International Polar Year opened - Anthropologists involved
More than 50,000 scientists from 63 nations turned their attention to the world's poles when the International Polar Year officially opened on Monday: It unifies 228 research projects about the impact of global warming in the Arctic the Washington Post reports.
Anthropologists are also part of it. "Anthropologists are also planning to study the culture and politics of some the Arctic's 4 million inhabitants" according to the newspaper.
More information can be found on the website of the Polar Year where the participants already have started blogging. The website provides lots of RSS feeds.
One of the projects about people in the Arctic is:
NOMAD: Reindeer herding from a reindeer perspective:
The central idea of NOMAD is the establishment of a mobile observation platform. This is facilitated by a nomadic tent camp that houses an interdisciplinary group of researchers. They follow the annual migration of semi-domesticated reindeer in Kola Peninsula, Northwest Russia. This is a novel effort, putting social and other scientists on the reindeer trek on a long-term basis. By positioning themselves in close contact with migrating reindeer herds the researchers observe the delicate ecology and conditions of renewable resource use in the subarctic.
(...)
The NOMAD Blog and Forum will start as soon as the first photographs and entries of the fieldwork diary will be sent over from the camp to the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology (Halle, Germany). We reckon this will happen in late April 2007.
On the website of the Indigenous People International Polar Year, we can see presentations from a workshop and videos. Among others, you can watch the whole Opening of the Indigenous Peoples International Polar Year, in Guovdageaidnu, Norway online - a three-day's conference! Unfortunately there are no subtitles (presentations in both Norwegian, English, Saami).
Recent news coverage about the Polar Year
Greenland meltdown could change the world: If ice covering the island melts, rising sea levels could displace millions from Florida to Bangladesh (The Vancouver Sun, 28.2.07)
SEE ALSO:
A new word For June - or: When is the Arctic no longer the Arctic?
1 comment
Comment from: Simon Steven
Finnmark 2007 Expedition
http://www.finnmark2007.com
Hi I thought you’d be interested in this: details below. thanks.
A unique dog-sledding expedition focusing on the early victims of climate change - leaving the UK for the arctic on March the 7th 2007.
“We shall be travelling on dogsleds through Arctic Finnmark, from the Barents Sea to the Atlantic, a journey of close to 1,500 kilometres in rugged conditions and temperatures ranging from minus 10 degrees C to minus 35 degrees”
The expedition focuses on the lives of an indigenous people of Finnmark, the Sámi. It’s a human story rather than a cold scientific story. It’s a drama that is easily relatable through interviews and observation - the effects of climate change will be made real and the implications more pressing by focusing on real lives.