunities that are of high societal relevance to Europe. These activities will contribute to the development of an Integrated Polar Research Programme, which will be presented to the European Commission in 2020.
The white papers were developed by a specially selected team of EU and overseas experts from diverse areas of polar research. These experts were challenged to identify polar research topics with a clear societal relevance and a specific importance for Europe that could make them suitable for future EU support.
These topics will, if adopted, further enhance EU research excellence, increase efficient use of European resources and expertise, and lead to a step change in data availability, access and interoperability. They will further increase the scale of polar research cooperation in Europe and, by including non-EU partners, will improve global cooperation.
Each of the topics employs a strongly interdisciplinary approach to deliver benefits in the complex and multi-faceted real-world of policy issues. Some of the white papers describe approaches that step outside traditional disciplinary boundaries, offering a transformational or even 'post-disciplinary' approach. Each is designed to deliver tangible benefits to problems that arise in the Polar Regions from the complex interactions of a changing physical environment, stressed ecosystems, complex issues of sovereignty and governance, and layered cultural and social structures.
The EU-PolarNet white papers will give the EU and national re-search agencies guidance, which research themes are of high importance to advance in the understanding of the ongoing change not only in the Arctic but in both Polar Regions.
