CAPARDUS is a CSA project under H2020 with focus on capacity-building to develop guidelines, practices and standards in selected Arctic topics. These include data collection and management related to natural resource management, tourism, safety, community planning and decision making. The project develops a framework for development of standards as a collaborative effort between scientists, local communities and other stakeholder groups involved in the case studies in Greenland and Svalbard, with contribution from studies in Alaska and Yakutia in Russia. The project organizes a number of workshops, dialogue meetings and research schools as part of case studies in local communities, showing how the social-environmental systems are changing Arctic communities and what are the drivers for these changes. The climate change and its consequences in the Arctic leads to new requirements for planning and decision-making based on scientific and economic data, assessments and predictions. A prerequisite for good planning is access to data and information of relevance to the operators in the Arctic. CAPARDUS promotes and supports the Community-Based Monitoring and Citizen science as a contribution to data collection and knowledge building. The project will provide requirements and recommendations for an Arctic Practice System to the benefit of both local communities and other actors in the Arctic. At the end CAPARDUS will summarize the emergence of guidelines, practices and standards, supporting a sustainable development in the Arctic.

The Arctic is undergoing rapid changes. Multiple stressors such as climate change and pollution from local and remote sources affect human life, wildlife and the ecosystems of the Arctic. These are inseparably connected and require a holistic approach to analyses and assessments of pollution issues, and to their solutions. Using this One Health approach, ArcSolution will provide knowledge and mitigating solutions, co-created with the people of the Arctic. The Arctic is home to a variety of Arctic communities. To capture this diversity, ArcSolution will work in four Arctic locations, i.e. Northern Finland, Svalbard, Northern Norway (Tromsø) and Greenland, integrating local and Indigenous knowledge with environmental, health, technical and social science research in a One Health approach. The One Health framework will be instrumental in identifying knowledge and data gaps, and in synthesizing the information generated and collected in ArcSolution. In addition to scientifically relevant priority pollutants (e.g. per-/polyfluorinated alkylated substances, mercury, (micro)plastics and their additives, and key pathogens), ArcSolution will provide room for research and citizen science projects on locally prioritized issues. We will study pollution from local and remote sources in a climate change context, pollutant accumulation in food webs and human exposure. We will also evaluate current and predict future impacts of these pollutants on Arctic ecosystems and human health. Together with the local communities, we will develop solutions in the fields of circular economy, technology and chemicals management. Our results will be used in education programmes at Arctic schools already connected to ArcSolution. They will be communicated to policy-makers, industry and the scientific community. The One Health-based knowledge will strengthen the knowledge base and contribute to sustainable preventive actions for human life, wildlife and the ecosystems in the Arctic.