With this complementary funding from NordForsk CLINF aims to produce a white-paper with recommendations for a CSI infrastructure and information flows relevant to societal decision making in Siberia.
United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals are lacking an Arctic perspective; they do neither contain Arctic nodes nor indicators. The Russian part of the Arctic, with more than 50% of the territory containing permafrost, bears a huge risk. With climate change and the associated risk of thawing permafrost, enormous areas threaten to transform into CSI habitat and could connect with existing CSI areas at the warmer end of the climate gradient. This scenario threatens not only Northern societies, but might also limit our capacity to combat emerging infectious diseases globally.
Therefore, CLINF sets out to complement the CSI database with data from trans-Ural Russia and to strengthen collaboration with Russian colleagues as well as their participation in building strategic CSI infrastructures and information flows across the North. We are looking forward to exciting and important work together with research institutes from Murmansk to Yakutsk, says CLINF coordinator Tomas Thierfelder.