Our mission is to safeguard the biodiversity of the Arctic Ocean and the associated ecosystem services which include air purification, genetic resources, seafood production and carbon sequestration.
To achieve this 90 North Foundation focuses proposed conservation measures on the Central Arctic Ocean’s (CAO) high seas region that surrounds the North Pole (ie the waters north of the Arctic coastal states Exclusive Economic Zones).
The conservation measures will seek to minimise the vessel-induced impacts, stressors and risks to the survival, health and abundance of the native and migrating non-native species.
By minimising these manageable vessel-based risks, the resilience of the region’s vulnerable marine life to adapt to the world’s fastest-changing ocean environment can be optimised.
Our work is therefore to catalyse the processes whereby the optimum conservation measures are agreed by policy-makers, within the wider context of sustainable development, through an international legal instrument by 2037 which delivers a North Pole Marine Reserve (or similar).
Consequently, the strategy to achieve our mission is:
Through 90 North Foundation’s partnership with the world-class marine research faculty at the University of Exeter (UK), the Arctic Ocean Research Unit (AORU) was established, with some of the university’s leading marine researchers and policy-influencers engaged with 90 North Foundation’s vision.
The AORU’s focus is the biodiversity of the Central Arctic Ocean, and how these relate to the wider Arctic Ocean. Its research prioritises subjects explicitly relevant to the scientific ‘Criteria for Declaration’ being prepared by the UN High Seas Treaty.
Over the coming years the ambition is to stimulate the delivery of a body of research, through the work of the Foundation and more significantly an array of other interested research bodies, that shifts the dial from generalised concern to informed and effective conservation action.
Few people witness first-hand the wildlife and seascape of the Central Arctic Ocean (CAO) which goes some way to explaining why it is the least disturbed, least explored, and at this critical juncture in its management, the least understood marine environment in the world.
Awareness and understanding of the role and value of the biodiversity and ecosystem services of the CAO is of special relevance to the people and nations living closest to the CAO, especially the circumpolar Indigenous Peoples who are all too aware of the changing Arctic environment, and are directly impacted by the degradation of these ecosystem services.
The Foundation’s educational work will also be engaging with increasingly international audiences, not simply because what happens in the far North will have impacts for everyone, but because the CAO is comprised entirely of international waters (aka high seas) making it a body of water for which all nations have an equal stake in its future.
90 North Foundation’s advocacy catalyses the processes within the marine policy-making communities to deliver its recommended conservation measures. The two highest-level bodies, the International Maritime Organization and the Convention on Biodiversity Beyond National Jurisdiction, require proposed conservation measures to be sponsored by one their member nation states. The Foundation therefore works to secure a sponsoring member state for each of its conservation measures.
The majority of the envisaged protections for the Central Arctic Ocean (CAO) wildlife can be secured by: maintaining the existing voluntary agreement that prevents commercial fishing in the CAO, managed by the Arctic Council; agreeing the location and conditions for any northernmost shipping route in the event of an ice-free Arctic Ocean, to be delivered through the International Maritime Organization; and agreeing an exclusion zone for fossil fuel and mineral exploration and extraction in the CAO, delivered through the International Petroleum Industry Environmental Conservation Association and the International Council of Mining & Minerals.
The Foundation’s end-goal is for an application to be made by 2037 for an ‘Other Effective area-based Conservation Measure’ (OECM) to be established for the CAO. This will be deliverable through the Convention on Biodiversity for Areas Beyond National Jurisdiction (currently in process to become implemented by 2028). This envisaged OECM is provisionally referred to by the Foundation as the North Pole Marine Reserve.
The 90 North Foundation is a Charitable Incorporated Organisation registered in 2021 with the Charity Commission for England and Wales (Charity No 1194573). The Foundation is governed by its Constitution, available on request from the Charity Commission.
Currently, no other non-governmental organisation is focused exclusively on the conservation of the biodiversity and ecosystem services within the international waters of the Central Arctic Ocean (CAO), the benefits of which will be felt in the more biologically active coastal waters of the Arctic Ocean surrounding the CAO.
It is this focus, supported by the scientific evidence and its collaborative approach with the key stakeholders, that underpins the Foundation’s work to catalyse policy-makers’ agreement for the proposed conservation measures.
Peter Hinchliffe is the former Secretary-General of the International Chamber of Shipping (ICS), the membership of which comprises national shipowner associations in Asia, Europe and the Americas, and whose member shipping companies operate over 80% of the world’s merchant tonnage.
Peter was awarded the prestigious International Maritime Prize (2019) by the UN International Maritime Organization (IMO) in recognition of his invaluable contribution to the work of the IMO providing shipping industry leadership on a number of key regulatory developments and to the international maritime community as a whole. He was known within the shipping community for his belief in the sector’s need to improve its performance on environmental issues.
He enjoyed a first career as a submariner in the British Royal Navy, accumulating over 20 years at sea and five years in sea-going command.
Brendan Godley, one of our founding Trustees, is a conservation scientist with wide ranging interests in biodiversity conservation.
Previously director of the Centre for Ecology & Conservation at the University of Exeter, his own research largely focuses on marine vertebrates, notably, turtles, mammals, birds and sharks. In the last few years, he has spent ever more efforts on interdisciplinary approaches to conservation research, and the development of how best to present research to policy-makers.
Brendan has received awards including the ZSL Marsh Award for Marine and Freshwater Conservation and the Queen’s Anniversary Prize; he serves on numerous international and national committees and panels including as a Member of Council for Fauna & Flora International; and he serves on editorial boards of scientific journals including Endangered Species Research, Oryx, and Current Conservation.
David Williams (FRICS) is Executive Director of Savills and a board director of Savills (UK), having originally joined Savills in 1982. With a career focus on commercial property, since 1996 he has directly contributed to the evolution and growth of Savills and its European business. Savills is currently one of the world’s largest real estate firms with 40,000 employees in 600 offices across 70 countries.
David’s championing of the sector’s wider concern about the carbon footprint of both the built and rural environments led him to being instrumental in the development of Savills Earth, a unit which brings together the in-house expertise of more than 100 specialists to support and advise clients on their sustainability, energy and carbon strategies.
Meanwhile, David has been a significant supporter of Pen Hadow’s Arctic Ocean environmental research and more extreme endeavours for over 30 years. His lifelong active support of conservation has been land-based to date, but now his coastal upbringing has come to the fore through his role as Treasurer of 90 North Foundation.
Pen Hadow had an epiphany far out on the Arctic Ocean on his way to the North Pole in the Spring of 2003, an epiphany that led to the creation of the 90 North Foundation and its mission to protect the vulnerable biodiversity of the North Pole region, the Central Arctic Ocean (CAO).
Though Pen has spent most of his working life involved with the CAO including travel across its surface as an expedition guide, adventurer, field research leader and explorer, it took his solo trek from Canada to the North Pole back in 2003 (and more specifically all the swimming that proved necessary between the ice floes to reach the Pole), to fully reveal to him the scale and speed of the region’s loss of sea-ice habitat.
Soon after his return, he realised that an array of vessel-based activities were looking to exploit this newly-emerging open ocean, and would therefore be adding a host of new direct risks, further compromising the future of the region’s wildlife, ecosystem and ecosystem services.
Pen then led an international scientific research programme (2007-2012) studying sea-ice loss and its impact on species and geophysical processes. Over this period he began to feel that while gathering scientific evidence was essential to building the case for protection, if advocacy efforts did not begin immediately for protection, it may soon become too late, given the time needed to bring protective measures into effect.
And so, in Autumn 2017, Pen led the first vessels (two 50ft sailing boats) to enter the North Pole’s international waters without icebreakers, to demonstrate how commercial vessels would soon be able to navigate in these waters. Pen was subsequently invited to address a UN International Maritime Organization plenary session, and brief the 800 delegates representing the 174 member states about the predicament facing the wildlife of the Central Arctic Ocean. The resulting ovation, rarely given at such UN conferences, and the subsequent follow-up conversations, led Pen to realise there was an important job to be done, and he was in a position to provide some leadership.
Pen conceived that by making the planet’s northernmost waters as benign as possible through protective measures for the native species, and for those ‘refugee’ non-native species that will be seeking sanctuary in the North Pole region’s cooler waters, then we can slow down the processes leading to extinction, and sustain as many species as possible until global ocean and atmospheric conditions begin to improve. In effect, we would be creating a zoological Ark - an Arctic Ark - of the world’s coolest waters.
For all the reasons above, he founded the 90 North Foundation to catalyse the processes by which appropriate, legally-enforceable measures can be established for the protection of the biodiversity and ecosystem services within the unique and iconic ‘global commons’ that is the Central Arctic Ocean - for the global public benefit.
Dan Laffoley is a well-respected leading global expert on ocean conservation, and is currently Emeritus Marine Vice Chair of the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN)’s World Commission on Protected Areas (WCPA).
He chairs the Hope Spot Council, and is an Emeritus Board Member of Mission Blue. He is also a founding Non-Executive Board Member of the UK’s Office for Environmental Protection established in the wake of Brexit under the Environment Act. This new body was established in 2022 to hold UK public bodies to account on their environmental records, and to advise on the implementation of UK environmental law.
Prior to these appointments and up until 2022 Dan was Principal Advisor, Marine Science and Conservation for the IUCN’s Global Marine & Polar Programme, and held the global honorary role as Marine Vice Chair for the WCPA for 17 years, providing a world-wide lead on ocean protection. During his time as marine Vice Chair at the IUCN Dan instigated and led many initiatives that continue to have a lasting impact on global ocean protection and stimulated action by countries throughout the world.
For over 35 years Dan has been responsible for the creation of many national, European and global partnerships and alliances that underpin modern-day marine conservation. He served as chief scientific advisor for the marine environment in Natural England, for over a decade headed-up the marine conservation programme for English Nature and has also worked in a variety of other roles including special marine environmental advisor for the Prime Minister Tony Blair’s Strategy Unit, and for the European Commission.