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World political and business leaders, arriving at the World Economic Forum in Davos in January were greeted by an encampment of tents, containing some of the globe’s most distinguished Arctic experts.

The experts – natural and social scientists - slept in a re-creation of an Arctic Basecamp just metres from the Davos Helipad and luxury Intercontinental Hotel. For 3 nights, they braved temperatures falling to -24, to highlight the environmental, economic and social risk of climate change, dramatically illustrated by the melting of the polar ice caps.

The Arctic Basecamp at Davos, co-organised by Lancaster University, British Antarctic Survey and the WSL Institute of Snow and Avalanche Research,  caught the imagination of the world’s movers and shakers, according to Professor Gail Whiteman,.

“We received amazing feedback from participants. There is huge competition amongst the side events at Davos, but we broke through the clutter and became the hottest ticket in town,” said Gail, Director of the Pentland Centre for Sustainability in Business, who first dreamt up the idea of an Arctic Basecamp at Davos six years ago while in the Canadian Arctic.

Gail, an organisational scholar, spoke at the summit alongside top scientists and former US Vice President, Al Gore, and Christiana Figueres, the former Executive Secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change.

“The Arctic is a barometer of global risk,” Gail explained while giving a “sneak preview” of research her team is carrying out at Lancaster University, plotting the production of staple food against the loss in Arctic Ice, and assessing economic costs alongside the benefits of increased Arctic shipping.

Gail told the audience of politicians, business leaders and civil society organisations that this threat to food security, alongside the adverse impact of extreme weather events on infrastructure and the incremental climate costs of potential Arctic shipping, may cost the world many trillions of dollars.

 

Al Gore, Chair of the Climate Reality Project, made an impassioned plea for the world to stop “chasing short term profit and short term political gains and short term cheap cultural exploitation.

“It is time to listen to these arctic scientists, to take the evidence that is so compelling, and say we’ve got to act.”

Christiana Figueres, Former Executive Secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, told the Summit that the world needs a change in mindset: “We continue to convince ourselves that we have done everything we could, that we can’t go any further…… We have to completely change this.”

The impact of the Arctic Basecamp and the science meeting went far beyond the Davos meeting.

“It greatly exceeded expectations. We know that nearly 5,000 people globally watched our event via live streaming, we had TV coverage in over 100 TV stations and social media presence was high including a Twitter reach of 9.7 million for #ArcticMatters,” Gail said.

Dr Jeremy Wilkinson, Lead Investigator at the British Antarctic Survey, said: “It’s fantastic that Arctic issues are on the political and business agenda as they are very relevant to society. Scientists must build meaningful relationships with policy makers, business leaders, economists, and the peoples of the Arctic in order to provide access to the latest research studies which can then underpin decision making.”

Professor Konrad Steffen, Director of the Swiss Federal Institute for Forest, Snow & Landscape Research WSL, said: “The Polar Regions, as well as Alpine regions, will experience two to three times the mean level of global warming predicted for the future. We need to act swiftly to delay, or prevent, the loss of the ice masses in the mountains and the shrinking of the two polar ice sheets which will lead to unsustainable sea level rises.”

Gail and her collaborators are hoping to bring the Arctic Basecamp back to Davos next year. Perhaps next year they will attract some political and business leaders to forego the comforts of the Intercontinental Hotel to join them under canvas to help alert the world to the risks of climate change. 

The Arctic Basecamp at Davos was supported by the ICE-ARC (Ice, Climate, Economics – Arctic Research on Change) research programme funded by the European Union’s 7th Framework Programme, along with generous support from Lancaster University (the Lancaster Environment Centre, the Faculty of Science & Technology and the Pentland Centre for Sustainability in Business) and the European Climate Foundation.

 

See how the BBC and Reuters covered the Arctic Basecamp story, see other coverage on the @ArcticDavos facebook page, and follow developments in the Arctic on #ArcticMatters on Twitter