Our mission is to safeguard the biodiversity of the Central Arctic Ocean (CAO) and its associated ecosystem services which include seafood production, genetic resources, carbon sequestration, air purification, oxygen production and climate control.
The CAO’s ‘high seas’ region surrounds the North Pole, and is defined as being all waters more than 200 nautical miles (370 kilometres) north of the surrounding Arctic states’ northernmost coastline – namely USA, Canada, Russia, Greenland and Norway.
The conservation measures will seek to minimise the vessel-induced impacts, stressors and risks to the survival, health and abundance of the native, non-native, and migratory species. By minimising these manageable vessel-based risks, the resilience of the region’s marine life is optimised to adapt to their fastest-changing of ocean environments.
Our work is therefore to catalyse the international policy-making process to deliver the optimum conservation measures for the CAO within the context of the United Nation’s drive to secure protection for 30% of the world’s marine environment by 2030.
Our ultimate objective is to establish a North Pole Marine Reserve dedicated to promoting biodiversity conservation, scientific research, and peaceful international co-operation.
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.
AORU’s focus is the biodiversity of the Central Arctic Ocean, and how this relates to the wider Arctic Ocean. Its research prioritises subjects identified as ‘Criteria for Declaration’ by the emerging UN High Seas Treaty, and vessel activity in the Arctic Ocean.
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 worldwide, 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.
Promoting international awareness and understanding of the global 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 ‘high seas’ making it a ‘global commons’ to which all citizens and nations have an equal stake in its future.
The Foundation’s advocacy seeks to inform, catalyse and accelerate the international policy-making process to deliver the optimum conservation measures for the CAO, in the context of the United Nation’s goal to have 30% of the global marine environment protected by 2030.
Currently, the Foundation is exploring the merits of a broadly similar pathway for the CAO’s protection to that which secured the Antarctic Treaty System for Antarctica, specifically by working through both the International Polar Year (2032) and an envisaged CAO Scientific Committee, before finally engaging with an international CAO Commission tasked with establishing the North Pole Marine Reserve.
To achieve this, the Foundation collaborates with non-governmental organisations and alliances, and engages with Indigenous Peoples, relevant commercial sectors, government agencies and policy-makers.
90 North Foundation is a Charitable Incorporated Organisation registered in 2021 with the Charity Commission for England and Wales (Charity No 1194573). It is led by a Board of Trustees governed by the Foundation’s Constitution (available on request from the Charity Commission).
The Foundation is funded by grants from charitable trusts and foundations, and donations from businesses, philanthropists and the public.
90 North Foundation’s head office is in London, and a Norwegian subsidiary opens in 2025, based in Longyearbyen on Spitsbergen/Svalbard (Norway).
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.