Public summary
The overall aim of CONNECTING-the-ARCTIC is to contribute to a sustainable, responsible, and inclusive development of Arctic coasts and seas by identifying challenges and opportunities through scientific research, education, stakeholder dialogue and public engagement.
To achieve this, CONNECTING-the-ARCTIC will bring together:
- Different disciplines, integrate from natural to social sciences.
- An intense cooperation between renowned Nordic and internationally universities and research centres, with Arctic communities and stakeholders.
- Nordic Arctic research at the cutting edge of international scholarship, with direct relevance for communities depending on Arctic marine coastal regions.
- Involve three principles to organize work: 1) Interdisciplinary science; 2) Cross-scale science; and 3) Inclusive science.
CONNECTING-the-ARCTIC will:
- Be organised in four mission tasks: 1) Science & research; 2) Education & researcher mobility; 3) Public engagement & outreach; 4) Internationalization.
- Organize the scientific and research activities around two central research clusters and two cross-cutting themes.
- Utilize, integrate a wide range of methods, from global environmental change, on-ground assessments of communities, to economic experiments.
- Have case studies to synthesise our wide disciplinary and methodological variety: the Barents Sea and its coasts, and the seas and coasts between Greenland and Iceland.
- Combine and integrate quantitative and qualitative knowledge of long-term social, ecological and physical dynamics in and around the Arctic marine seas and coasts in ground-breaking ways, investigating across scales, from global to local levels.
- Educate a new generation of scholars, in total 17 researcher positions, being trained through workshops, courses and internships, being supervised by researchers and senior, established scientists who are world leaders in their fields
- Use knowledge to identify policy leverage points for the Arctic, for resilient environments while supporting Arctic communities
CONNECTING-the-ARCTIC will provide a platform for rethinking the Nordic added value. The Arctic (e.g., the environment) is affected by the rest of the world, but it also impacts the globe itself: this call provides an excellent platform for the Nordic countries to take the lead on Arctic research and policy development; fittingly, our research team will put Nordic nations in the lead over outside nations (e.g., the EU).