28 March 2026 | 09:00 - 12:00 CET
Open Session - HYBRID
Room: Mødelokale 2.2
Organiser: Martin Sommerkorn (WWF Global Arctic Programme, Norway)
Session Description:
The Arctic is at the forefront of climate change. Rapidly changing temperatures, sea ice, snow, and permafrost will continue to drive shifts and disruptions of habitats and biomes, along with changes in the ranges and abundance of species. The unprecedented pace of change compels urgent action to implement area-based measures to conserve biodiversity. It is vital to design and implement such measures in a manner that anticipates and responds to shifts in environmental conditions, in species and habitats distributions, and in human activities to provide effective conservation and protection of marine life.
However, despite the availability of climate projections and the recognition that a lack of anticipatory planning increases climate risk for nature and people, there is a paucity of activities to proactively conserve and manage Arctic ecosystems.
Bringing together experts from academia, conservation and management practice and Indigenous Peoples organizations, in this workshop we will identify approaches that overcome this paralysis. Jointly, workshop participants will discuss recent initiatives that chart a way forward and identify knowledge needs and activities that support such initiatives.
We start by introducing an approach to guide proactive Arctic conservation, adaptation, and sustainable development investments by combining climate projections and a multidisciplinary dialogue to describe plausible ecological futures of Arctic seas for different global warming pathways.
We then turn to conservation and management tools and measures that support biodiversity integrity and resilience to rapid environmental change and discuss how they must be designed or applied to remain effective in a changing Arctic Ocean. Workshop participants will discuss how these tools and measures are or could respond dynamically and adaptively to changing conditions, build on robust and equitable governance, empower Indigenous stewardship, robust to mounting industrial pressures, practical to implement, and enforceable. To assist discussions, we showcase how a decision support tool can translate pan-Arctic scale marine biological information into practical steps for area-based management, conservation planning, and the prioritization of areas, making decisions transparent, organizing and facilitating engagement across rights holders and stakeholders, help identifying effective conservation measures and aiding prioritization of investments into implementation efforts and partnerships.
Preparing for and responding to changes and establishing dynamic management measures requires decision-making based on the availability of best-available knowledge. Workshop participants will discuss approaches to establishing and using dynamic knowledge bases that comprise diverse knowledge sources, including Indigenous Knowledge and rapidly emerging knowledge such as from real-time monitoring approaches, the sharing of spatial and temporal data in platform that respect data sovereignty, especially of Indigenous peoples.
We close our session with a round of reflection on how the presented approaches can assist Arctic governments in fulfilling their commitments to the UN’s Global Biodiversity Framework and inform possible actions under the new High Seas Treaty.