Second Inter-Polar Conference:
Building on the success of the First Inter-Polar Conference, the second edition is being planned for September 3-5, 2025, in ICIMOD premises in Kathmandu, Nepal, and jointly organized by the Arctic Centre of the University of Lapland, ICIMOD, and the Ocean Policy Research Institute (OPRI) in collaboration with the following institutions: the UArctic Chair in Arctic Legal Research and the UArctic Law Thematic Network. The conference will contribute to the objectives of the International Year of Glaciers’ Preservation (IYGP) 2025, which aims at taking immediate action towards preserving the cryosphere for building a resilient future for all.
The special theme for the second edition is Cryosphere, People, and Climate Change
The decline of the cryosphere has numerous negative global effects like climate change acceleration through carbon release and albedo reductions, sea level rise, weather perturbations and intensification of extreme weather events, as well as regional effects related to water and food security, transboundary conflicts, infrastructure challenges, and severe impacts on Indigenous and local livelihoods. We aim to promote and share knowledge and understanding on how to best respond to changes in the cryosphere in the Arctic and the Third Pole HKH region, as well as build resilience in the face of already occurring changes in both regions. We intend to bring together world experts and knowledge holders to share their perspectives and jointly produce novel insights that can be translated into concrete actions and long-term strategies with a forward-looking approach. Besides this, we aim to build a lasting and durable network of scholars and stakeholders from both regions to continuously engage in dialogue and share experiences and expertise.
Objectives of the conference:
- Explore the effects of climate change on the cryosphere and ecosystems, resulting in multiple hazards for human communities and ecosystems in the Arctic and the Third Pole HKH regions.
- Identify key challenges and response mechanisms, research gaps and needs, potential regulatory and policy tools, and realistic and practicable solutions.
- Facilitate interpolar knowledge sharing and collaborative solutions for sustainability and resilience by involving early-career scholars, knowledge holders, relevant stakeholders, and experts.
- Continue efforts to create a global knowledge network on Arctic-Third Pole connections.
Under the special theme – Cryosphere, People, and Climate Change – the Conference will focus on the following sub-themes and their relevant disciplinary angles:
Understanding cryosphere changes and their impacts
- What are the socio-ecosystem impacts of climate change in both regions?
- What are the effects of climate change on local and indigenous livelihoods?
- What are the risks of extreme events in both regions?
- How does climate change impact food and water security in both regions?
- How does climate change in either region influence the other?
Protection, preservation, and conservation
- What legal and governance regimes are available in both regions in the context of climate change-cryosphere interactions?
- How do traditional knowledge systems in both regions interplay with other knowledge frameworks?
- What novel or traditional measures exist to adapt to or mitigate the effects of climate change in both regions?
- What are the geopolitical challenges arising from cryospheric decline in both regions?
- How can international collaboration be enhanced through science diplomacy in both regions?
Socio-cultural dimensions of cryosphere-climate change interactions
- How do different local and indigenous communities experience and understand the climatic and environmental changes occurring in both regions?
- How does the resilience of local and indigenous communities manifest itself in response to climatic and environmental changes?
- How are the climatic and environmental changes depicted artistically?
- How do local and Indigenous communities' religious or spiritual beliefs interact with the climatic and environmental changes?
- How can local and Indigenous communities come together to learn from each other’s experiences?
Abstract format:
1. Presentation title
2. Author(s)
3. Email address(es)
4. Abstract text (Up to 200 words)
5. Keywords (4-5)
Background
On September 06-09, 2023, the first "Inter-Polar Conference: Connecting the Arctic with the Third Pole,” was held in Kathmandu, Nepal. The Arctic Centre of the University of Lapland and the International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development (ICIMOD) jointly organized the Conference in collaboration with the UArctic Chair in Arctic Legal Research and Education and the Law Thematic Network. With approximately one hundred selected participants from the Arctic and the Third Pole Hindu Kush Himalaya (HKH), including early-career scholars and indigenous voices, the Conference marked a ground-breaking initiative to study the Arctic and the Third Pole together and from an interdisciplinary perspective.
The Arctic and the Third Pole HKH region both contain important elements of the cryosphere, the near-permanent presence of water in a frozen state. However, as temperatures in both regions are increasing disproportionately compared to the global average, these areas are rapidly thawing, and several elements of the cryosphere have possibly already crossed climatic tipping points. Changes in the cryosphere will have major impacts on local communities and ecosystems and also lead to larger-scale changes: the rapid melting of the Himalayan glaciers and changes in the snowpack will have significant regional effects, such as those related to infrastructure, water supply, and ecological health. A quarter of humanity relies on freshwater supply from the Himalayan region, and the melting of the cryosphere will contribute significantly to the rise of the global sea level, with the Greenland ice sheet alone holding enough water to raise global sea levels by up to 6 meters.
The interlinked aspect of the cryosphere thaw and climate change has been evidenced as crucial in promoting polar science. However, the Arctic and Third Pole are almost always considered separately, demonstrating little knowledge about the commonalities, links, and differences between both regions, especially concerning geo-political, socio-cultural, environmental, and legal dynamics of effects of and responses to these changes. The first conference highlighted interlinkages between the Arctic and the Third Pole HKH around the effects the decline of the cryosphere is having on people and communities from a range of academic disciplines and other knowledge systems (e.g., local and traditional).
The process of the conference and its main findings are available in the conference report.