Pen Hadow is committed to bringing about the necessary international agreement(s) that establish a North Pole Marine Reserve for the Central Arctic Ocean’s (CAO) high seas region.
Such a reserve would be founded on the promotion of biodiversity conservation, scientific endeavour, and peaceful international co-operation (just as the Antarctic Treaty does for Antarctica). To enable this work he founded the ocean conservation charity, 90 North Foundation, see www.90northfoundation.org
90 North Foundation’s objective is to catalyse, promote and support the necessary international policy-making process through the circumpolar Indigenous Peoples, Arctic Council, UN High Seas Treaty, and possibly through an envisaged international CAO Commission.
The CAO’s summer sea-ice cover is likely to continue reducing in the long-term, so its unique “floating ice-reef ecosystem” is likely to experience increasing stresses because the sea ice is essentially the habitat for the region’s biodiversity.
The imminent human threats resulting from increased accessibility to this newly-created open ocean – most especially from international cargo shipping and deep-sea mining – just add to the existing risks to biodiversity generated by greenhouse gas emissions far to its south. But these direct threats can be controlled before they even start through a moratorium (while noting the CAO Fisheries Agreement currently prevents commercial fishing by its many signatories until 2037 when it’s due for a major review).
In autumn 2017 the story, research and images from his Arctic Mission voyage investigating marine pollution in the Central Arctic Ocean was used successfully by Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse in a ‘Save Our Seas Act’ debate in the US Senate to successfully recover funding for the National Oceanographic & Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) Marine Debris Programme.
