GML: UAF's Center for Arctic Sustainable Development

Keynote Speaker:
Nettie La Belle-Hamer
Associate Vice Chancellor for Research and ASF Director, UAF

America’s Arctic University, UAF, is creating a unique opportunity to build and implement a center focused on the Arctic in collaboration with leading experts across academia, industry, and government. The Center for Arctic Sustainable Development is a proposed UAF-based I/UCRC that will formalize relationships and communication pathways among scientists, Arctic communities, industry, state and federal agencies, and international partners. The threat of an Arctic marine oil spill is not limited to off-shore resource production facilities, but includes risks from increased shipping of tankers, bulk carriers, cruise ships, fuel barges, and other hazards associated with increased human activities in the Arctic. By locating the research center in Fairbanks, the expertise will be developed in Northern Alaska within the cultures and communities who would be most affected by and most likely respond to an oil spill in the Arctic.