Prince Albert II of Monaco closed last week’s Monaco Polar Symposium with a personal call to action, delivering a video address to scientists, policymakers and Indigenous representatives gathered at the Oceanographic Museum for three days of talks on the future of the Arctic and Antarctic.
Speaking to delegates, the Prince urged the international community to not waste this the moment. Cooperation on polar science, he said, must move beyond discussion and translate into real impact — and the countdown to the Fifth International Polar Year, due in 2032–33, had already begun. “Let us seize this momentum to deepen cooperation,” he said. “The fifth international polar year begins right now.”
Held from 25th to 27th February, the third edition of the biennial symposium brought together more than a hundred participants from the Arctic and Antarctic communities under the theme ‘Enabling the Legacy: Translating Polar Research into Action’.
The event mainly grappled with a harsh reality: scientific knowledge about the poles is moving fast, but turning it into policy and action is proving harder than ever.
The Tara Ocean Foundation
Among those attending for the first time was Pierre Meinville, advocacy officer at the Tara Ocean Foundation, which is preparing to deploy a new scientific platform, the Tara Polar Station, in the central Arctic Ocean.
“The most important challenge, the main roadblock, is how international collaboration is deteriorating – not just in recent months, but over recent years,” Mienville told Monaco Life. “I’m strongly convinced that we need to keep on believing in it, keep on working on it, fostering participation with all Arctic states and non-Arctic states that are committed to Arctic protection.”
The Tara Polar Station, unlike conventional research vessels, is designed to drift freely through the Arctic for two years at a time, carrying scientists from around 40 laboratories across the world. Its missions are planned to continue for the next two decades.
“We’re going to be a bit like the International Space Station,” Mienville explained. “The objective is to study how the central Arctic Ocean is going to evolve in the next decades, and how, in return, that will affect the rest of the world — because everything that happens in the Arctic is linked to climate, to ocean circulation.”
For now, according to Mienville, the Polar Symposium identified key priorities, but concrete results remain to be implemented.
The symposium was co-organised by the Prince Albert II of Monaco Foundation, the Scientific Committee on Antarctic Research, the International Arctic Science Committee, and the Oceanographic Institute of Monaco.
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Main photo credit: Monaco Life