IPY – Oslo Science Conference: Opening speech

Ministers, Excellencies, ladies and gentlemen.

It`s a great pleasure for me to be here at Oslo Science Conference to see some of the early results from the fourth International Polar Year. This is the largest polar science gathering ever, and the conference certainly comes at the right time.

The rapid changes in the Polar Regions, especially in the Arctic, that you have observed and recorded over the last decades concerns us all. The need for polar research has never been greater.

During the last couple of years, I have had the pleasure of visiting both Svalbard and Greenland together with Crown Princess Victoria of Sweden and Crown Prince Frederik of Denmark. These trips were fun and also meaningful.

We met with fishermen and hunters who described how they over the last fifty years had observed the ocean rise more than 30 centimetres, that a glacier tong of several kilometres had melted, and that the winter ice was less reliable. And we met with scientists who are hoping to observe temperature and climate more than 140.000 years back by drilling into the icecap.

But the most impressive of all was the greatness of nature in itself. It became even more evident to me that the entire globe is a mechanism that needs to be fine-tuned and well balanced. The Arctic reminds me that I am part of nature and that the vulnerability of nature is a reflection of my own vulnerability.

In the Arctic, we find some of the keys to understanding how and why the climate is changing. We know these changes have implications for the global climate, and may have an impact on sea level and ocean currents.

We know that biological production in the oceans can be altered. The livelihoods of many Arctic peoples are already at risk. The research questions you are faced with as polar scientists are thus urgent issues for the entire global community.

The title of this conference is “Polar Science – Global Impact”. I think that is an excellent way of pinpointing the importance of polar science. If you want to fight poverty, it makes sense to go to the Arctic. Handling climate change is a prerequisite for reaching our goals when it comes to eradicating extreme poverty.

The economist Paul Collier, the author of “The plundered planet – how to reconcile prosperity with nature” puts it this way: “The countries of the bottom billion have one lifeline, nature. Nature has potential to lift most of them to prosperity. But nature does not come on a platter” (end quote).

Ultimately, this is about making life better for individuals all over the world.

Taking care of the environment is a responsibility we all share to maintain the ecological balance. But let`s not forget that it is also a means to improve people`s quality of life. And through your important work, you all contribute in bringing us one step closer to solving the global challenges we are facing.

The International Polar Year is remarkable in many ways. The vision to involve the public, through extensive education, outreach and communication, makes International Polar Year unique. The tone was set when I took part in the inauguration of the Norwegian programme three years ago, with 3000 schoolchildren on the square in front of the Oslo city hall.

We have seen an abundance of activities in schools, exhibitions, films, books and media coverage.

Both institutions and individual scientists have made extraordinary efforts to reach out to the public with their science. The advantages are obvious. Outreach reinforces the understanding of what we know, what we do not know and why it is important to continue to seek answers.

You have been part of the largest international coordinated research effort in 50 years. The fourth International Polar Year has provided more data than ever before from the Polar Regions.

Even more impressive is it that the International Polar Year has managed to engage the intellectual resources of at least 50.000 scientists from more than 60 countries, representing an unprecedented breadth of specialities, from geophysical and biological to social sciences. Altogether 160 international science projects have been conducted under the  International Polar Year-umbrella.

The International Polar Year is about people joining forces and working together to solve a task that couldn`t have been solved by any of them alone. You should all be proud of being part of this effort.

The high level of recruitment of young scientists to the field of polar research will certainly be an important part of the legacy of International Polar Year . I have been told that this conference has set a new precedence in the involvement of young polar scientists.

I am confident that any field of research will gain a lot from being open to the energy and new perspectives of early career scientists. You are the ones that will, inevitably, shape the future of polar science.

Thank you for your attention.