International Cooperation in Arctic Research

Abstract

Probably in few regions of the world are the opportunities for international scientific cooperation greater than in the Far North. From west to east, the United States (Alaska), Canada, Newfoundland (Labrador), Iceland, Denmark (Greenland), Norway, Sweden, Finland, and the Soviet Union are all vitally concerned in Arctic and Subarctic problems. And many other countries have contributed significant chapters in the ever-expanding book of knowledge entitled "The North". Scientific problems are similar regardless of international boundaries, and the number of problems in the Arctic and Subarctic that can be best solved by international cooperation is legion. In fact many of them can be solved only by international cooperation. The desirability of such cooperation and of a circumpolar background is stressed by Professor V. C. Wynne-Edwards: "Parallel investigations along many lines are being made in Alaska, Scandinavia and the U.S.S.R. The importance, from the purely scientific as well as the practical and economic standpoint, of acquainting the investigators of this country at first hand with similar problems and conditions in other northern lands cannot be too strongly stressed. Understanding and insight are born of experience; and the need for a circumpolar background must be evident to many besides myself." ...