Rethinking Arctic Collaboration - project funded by the UArctic and UiB (2023-2025)

The tight connection between science and diplomacy in the Arctic has traditionally helped reduce geopolitical tensions and facilitated international resource management. However, after Russia’s full scale invasion in Ukraine, the Russo-western relationship has entered an ice-cold face. Due to the war and international sanctions, science, science-informed decisions, and science diplomacy suffers severely. Reduced international Arctic science collaboration may have severe consequences for climate research and other important scientific topics like social science and ocean ecosystems. The objective of the project is, as described in the grant proposal to UArctic:

• To understand what the effects of war are on scientific collaborations and the volume and value of arctic science in the north.
• In the light of various discussions in the scientific community, to elevate a discussion on what principles should be the foundation for political decisions on science collaboration across borders in turbulent times.
• To discuss what may become the characteristics of the future Arctic science collaboration architecture.

• Science Diplomacy Summit, hosted at Johns Hopkins University in Washington, DC, on April 14–15, 2025. Project manager Ole Øvretveit contributed to the session Polar Diplomacy: Arctic & Antarctic with a talk titled Towards a New Era of Arctic Exceptionalism. Spinn-off: Chapter in the Special Paper (September 2025) by the Institute for Security and Development Policy (Sweden): The “New” Frontier: Sino-Russian Cooperation in the Arctic and its Geopolitical Implications, Chapter 8, Science at the Top of the World: Sino-Russian Cooperation and Contestation in the Arctic, by Ole Rasmus Øvretveit, Marco Volpe, and Nataliya Shok.

• Arctic Frontiers Conference 2025: Beyond Borders, January 27th, side-event - The future of Arctic collaboration at a crossroad (recorded)

• Project workshop (18-22 November 2024) at The John Sloan Dickey Center for International Understanding, Dartmouth College, USA. Kick-off for writing a paper on Science Diplomacy in the Arctic and a potential policy brief. The work is still in progress. 
• The John Sloan Dickey Center for International Understanding, Dartmouth College, USA, November 18th, 2024, Climate Diplomacy on Thin Ice: Navigating Arctic Cooperation & Polar Governance. See recorded event here.
• Completed a Nordforsk application (June 2024): Arctic knowledge and knowledge systems in flux – threats and coping strategies for a sustainable Arctic future (not funded).
• Science Diplomacy in the Arctic region, a contribution to the Berlin Science Week 2024, 4 November 2024 at the Nordic Embassies, Berlin.
• Arctic Circle Assembly in Reykjavik 2024, October 19th, Rethinking Arctic – Scenarios on future Scientific cooperation and diplomacy: See recorded event here.
• Arctic Circle Assembly in Reykjavik 2024 - roundtable session (by invitation) on October 19th, 2024
• Arctic Circle Berlin Forum 2024 on May 8th, 2024
• Arctic Frontiers 2023 on February 3rd, 2023 (part of a pre-project on Science Diplomacy in the Arctic)

• Navigating the North: Climate and Geopolitical Shifts in the North Atlantic and the Arctic, September 11, 2025, in Bergen, public event chaired by project manager Ole Øvretveit. Followed by a workshop, September 12, involving some of the UArctic project partner institutions, in adittion to representatives from the French and German Embassies to Norway, where elements from the UArctic project will be included in discussions on potential future project collaborations. 
• Accepted event at Arctic Circle, October, 2025: Towards a New Era of Arctic Exceptionalism: Collaboration, Knowledge, and Resilience in a Changing Arctic 
• Berlin Science Week 2025
• UArctic Assembly, Faero Islands, June 2026, event proposal submitted: Revitalizing Arctic Science Diplomacy in an Era of Geopolitical Transformation. 

Currently, Arctic climate research does not have access to climate data from 45% of the Arctic area. This is because climate data from the Russian Arctic areas is largely no longer available to the global research community, as a by-product of the Russia sanctions.

This is one of the findings in the report The Future of Arctic Science and Science Diplomacy, by Academia Europaea Bergen, the Nordic-Baltic hub for the European science academy Academia Europaea.

The topics of the report were central to a successful event with key stakeholders at the 2023 Arctic Frontiers conference. The issue has also been the topic of a SAPEA’ podcast, with project manager Ole Øvretveit and hub director Eystein Jansen as guest. 

• Science Diplomacy and the Rise of Technopoles, Vaughan Turekian and PeterGluckman, Issues in Science and Technology 41, vol. 1 (2024)
• Science Diplomacy Challenges at the Poles. Corine Wood-Donnelly, Charlotte Gehrke. https://doi.org/10.1126/scidip.adt9924
• Science at Stake – Russia and the Arctic Council. Arctic Review on Law and Politics, Vol. 14, 2023, pp. 112–131
• Health and disease surveillance: Shok, Nataliya, and Katherine Ginsbach. “Channels for Arctic Diplomacy.” Issues in Science and Technology 40, no. 3 (Spring 2024): 42–45. https://doi.org/10.58875/HGCJ5356
• Heather Exner-Pirot, Managing Editor, Arctic Yearbook, Global Diplomacy for the Arctic (response to article above)
• Towards an increasingly biased view on Arctic change (Nature article)
• We should not close those doors and throw the keys away," says Norway PM on Arctic Council cooperation with Russia (The Barents Observer, February 2024)
• Science Diplomacy in the Polar Regions (Alfred Wegner Institute)
• The Future of Arctic Science and Science Diplomacy (Academia Europaea Bergen)
• The Arctic Barometer – June 2022
• Arctic Yearbook 2024 - Arctic Relations: Transformations, Legacies and Futures (call for abstracts)