May 24, Davos, Switzerland – With the Arctic warming almost three times faster than the rest of the world, a new interactive tool could help people and businesses take informed action on global risks.
The Arctic Risk Platform was unveiled today, during a session titled “Mitigating Risks and Creating Business Solutions with Environmental Intelligence” organised by Arctic Basecamp and the University of Exeter, during the Annual Meeting of the World Economic Forum, in Davos.
The Arctic Risk Platform sets out the latest science and data on the global risks triggered by Arctic climate change. Its goal is to equip global decision-makers with the best information available so that they can mitigate and manage risk by taking climate action.
The announcement came after a keynote speech by Nigel Topping, UN High-Level Climate Action Champion for COP26, on “Why do we need to Mitigate Risks by Scaling Environmental Intelligence with Digital Technologies?”
The innovative science-based risk dashboard was then unveiled by Polar Climate Scientist and member of Arctic Basecamp’s (AB) science team Professor Julienne Stroeve alongside AB’s Founder and Executive Director Gail Whiteman, and Peter Bakker, President World Business Council for Sustainable Development and AB board member.
Leaders see climate change as a top global risk. In fact, the WEF Global Risks Perceptions Survey (GRPS) 2022 saw leaders rank it the number one long-term threat to the world.
Changes in the Arctic affect how we live and do business everywhere. Rapid Arctic climate change is a threat multiplier, amplifying existing threats to safety, security, migration, environmental resilience and economic stability across the world.
"Arctic Basecamp is really trying to help bring the science in a way that is more tangible, so that everybody else can start looking at it. That’s why we’re launching the Arctic Risk Platform. The science can help us identify the risks and vulnerabilities, but then we need that to form science-based policy and action on climate change." – Juilenne Stroeve, Professor and Polar Scientist, Arctic Basecamp
"This topic is the most important – it’s the race to resilience. How do we move from an era where science has largely been used to define how bad the problem is, to an era where science is empowering business to accelerate the solutions? There’s no such thing as ‘It’s not a business case’ when we’re talking about improving lives and livelihoods. It’s just a question of the entrepreneurial will and political will to lean into the problem and find creative solutions. This race to resilience is the race that we really need to win together or we’ll all be abandoning half of the population and future generations.” – Nigel Topping, UN High-Level Climate Action Champion for COP26
"The question that we have coming from the scientific community is can we translate, curate and deliver the things that we know about risk in a much faster way." – Professor Gail Whiteman, Founder & Executive Director of Arctic Basecamp, Professor of Sustainability at University of Exeter Business School
Everyone is invited to explore the platform at arcticrisk.org where they can also download the Risk Briefing. For further information, please contact
Arctic Portal is a proud partner in the development of the Arctic Risk Platform.
Source: Arctic Basecamp