The InterDependent

To see firsthand the dramatic changes global warming is wreaking on one of the remotest corners of the world, members of the United Nations Foundation board traveled to Norway last week to meet with scientific experts and to visit the island of Svalbard, home to the northernmost community in the world.

In the Svalbard archipelago, more than 1,200 miles from Oslo, the Norwegian capital, the climate is arctic. Svalbard is halfway between the Norwegian mainland and the North Pole.

“Remarkably, though we are in the northernmost region, this is truly one of the hot spots of the world,” said Timothy E. Wirth, the foundation president, in a conference call with reporters from the outpost. “We can see from here how the climate is dramatically changing.”

The board members, one of whom is Gro Harlem Brundtland, a former Norwegian prime minister, could see the effects of rapidly melting ice and a rising sea level, which could have a major impact on faraway oceans.

“This is a remarkable place, an extraordinary place scientifically,” Wirth said, “and one in which the government of Norway has made very, very significant investments in terms of its commitment to a long-term scientific understanding of climate change.” Norwegian experts are also using this region to develop programs for dealing with climate issues in the future, he added.

Ted Turner, the foundation’s chairman and an environmentalist who had been to the Svalbard archipelago before, pointed out that temperature changes at high latitudes like these alter their surroundings more drastically than in other regions, making such places global bellwethers. He noted that climate change will affect the northern part of the world and the southern part near the poles more than it will the tropics and the temperate zones.

UN Foundation/Stuart Ramson

The Global Seed Vault, which UN Foundation board members visited during a trip to the Arctic Circle region of Svalbard, Norway. The cavern preserves copies of seeds held in genetic banks worldwide as well as harbors seeds in case of large-scale regional or global crises.

Brundtland, who wrote a groundbreaking 1987 study for the UN, the Report of the World Commission on Environment and Development: Our Common Future, described how Norway, an oil producer on the frontier of climate change, imposed a carbon tax and regulation on oil drilling two decades ago. During the conference call, she expressed amazement and anxiety over other nations’ failure to take similar steps.

In Norway, the UN Foundation board also met with government, corporate and nonprofit leaders to build support for UN efforts to improve global health, catalyze innovations in international development and call for global action on climate change. Brundtland, the board’s host, is a former director-general of the World Health Organization and a lifelong advocate for aid to developing countries.

“Norway is a leader in tackling some of the biggest problems facing our world, and we’re proud to be cooperating so closely with the Norwegian government and the UN to improve health and education and combat climate change,” Turner said before the meetings in Norway began. “I applaud the Nordic countries for their leadership as funders of global development and supporters of the UN. They are matching rhetoric with real support, and it’s making a difference.”

In addition to meetings in Oslo with Norwegian leaders and the trip to Svalbard, members of the foundation participated in a conference, New African Connections, which was focused on finding creative solutions and partnerships in health care, finance and new technologies to enhance development in Africa. Kofi Annan, a foundation board member, was a featured speaker with Brundtland and Turner.