International Conference on Arctic Research Planning (ICARP) is a commitment that International Arctic Science Committee (IASC) made as a part of founding articles to periodically to identify the important Arctic scientific questions and issues and how they could be addressed through various implementation regimes in the future.
ICARP III is currently underway and this is process has been ongoing for the last 12 months. Between the formal launch of the ICARP III at the ASSW 2014 in Helsinki, Finland and the final conference at ASSW 2015 / ISAR-4 / ICARP III conference in Toyama, Japan, at the end of April 2015, there have been many, almost hundred meetings and side events led by the IASC working groups, IASC networks and action groups and ICARP III partner organizations and all of these are contributions to the ICARP III. There have been various types of events e.g. workshops, townhall meetings, writing team meetings, surveys and outreach and capacity building event, but all aiming to identify Arctic research priorities for the next decade, improve coordination of various Arctic research agendas, inform policy makers, people who live in or near the Arctic and the global community and build constructive relationships between producers and users of knowledge. All these activity summaries and reports can be found from the ICARP III webpage (icarp.iasc.info).
APECS has two projects that will contribute to the ICARP III process. To aid in assessing how past support has influenced early career Arctic researchers and potentially enhanced future opportunities, APECS, the Climate and Cryosphere Project (CliC) and IASC are working together to use IASC funding of early career researchers as a case study to assess the value of travel support for early career researchers. Results from this Where are they now? –project will give suggestions on how funds could be better used in the future and this will help form new standards for supporting the next generation of Arctic researchers. The APECS – ICARP III Survey: Arctic Early Career Researchers Support and Training Assessment assessed whether current funding, support, and training for early career researchers involved in Arctic research have helped foster their careers, in order to provide recommendations on how to better support them in the future. As ICARP III is very open process and it still welcomes contributions, this survey is still open and can be found http://www.apecs.is/research/apecs-projects/apecs-icarp-iii-survey-2015.html
ICARP III is currently in a process of synthesizing the outcomes of all these various activities. A snapshot of these outcomes as well as overarching themes of the discussions that took place in final conference at ASSW 2015 / ISAR-4 / ICARP III in Toyama at the end of April can be found from the conference statement. The statement can be found from conference webpage assw2015.org. During the next few months there will have open public process of determining the outcomes of the ICARP III and communicating these outcomes to the larger audience.
