The High North: Visions and strategies (2011) Ministry of Foreign Affairs
One of the major institutional Arctic initiatives in Norway is FRAM, the High North Research Centre for Climate and the Environment, a constellation of institutions contributing to maintaining Norway’s prominent status in the management of environment and natural resources in the North. The Norwegian Polar Institute, a member of FRAM, represents Norway on several international forums. The Norwegian Polar Institute is active within the fields of scientific research, mapping and environmental monitoring in the Arctic and Antarctica. The Institute advises Norwegian authorities in strategic and thematic matters relating to the polar regions, represents Norway internationally on various occasions and is Norway’s competent environmental authority in Antarctica. The Institute equips and organises major expeditions and owns the research vessel Lance as well as the Sverdrup Research Station in Ny-‐Ålesund. The FRAM centre also hosts the Arctic Council Secretariat. UiT The Arctic University of Norway located in Tromsø, is another prominent FRAM member. UiT´s key research focuses on the polar environment, climate research, indigenous people, peace and conflict transformation, telemedicine, medical biology, space physics, fishery science, marine bio-‐ prospecting, linguistics and computational chemistry. The university also has several other Arctic related initiatives, including the establishment of national research groups. It is a majority owner of the Northern Research Institute (Norut) , which carries out public sector and industry research commissions, with special expertise in the Northern regions, and UiT is an initiating partner of the National Centre for Petroleum Activities in the Arctic. The latter centre, to be seated in Tromsø, received seed money from the Norwegian state in 2012 and brings several institutions together to focus on petroleum extraction-‐related research in an Arctic context. The Institute of Marine Research, also a member of FRAM, is Norway’s largest centre of marine science. Their main task is to provide advice to Norwegian authorities on aquaculture and the ecosystems of the Barents Sea, the Norwegian Sea, the North Sea and the Norwegian coastal zone. About 50% of their activities are financed by the Ministry of Fisheries and Coastal Affairs. The institute owns several research vessels to this end. The Norwegian Polar Institute, the Institute for Marine Research, and UiT The Arctic University of Norway has commissioned the construction of research vessel “Kronprins Haakon”, an ice-‐class Polar 10 Icebreaker which should be ready for delivery in 2015. The University Centre in Svalbard (UNIS), also a member of FRAM, is a share-‐holding company, owned by the Norwegian Ministry of Education and Research. UNIS’s goals are to provide university level education in Arctic studies, to carry out high quality research, and to contribute to the development of Svalbard as an international research platform. It is an important clearing house for research on Svalbard. UNIS is also in charge of the Svalbard Integrated Arctic Earth Observing System (SIOS) (see table 2.2). The overall goal of SIOS is to establish an Arctic Earth Observing System in and around Svalbard that integrates the studies of geophysical, chemical and biological processes from all research and monitoring platforms. In terms of research stations, two Norwegian stations are part of the EU-‐INTERACT initiative. Finse Alpine Research Centre is located in the northwestern part of the Hardangervidda mountain plateau. Even though the University of Oslo is the official owner, state funding for building the station was provided on the condition that the Universities of Bergen and Oslo have equal rights to the use of the station for research and education. Bioforsk Svanhovd belongs to the Norwegian Institute for Agricultural and Environmental Research (Bioforsk). It is located in the Pasvik area in North-‐East Norway. The Centre for High North Logistics (CHNL) was established as an international knowledge hub for businesses, research institutions and authorities so that they can develop effective and sustainable logistics solutions for northern sea areas. One of their initiatives is the creation of an online database, Arctic Resources and Transportation Information System (ARCTIS), a knowledge hub to provide the best available information on non-‐living resources, shipping and logistics in the Arctic. Since much of its activities take place in the Arctic, Statoil, the Norwegian oil and gas extraction company in which the Norwegian government holds a majority share, has a dedicated Arctic unit and a specific focus on the far north of the Norwegian continental shelf. Besides infrastructural development in the north, Statoil has taken an institutional corporate initiative in conducting research and development programs tailored to meet the challenges of oil and gas extraction in the north.
The Northern Dimension is a joint policy between EU, Russia, Norway and Iceland. The ND Policy was initiated in 1999 and renewed in 2006. The policy aims at providing a framework to:
In addition to the four ND Partners namely EU, Russia, Norway and Iceland, also participating are:
To facilitate ND project implementation, four Partnerships have been established to deal with the following thematic issues:
An ND Institute (NDI) and ND Business Council (NDBC) have been established to involve academia and business community into ND cooperation
SELECTED EU-FINANCED PROJECTS
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