The Arctic Messenger Gains a Voice - The Changing Arctic Environment: The Arctic Messenger - page 36

programmes that contribute to the overall AMAP programme. In addition, over time, it ar-
ranged for the establishment of AMAP Thematic Data Centres, where results from con-
tributing projects are compiled. They are then made available to scientists participating in
AMAP assessments under a protocol that protects the publication rights of those who un-
dertook the original research or monitoring. Two other important roles of the data centres
are to record such matters as the quality assurance regimes that have been applied to each
set of data and to provide the foundation for AMAP's plans to maintain long-term archives
of information to support work on environmental change over time. At present, AMAP
Thematic Data Centres include the Norwegian Institute for Air Research (NILU) in Nor-
way that provides this service for atmospheric data, the ICES in Denmark for marine data
and the Norwegian Radiological Protection Agency (NRPA) in Norway for radioactivity
data.
The next big headache was to decide what the first full assessment report (due to be
completed in 1997) would look like and how it would be written. We quickly settled on
a basic report that would be a detailed and fully referenced document prepared by a team
of scientists, together with experts nominated by the permanent participants. It would be
called the AMAP Assessment Report [AAR]: Arctic Pollution Issues and would provide the
foundation for a second document to be written in plain language and suitable for use by
politicians and the general public. With an embarrassing lack of imagination, we called this
report “Arctic Pollution Issues: A State of the Arctic Environment Report” (SOAER).
The AMAP working group was composed of managers of national science pro-
grammes. These people were exactly what we needed to help set up the content and oper-
ational practices of AMAP. However, to coordinate writing the scientific AAR, we needed
the best active Arctic scientists we could find. To fulfill this function, we created an as-
sessment steering group chaired by Lars-Erik. The separation of the AMAP working group
from the SOAER also served to distance the drafting of the scientific AAR from any pos-
sibility of political interference.
The AAR itself was a single volume containing 12 chapters. Eight environmental is-
sues were identified and each provided with an individual assessment chapter: (1) contam-