D2.1 Report on prioritised objectives in polar research

Polar issues have been rising up the political agenda across Europe over the past decade
since the rapid changes occurring in the Polar Regions are significantly influencing global
climate with consequences for global society. The European Union and its executive body,
the European Commission (EC), attribute an increasing importance to science and
innovation in the high latitudes for a variety of reasons.
In this framework, EC has launched a five-year coordination and support action “EU-PolarNet
– Connecting Science with Society”, which will work in close cooperation with the EC in
shaping Europe’s polar research and policy agenda. EU-PolarNet will establish an ongoing
dialogue between policymakers, business and industry leaders, local communities and
scientists to increase mutual understanding and identify new ways of working that will
deliver economic and societal benefits. The results of this dialogue will be brought together
in a plan for an Integrated European Research Programme for the Antarctic and the Arctic
that will be co-designed with all relevant stakeholders and coordinated with the activities of
many other polar research nations beyond Europe.
As a first step, the project consortium has been tasked to compile a set of European
research priorities for the Polar Regions, which shall serve as a basis for the upcoming
research planning process in EU-PolarNet. These priorities have been identified by a desk
study based on publications of national Polar strategies, international consortia and major
scientific clusters. The list of the consulted documents is reported in the Annex.
Through a complex step-by-step process, all polar research strategic documents have been
analysed. A huge amount of relevant information has been extracted, processed,
harmonized and synthetized into ten overarching topics. Each topic includes several keyquestions,
which are summarizing the hundreds of key questions and priorities of the
background documents. A paragraph describing the relevant Societal Challenges connected
to each scientific topic has been added in order to match research priorities and societal
needs.
Based on this work, an on-line consultation has been launched in order to integrate the
Science Community’s input into the compilation of research priorities and related societal
challenges. Through this consultation, it has been possible to verify the completeness of the
original compilation and the related societal relevance.