Yuri Kozyrev and Kadir van Lohuizen (NOOR) were awarded at the 9th edition of the Carmignac Photojournalism Award dedicated to the Arctic and chaired by Jean Jouzel, and under the patronage of Minister Ségolène Royal, French Ambassador for the Arctic and Antarctic Poles.

The endowment allowed them to carry out their pioneer double polar expedition «Arctic: New Frontier». For the very first time, two photojournalists have simultaneously covered the entire Arctic territory to bear witness to the irreversible effects of climate change. They wanted to experience the dramatic transformation of natural landscapes and the demographics in the Arctic, and the impact of these changes on the lives of the region’s inhabitants.

The photos of Yuri Kozyrev and Kadir van Lohuizen are superb. Through them, from Siberia, Svalbard and Greenland to Canada and Alaska, we discover the Arctic of today, with its landscapes and wildlife that are drawing a growing number of tourists, as well as its populations who are exposed to extreme climates and engaged in the exploitation of mining resources such as nickel and, increasingly, gas, oil and coal. Protecting the environment does not appear central to their activity, to put it mildly. —Jean Jouzel, climatologist, winner of the 2012 Vetlesen Award and co-winner of the 2007 Nobel Peace Award as Director of the IPCC

Yuri Kozyrev travelled the route of the Russian maritime ports of the Arctic, accompanying the last remaining Nomadic people of the region, the Nenets, during their seasonal movement known as transhumance. This was interrupted for the first time in the Nenets’ history in 2018, because of the melting of the permafrost.

Kozyrev skirted the coast of the Barents Sea in the north of the country, and travelled aboard the Montchegorsk, the first container ship to use the Northern Sea route unassisted. He encountered people who had been made ill by nickel mining in Norilsk, and then travelled to Murmansk, where the first floating nuclear power plant is under secret construction.

Kadir van Lohuizen started his journey on the Norwegian island of Spitzberg in the Svalbard archipelago. He then followed the Northwest Passage, which is now the shortest route between Europe and Asia thanks to the melting ice. In Greenland, he met scientists who have recently discovered the existence of frozen rivers beneath the ice-cap, which are directly contributing to the planet’s rising water levels. South of Cornwallis Island, off the coast of Canada, he lived in the small community of Resolute, which has recently been home to a training facility for the Canadian Army, as climate change has led to ever-increasing routes through the Arctic region. Finally, he travelled to Kivalina, an indigenous village on the northern tip of Alaska, which, according to current forecasts, will disappear underwater by 2025. The forces of tourism, militarisation, exploitation of gas and mineral resources, and the opening of trade routes mean that the Arctic is today the site of clashes between countries and multinationals who are locked in a chaotic competition for control of these zones, which have taken on strategic importance in the history of humankind due to the effects of global warming.

The photographs in “Arctic: New Frontier” by Yuri Kozyrev and Kadir van Lohuizen are an alarming testimony to the speed of transformation in the region and the upheavals that are taking place on a global scale.

Each year, at the end of the five-month photo reportage in the selected area, the work of the Carmignac Photojournalism Award Laureate is used to produce both a major exhibition in Paris and London, and the publication of a monograph.

After taking place at the Cité des sciences et de l’industrie, in Paris, the exhibition of more than 40 photographs and 6 videos by Yuri Kozyrev and Kadir van Lohuizen, which “provides a masterful and salutary insight into one of the major challenges of the coming years” (L’Express, November 15th, 2018), is displayed through May 5 2019 at London’s Saatchi Gallery, which has been hosting the Carmignac Photojournalism Award for the fifth consecutive year.

The exhibition is accompanied by a bilingual French-English catalogue co-publi- shed by Fondation Carmignac and Reliefs Editions. It will be available at the Saatchi Gallery bookstore and throughout the network of bookstores in the UK and Europe. Reliefs is a publishing house that develops, in a spirit of permanent curiosity, an editorial policy focused on the transmission of knowledge and awareness of the future of our planet. Reliefs publishes a magazine of the same name dedicated to nature, adventure and exploration, with a strong desire to popularize science. This collaboration is part of the defence of common values and reflects a shared desire to report, through photographs and committed texts, on the contemporary issues covered by this dual expedition to the Arctic.

It is now clear that the first and strongest signs of global scale climate change are well underway in the Arctic. Global temperatures have risen by about 1.2°C globally since the late 1800s/early 1900s (top figure). This global increase is a combination of anthropogenic (human caused) and natural change. Governments of the world are attempting to constrain global warming to < 2°C but most scientists and policy makers are sceptical of this happening given the slow rate of uptake of international mitigation strategies to reduce our reliance on fossil fuels. Arctic amplification (AA) is a key feature of our climate system and this manifests as an amplification of the global average temperature at the high latitudes of our planet (bottom figure). Currently the AA results in about a 2 to 3 times multiplier of the global temperature (i.e., if you have a 2°C change globally you can expect a 4 to 6°C change in the Arctic). Arctic climate change is having a profound effect both inside and outside of the Arctic. Inside the Arctic climate change is affecting all components of cryosphere (sea ice, glaciers, permafrost, etc), the marine and terrestrial ecosystems, on traditional communities, their built infrastructure and on resource extraction.

Outside of the Arctic climate change is affecting the hydrological cycle (precipitation and drought), melting glaciers are causing worrisome sea level rise, storm surges and commensurate effects on the polar vortex and subsequent Arctic – mid latitude teleconnections are affecting the climate at more southerly latitudes.

Sea ice has experienced unprecedented variability in both the rates and magnitudes of change in extent, area, thickness, spatial distribution (about 14% reduction per decade). The ice has transformed from an environment dominated by thick, hard, multiyear sea ice (MYI) to one dominated by thin and softer first year sea ice. Coinciding with this change toward a younger ice cover is a commensurate increase in marine transportation across the Arctic.

The geopolitical conditions of the Arctic are a direct result of this increased accessibility of the Arctic in terms of security, globalization and trade. Significant opportunities accrue from the opening of the Arctic Ocean. Russia is by far the global leader in Arctic development with over 20% of their total GDP coming from

Arctic sources. Russia eclipses other nations in marine shipping, icebreaker sup- port, northern ports, resource development and rail infrastructure required to maximize economic benefits from the north. In contrast Canada, which has the longest Arctic coastline in the world and is similarly enriched with both renewable and non-renewable resources, generates only a small fraction of one percent of its GDP from Arctic sources.

Our future is being written by the realities of climate change, and it is important that we invest in this future and focus our nation building with the Arctic and climate change predictions clearly in mind.

(Excerpt from "Arctic: New Frontier" co-published by Reliefs Editions and Fondation Carmignac - Column by Professor David G. Barber, DP, FRSC, OC University of Manitoba, Canada, Jury member of the 9th Edition of the Carmi­gnac Photojournalism Award, Expert in Arctic climate change, and Chief Scientist of the expedition on Canadian icebreaker and Arctic research vessel CCGS Amundsen.)