Arctic Impact

The Arctic is undergoing rapid environmental change, creating increasingly complex challenges for managers, policymakers, Indigenous and Tribal organizations, communities, and others making decisions in the region. 

NCEAS brings substantial experience supporting Arctic data integration, collaboration, and knowledge-sharing initiatives, translating complex science into useful insights for conservation, management, and policy.

Arctic Impact, funded by the Kingfisher Foundation, is developing a new approach to scientific synthesis that starts with the decisions people face and brings together existing knowledge, data, and expertise to help address them.

Arctic decision-makers often need information that cuts across individual studies, disciplines, datasets, and knowledge systems. While a tremendous amount of Arctic research already exists, finding, connecting, and interpreting that knowledge for a particular decision can be difficult.

Arctic Impact aims to bridge this gap by developing a repeatable approach to decision-centered scientific synthesis. Co-development is central to the model. Rather than beginning with predefined research questions, the program starts by understanding real-world decision contexts and then works with scientists, managers, Indigenous and Tribal organizations, communities, policymakers, and other partners to identify where synthesis can provide value.

• Start with decisions: Identify the management, policy, planning, and community decisions where coordinated scientific synthesis would be most useful.
• Bring together diverse expertise: Connect researchers across disciplines with managers, Indigenous and Tribal organizations, community members, policymakers, and other knowledge holders.
• Synthesize existing knowledge: Bring together research, data, and other relevant knowledge to identify what is known, where uncertainty remains, and where additional information is needed.
• Develop useful products: Create synthesis products designed around specific decision contexts, which may include reports, maps, tools, frameworks, guidance, data visualizations, or other forms of decision support.
• Build pathways to use: Engage intended users from the start of the process so that synthesis is relevant to their needs and positioned to inform real-world decisions.
• Learn and improve: Evaluate what works, document lessons learned, and refine the program model for future working groups.

Arctic Impact is currently in a planning and program-development phase. During this phase, NCEAS is working with an expert advisory group and other partners to refine the program model, develop a transparent priority-setting process, identify broad strategic themes, and establish approaches for co-development and evaluation.

These strategic themes will eventually guide calls for proposals for Arctic Impact working groups. The themes will be intentionally broad, providing direction without prescribing specific research questions, geographic areas, methods, or products.

Arctic Impact is now building the framework for its first portfolio of decision-focused working groups. Philanthropic investment at this stage can help transform the program from a promising model into a sustained platform for action, creating a growing body of decision-ready knowledge, strengthening relationships among people working across Arctic science and decision-making, and establishing a model that can be applied repeatedly as new challenges emerge.

The opportunity is to help build the infrastructure that allows Arctic knowledge to move more effectively into action. These opportunities can also be shaped around a funder’s geographic, thematic, or strategic interests.

For more information about Arctic Impact and our partnership opportunities, contact: 

Nicole Greco - greco@nceas.ucsb.edu

Ben Halpern - halpern@nceas.ucsb.edu