The melting of the Greenland Ice Sheet is one of the climate tipping
points that would have local and global impacts. Greenland aims at
utilizing its natural resources as a source of income. Through Payments
for Ecosystem Services, ice sheet conservation could provide
Greenlanders with an alternative source of income. The project is
inspired by existing research on targeted interventions, an emerging
research topic among strategic responses to climate change. The project
leader Prof. John Moore has published about targeted intervention
methods in e.g. Nature (2018), and some ideas in this project have been introduced in a recent article in Global Policy (Moore et al. 2020).
We presented Ice sheet conservation to members of the EU Parliament and
EU permanent Representatives in 2019.
Preliminary modeling of
Jakobshavn glacier and Ilulissat Fjord and Disko Bay waters has been
made, including engineering plans and cost estimates. Climate
intervention studies and other participatory research projects in
Finnish Lapland (tourism) and Greenland (sand) have been conducted by
the team. Team members have done research in Ilulissat. In the study,
we follow the IASSA Principles and Guidelines for Conducting Ethical
Research in the Arctic and participatory research.