Pen Hadow

As an explorer Pen Hadow has been a pioneering figure in the North Pole region since 1989 through his expedition guide service, record-breaking feats, international research programmes, and now his conservation mission to protect the region’s biodiversity through an international agreement.

His iconic solo trek from Canada to the North Pole has never been repeated, and his US$10 million programme of non-governmental scientific research on the Arctic Ocean (Catlin Arctic Surveys 2008-12) is without equal. He has spent over 10,000 hours on the Arctic Ocean, and decades of work behind-the-scenes preparing for those hours on the sea ice. He has become one of Britain’s quintessential explorers, now committed to protecting our planet’s biodiversity and its life-supporting services for future generations through the ocean conservation charity, 90 North Foundation.

Pen Hadow believes exploration and conservation of the natural world has been never more urgent or important in human history, given the continued existence of humankind is becoming evermore obviously dependent on improving the understanding and management of our impacts on, and relationship with, the natural world’s resources, processes and systems.

90 North Foundation is exclusively dedicated to protecting the biodiversity of the world’s northernmost ocean waters, as its sea-ice habitat disappears and increasing vessel activity introduces additional stressors and risks. The Foundation undertakes research projects, public education programmes and conservation advocacy with the objective of catalysing the policy-making community to secure, through an international legal instrument, the promotion of biodiversity conservation, scientific endeavour, and peaceful international co-operation which results in a North Pole Marine Reserve for the high seas of the Central Arctic Ocean.