IPY Blogs
The Legacy of IPY: a Circumpolar Arctic Park and Global Sustainability?
The Legacy of IPY must be a Circumpolar Arctic Park conserving Biodiversity, Habitats, People, Ecological Processes and Services for Global Sustainability
Falk Huettmann PhD, Assistant Professor
EWHALE lab, Institute of Arctic Biology, Biology & Wildlife Department, University of Alaska-Fairbanks, Fairbanks AK 99775 USA, Email fffh@uaf.edu Phone 907 474 7882
IPY is a massive global research project that wants to provide huge progress, a quantum leap. However, looking at the sophisticated honey comb project scheme showing that all projects are connected, it gets obvious that SUSTAINABILITY and Biodiversity were actually left out in the major structure and its 8 headings (Sustainability and Biodiversity were just given smaller roles in the overall IPY fabric). Instead, the IPY science, initiated by ICSU (International Council for Science) and WMO (World Meteorological Organization), and simply reflecting the value system of the IPY creators, just focuses on all what can be measured (temperature and ice foremost), but not on how we actually achieve Sustainability in the Arctic in real terms. Sustainability is in everybody
