CAPARDUS | Capacity-building in Arctic standardisation develoment

CAPARDUS is a Coordination and Support Action with focus on capacity-building to develop guidelines, standards and best practices related to exploitation of new technologies and utilization of data to support sustainable development in the Arctic. The capacity-building involve scientists, students, technology providers, economic actors, local communities, regulators and their organisations, who will participate in a series of workshops and research schools. These events will be used as part of case studies in local communities in different regions, showing how the social-environmental systems are changing Arctic communities and what are the drivers for these changes. The climate change and its consequences in the Arctic leads to improved access to the Arctic and its resources, offering new opportunities for communities and for economic development related to exploration of natural resources, tourism, transport, and other industries. This presents extraordinary requirements for planning and decision-making based on scientific and economic data, assessments and predictions. A prerequisite for good planning is access to data and information of relevance to the operators in the Arctic. The project will develop a Comprehensive Framework Model for Arctic Standard and Best Practices as a collaborative effort between scientists, local communities and other stakeholder groups, including economic actors who are interested in business development in the Arctic. Towards the end of the project CAPARDUS will provide a roadmap for implementation of the comprehensive framework for sustainable economic development in the Arctic, to the benefit of both local communities and other operators. CAPARDUS will thereby contribute to EU’s Arctic policy, the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and the Paris Agreement.