New Publication - Progress Update Report for International Polar Year
IPY-5 in 2032-33 aims to address urgent global challenges by advancing polar research, focusing on the impacts of climate change in the Arctic and Antarctic.
The 5th International Polar Year (2032–33), or IPY-5 for short, is being organised with unprecedented urgency due to rapid environmental and social changes in the polar regions. There is widespread concern about crossing thresholds that may irreversibly alter life in the Arctic, Antarctic, and around the world. IPY-5 will build on four groundbreaking IPYs since 1881 and millennia of Indigenous Peoples’ knowledge production, that together form a long chain of coordinated polar research and credible scientific evidence and knowledge on socio-ecological changes in the polar regions. Most recently, the fourth IPY (2007–2008) drew together evidence from thousands of participants emphasizing that polar changes have global consequences. IPY-5 will encourage and enable vital cooperation across countries, disciplines, and knowledge systems to coordinate research, observations and monitoring, as well as innovative expeditions in the polar regions to produce urgently needed and actionable knowledge to more deeply understand global processes, support informed decisions and offer effective and implementable solutions.
IPY-5 will:
● Extend observations of accelerating changes, and establish new baselines to guide actions
● Harness new tools and methods developed since IPY-4, across disciplines and knowledge systems
● Advance transdisciplinary research by integrating diverse knowledge systems including from natural
sciences, social sciences, humanities research, and Indigenous knowledge.
This momentum aligns with international developments such as the 2023 Helsinki Declaration and the 4th International Conference on Arctic Research Planning Process (ICARP IV), and the UN Decades of Ocean Sciences, Cryosphere Sciences, Ecosystem Restoration, and Indigenous Languages. IPY-5 will work with and alongside these and other initiatives, which together highlight the need for greater international coordination to provide evidence for effective decision-making on urgent global issues.