Significant and rapid climate change is predicted for Arctic regions. These changes are expected to have implications for indigenous communities. This paper argues that the starting point to understand how future climate change may affect communities is analysis of past and present experience of, and response to, climate variability and change. Using a vulnerability approach, the paper provides an historical account of changing vulnerability to climate-related risks among Inuit in Igloolik, Nunavut. The research demonstrates that Inuit in Igloolik have been highly adaptable in the face of climatic stresses. This adaptability has historically been facilitated by traditional Inuit knowledge, resource use flexibility and diversity, group mobility, and strong social networks. However, societal changes, and more recently biophysical changes, have increased the susceptibility of people to climatic risks and have undermined certain aspects of adaptive capacity. The research indicates that the implications of future climate change will be influenced by the interaction between biophysical and societal changes, will vary over time in response to forces internal and external to the community, and will be differentiated among social groups.

The UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues (PFII) was established on 31 July 2000 and held its first session at UN Headquarters in New York in May 2002. The result of decades of development, the forum signified an official opening of the UN to indigenous peoples' participation alongside that of states. This article analyses the discussions on the establishment of the PFII and the role of indigenous peoples as political actors in those discussions. A focus of particular interest is the contradiction between state sovereignty and indigenous self-determination. In examining the establishment process, the analysis draws on scholarship dealing with norms, institutions, organisation and legitimacy. The themes and frames used by indigenous peoples that are significant in state-indigenous relations and that have had an effect on the forum are indigenousness, self-determination, rights and recognition. These show how the relationship between state sovereignty and indigenous self-determination underlay the establishment discussions and their outcome. The materials for the article comprise the transcripts of the establishment negotiations, interventions of state and indigenous representatives, as well as literature on the political participation of indigenous peoples, international law and the UN system and indigenous peoples. The discussions are analysed textually. The article claims that, although the UN is a state-dominated organisation, indigenous peoples are nevertheless able to affect international cooperation. This is an INDIPO project paper (Tennberg 2006).

The South Shetland Islands were discovered in 1819. Almost immediately the fur seal population was intensively exploited and this lasted through the early years of the 1820s, by which time seal numbers had been so depleted that sealing became uneconomic. Sealing was revived for both fur seals and Elephant seals at several periods later in the century. Sealers were put ashore in gangs and built makeshift shelters in which to live. Many of these have been identified on the South Shetlands, and a number have been excavated, though few with archaeological method. Fifty known sites are identified. The paper outlines the survey and excavation of two sites on Rugged Island by archaeologists from Australia and from the Chilean National Natural History Museum. One site relates to the sealing era of the 1820s, while the second may be associated with a marooned sealing gang in the 1870s. The nature of the occupation sites on the South Shetlands is analysed in relation to the social and operational context of the merchant navies of Britain and the USA in the nineteenth century. This is seen as a more directly relevant context for assessing physical evidence than is the application of theories of global capitalist systems.

Polarbjørn (‘Polar Bear’) was launched at Narvik in 1919, having been constructed for work in the Arctic. In 1923 she was the expedition ship for Adrian Jacobsen's expedition to Franz Josef Land, Svalbard, and Novaya Zemlya. The following year she was the expedition ship for George Binney's Oxford University expedition to Svalbard. She sailed twice to the Arctic with aeroplanes onboard to chart the region, in 1924 to Svalbard and in 1932 to northeast Greenland. Between 1931 and 1948 she was expedition ship for 10 scientific expeditions to Svalbard, Jan Mayen, and northeast Greenland organized by the Norges Svalbard-og Ishavsundersøkelser, the forerunner to the Norsk Polarinstitutt. In 1940 Polarbjørn was engaged by the Norwegian government in exile in London to deliver equipment and supplies to wintering trappers and wireless operators and to bring secret codes to the telegraph stations in northeast Greenland. From autumn 1941 to the end of the war she was chartered by US government forces and shuttled between Boston and Halifax to Greenland, Baffin Island, and Labrador. After the war she returned to sealing under Norwegian ownership, and in 1949 caught fire and sank off Belle Isle, Newfoundland.

The current lack of a specific policy regime for Antarctic biological prospecting (bioprospecting) has emerged as a focus of recent discussion. Consideration has been given to the interface of the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) and the Antarctic Treaty System (ATS). This paper aims to introduce the potential for industry accreditation to address existing regulatory uncertainty. The Marine Stewardship Council (MSC) accreditation for sustainable fisheries and the accreditation scheme being developed for Antarctic tour operators provide examples of industry accreditation that interplay with the Antarctic Treaty System. Accreditation may provide an avenue for industry to promote legitimate activities, demonstrate willingness to comply with existing principles and established regulations while the perception of being over-regulated is potentially reduced. Accreditation may also serve as an interim solution while more binding measures are developed. While Antarctic bioprospecting accreditation is not without its limitations, it does provide an avenue for the Antarctic Treaty Consultative Parties (ATCPs) to engage industry stakeholders, clarify existing obligations and promote a regulatory initiative in conformity with the principles of the Antarctic Treaty System.

This article focuses on the construction of the Inuit Circumpolar Conference (ICC), the aim being to offer the historical context within which the ICC came to serve as a significant voice for Arctic policy making and as a representative of Inuit peoples in general. It explores the role of the ICC in relation to the domestic, regional, and international political events taking place during its formative years in order to provide the basis through which the ICC came to be a political authority in the Arctic. While the main coalescence of events was around the theme of Arctic resource development, each event significantly helped lay the foundation for, and structures under which, Arctic policy would proceed into the future. This includes a changing Arctic narrative that has transformed the Arctic from a being a region concentrated on resource extraction and Cold War security into a region serving as a symbolic pinnacle for global sustainable development. Through the expanded political agency of the ICC and an international focus on the Arctic, a vision of the Arctic has emerged under which it is defined by its natural environment and by the indigenous peoples who inhabit this space. This is an INDIPO project paper (Tennberg 2006).

This paper outlines an emerging post-colonial engagement with Antarctica. Although ‘post-colonialism’ is a term that covers a great diversity of theoretical and political perspectives, it is generally agreed that it is united in its critical evaluation of colonialism and associated practices. Antarctica, thus far, has not attracted a great deal of attention from post-colonial scholars. By drawing on the limited engagement with Antarctica thus far, it is proposed that there are the intellectual resources for a deeper interrogation of polar colonialism and associated practices such as territorial claiming and base construction. The paper is intended to be a starting point for a more sustained and potentially unsettling engagement with post-colonial Antarctic projects.

This paper aims to elucidate the important economic and political aspects of an extremely complex policy issue involving biological prospecting (bioprospecting) in Antarctica. In addressing this rapidly growing global industry, which searches for commercially valuable biological and genetic resources in a world of biological diversity, it becomes obvious that a critical interface exists between Antarctica and the intertwined bioprospecting policies brought forth during recent decades by two treaties, the Convention on Biological Diversity and the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea. The analytical framework of the paper builds upon the economic concept of public goods within a political framework of international treaties and law. The concept of a national public good, associated with the sovereignty of a state (nation) over its biological and genetic resources, is the basis of such policy under the Biological Diversity Treaty. In practice, this jurisdiction applies both to the land area of a state and to the exclusive economic zone of a coastal state. The Law of the Sea Treaty, on the other hand, provides both a national public good connotation to exclusive economic zones while creating a global public good connotation for deep seabed mineral resources, with a related potential application to bioprospecting in the deep seabed. While the Antarctic Treaty System possesses several institutions that could be adapted to a bioprospecting policy regime, no such regime has been established up to the present. The paper concludes with a consideration of the critical question: is bioprospecting in Antarctica a national or global public good? While logic would appear to lead one toward the ‘global’ answer, multinational economic and political realities in today's world suggest that either a national public good approach, or a largely unregulated open access approach, is more likely to prevail.

Giacomo Bove, an Italian participant in Adolf Erik Nordenskiöld's 1878–1880 Northeast Passage expedition, and Cristoforo Negri, director of the Italian Geographical Society, drew up plans for an Italian Antarctic expedition to depart from Genoa in 1881. The plans were for a three-year, single-vessel expedition with two winterings, one in the Ross Sea and the second in Enderby Land. They were drawn up in considerable detail and proposed a lavish budget. The expedition never took place because of failure to secure sufficient funds from public subscription and because of the unwillingness of the Italian government to provide support. However, Bove was employed by the Argentine government to put into effect expeditions that had some elements of his plans.

In May 1916 Sir Ernest Shackleton and two companions arrived at the Stromness whaling station, South Georgia, after their dramatic boat journey from Elephant Island and traverse of the island's mountains. The Manager's Villa, where they were believed to have been made welcome, became a historic building that has been frequently visited by those journeying to South Georgia. There have been two different manager's dwellings in Stromness through the years, but their history has not been clear. New evidence indicates that the Villa that was assumed to be the one Shackleton reached in 1916, was not erected in Stromness until 1925. In that year it was moved from the abandoned Ocean Harbour whaling station farther south on the island and replaced the original Manager's Villa. This paper reviews new evidence on the Stromness villas and concludes that the historic focus should be shifted to the correct building.

The ecosystem-management approach laid down in the Arctic Council Marine Strategic Plan (AMSP) was not started on an empty purse. Some of the integrative (interdisciplinary) concepts of the International Northern Sea Route Programme developed during the period 1993–99 may prove useful in making the AMSP a document of operational utility and significance. The INSROP analysis was designed around two counterveiling variable: obstacles to and promoting factors of increasing navigation. These variables were applied for analysis to interactive relationships such as ice conditions and commerciality, ship design and depth conditions, sailing season and ice conditions, regional development and transit trade, environmental challenges and economic activities, military and economic activities, international ocean law and the NSR, insurance and navigation, and native cultures and navigation. The analysis of these relationships gave rise to integrative concepts like aggregated hot spots, issue-specific hot spots, cool spots, socio-biodiversity, single-value navigation, and multi-value navigation, all of which have a bearing on the realisation of the overarching aim of AMSP: to minimize the impact of navigation on the environment by integrative approaches across environmental, socio-economic, political, cultural, and other sectoral realms.

Giacomo Bove (1852–1887) was an officer in the Royal Italian Navy who participated in Nordenskiöld's Vega expedition through the northeast passage, and in other expeditions in various parts of the world. He was, in part, responsible for drawing up plans for an Italian Antarctic expedition to depart in 1881. He died, at the age of 35, after an expedition to the Congo. A small museum in his honour has been established in his home village of Maranzana, Italy.

During the Second World War, both Chile and Argentina advanced sovereignty claims to the Antarctic Peninsula and surrounding sub-Antarctic islands that overlapped substantially with claims that the United Kingdom had made in 1908 and 1917. This article explores the emergence of the concept of a South American Antarctica during this period. Although, at one level, the two South American countries attempted to create a united front against the British, they actually decided to press their claims to Antarctica for different and sometimes conflicting reasons. In Argentina, nationalists connected the question of sovereignty in Antarctica with their claims to the Malvinas and with a broader struggle against a supposed British economic imperialism. In Chile, patriotic officials were less concerned with British claims to the Antarctic Peninsula and more worried about Argentina's growing interest in the region. The article concludes that a better understanding of the complex and contradictory history of the emergence of the idea of South American Antarctica during the Second World War leads to an enhanced appreciation of the subsequent development of the so-called ‘Antarctic Problem’ as it developed over the next 15 years. In order to avoid the artificiality of the term ‘Falklands (Malvinas)’, the British terms ‘Falklands’ and ‘Falkland Islands’ have been used when discussing the United Kingdom's position, and the Argentine term ‘Malvinas’ when discussing that of Argentina.

The International Polar Heritage Committee (IPHC) was formed to serve as a resource for professionals who often work in isolation on heritage protection projects in Arctic and Antarctic regions. Its credibility has now been established in a number of areas of the wider polar infrastructure and its networks continue to expand. With such an international structure it is also able to act as an independent advocate to promote polar heritage protection issues in professional, public and political arenas.

This note reports on a project concerning the wreck of Belgica, in 22 m of water at Bruvik, Norway. A society has been founded with the aims of protecting the wreck, conducting a feasibility study on the possible raising and preservation of it, and for promoting education concerning the polar regions.

Additional, or supernumerary, teeth occur in most mammalian taxa, although they are better recorded in some species than in others. As part of a larger biometric study, incidence of visible supernumerary teeth was recorded in the skulls of 1228 pinnipeds (seals, sea lions, and fur seals). Results showed that supernumerary teeth only occurred in the postcanine (molars and premolars) tooth row. It was also found that 3.3% of otariids (sea lions and fur seals) and 4.7% of phocids (‘true’ seals) possessed supernumerary postcanines. Out of a total of 52 supernumererary teeth recorded, only six were morphologically abberant; all the others played a functional role in the normal tooth row.

The Gough Island scientific survey (GISS) of 1955–1956 contributed greatly to knowledge of the natural history of that remote island in the south Atlantic. This note commemorates the expedition and provides information concerning it and its achievements. An outline is also given concerning the research that has since been undertaken on the island.

John Heap's whole working career was one devoted to the polar regions, primarily the Antarctic — as scientist, then as a distinguished, internationally respected polar diplomat, and finally to holding the Directorship of the Scott Polar Research Institute in Cambridge (Fig. 1). Much of the stability and innovative development of the Antarctic Treaty System during the crucial period of the 1970s and 1980s can be attributed to Heap's long tenure as Head of the UK Delegation to successive Antarctic Treaty meetings.

Each year Polar Record calls upon numerous scholars to assist in the demanding and intensive refereeing and peer-review procedures for manuscripts submitted for publication. These individuals give generously of their time and expertise to help insure that a high academic quality is maintained in Polar Record. During the preparation of the four issues for 2005, some 100 individuals assisted in the review and refereeing process.