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Arctic NGO forum to promote civil society dialogue,
collaboration and action on Arctic issues. The forum
is being seed-funded by the European Commission
for 3 years; and
• Throughout 2011, GRID-Arendal participated in dis-
cussions on the creation of an EU Arctic Information
Centre to be funded by the European Commission.45
Led by the Arctic Centre of the University of Lapland
and made up of a network of more than a dozen or-
ganisations, GRID-Arendal is on the steering panel
and is expected to play a central role through its ex-
pertise in visualising data, communications, and its
global links through UNEP.
Collaboration was strengthened with the University of the
Arctic (UArctic). Advancing UNEP’s focus on green econo-
my, GRID-Arendal and UArctic co-sponsored a seminar on
the theme of Green Growth in the Arctic, which attracted
high-profile speakers from Iceland, Finland, and Sweden.
A new UArctic Thematic Network on Environmental Train-
ing and Education for Sustainable Development of the
Arctic (NETESDA) was also launched,46 with a focus on
creating interdisciplinary courses on ecological education.
Additionally, as part of the larger portfolio of work related
to reindeer husbandry, GRID-Arendal initiated a 3-year pro-
ject with funding from the Norwegian public agency that
supports reindeer husbandry, Reindriftsforvaltningen-Alta,
to investigate the impacts of climate change on reindeer.
Arctic communities and Small Island Developing States
(SIDS) live in vulnerable environments and share charac-
teristics of resilience and adaptation to climate change.
The goal of the Many Strong Voices (MSV) Project, imple-
mented in collaboration with CICERO, is to promote the
well being, security, and sustainability of communities in
the Arctic and SIDS by bringing stakeholders in these re-
gions together to take action on climate change mitigation
and adaptation, and to tell their stories to the world.
A central message of MSV is that indigenous knowledge
(IK) needs to be integrated in any planning process to sup-
port climate adaptation. Drawing on long-standing experi-
ence in the Arctic, the latest initiative seeks to integrate
IK with scientific knowledge for ecosystem-based adapta-
tion. A component of this initiative, Pilot Case Studies on
Ecosystem-based Adaptation in the Small Island Developing
States (SIDS) , received direct funding from MoFA in 2011
and is linked to the Marine section of the 2011-12 PoW.
Calf mortality is high and remains a significant challenge for the sustainability of the Dukha reindeer herds (photo by Lawrence Hislop)
45.
formation_Centre.iw3
46.