Germany at the Poles: Exploring Legitimacy

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Installation at Alfred Wegener Institute in Bremerhaven, Germany. The signpost stood in front of the former Neumayer II station in Antarctica until 2009. Photo: Charlotte Gehrke

The Arctic Institute Knowledge Production Series 2025

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In September 2024, the German government adopted its new Arctic policy guidelines. This third edition, following the 2013 and 2019 policy guidelines, sets a clear focus on geopolitics, security, and stability as a response to Russia’s war in Ukraine.¹⁾Gehrke C & Wehrmann D (2024) Germany’s new Arctic guidelines: a case for knowledge diversification. The Current Column, IDOS, https://www.idos-research.de/fileadmin/user_upload/pdfs/publikationen/aktuelle_kolumne/2024/German_Institute_of_Development_and_Sustainability_EN_Gehrke_Wehrmann_14.10.2024.pdf. Accessed on 26 May 2025 Taking the current German Arctic policy only as a starting point, Germany is an active player in research at both poles and in fact German polar activities can be traced throughout the International Polar Years (IPYs), with Germany’s new Arctic policy guidelines set to coincide with the IPY-5.

IPY	Year
First	1882-1883
Second	1932-1933
Third – also known as the International Geophysical Year (IGY)	1957-1958
Fourth	2007-2008
Fifth	2032-2033

With this short commentary, we seek to explore different aspects of legitimacy building in German polar research contributions to the IPYs. We aim to better understand how legitimacies are built that argue for the role of (German) knowledge production at and about the poles. For the purpose of this article, we are interested in asking: who are audiences for legitimacy and what are sources of legitimacy?²⁾von Billerbeck SBK & Gippert BJ (2017) Legitimacy in Conflict: Concepts, Practices, Challenges. Journal of Intervention and Statebuilding 11(3): 273–285.

We apply a relational perspective in understanding legitimacy as a socially constructed phenomenon where actors cannot ‘possess’ legitimacy, but they have to be assessed as being legitimate actors by others.³⁾Lidskog R, Standring A & White JM (2022) Environmental expertise for social transformation: roles and responsibilities for social science. Environmental Sociology 8(3): 255–266. Thus, legitimacy can be understood as a two-folded concept, in which actors themselves grant legitimacy to others, or where it is conferred on them.

Further, we frame constructions and contestations of legitimacies beyond hierarchical relationships focusing exclusively on states.⁴⁾Dellmuth L & Tallberg J (2015) The social legitimacy of international organisations: Interest representation, institutional performance, and confidence extrapolation in the United Nations. Review of International Studies 41(3): 451–475. While our case focuses on Germany, we focus specifically on polar researchers as actors on multiple levels – individual, collective, and national.

This article presents our initial framework for developing an academic article on the subject of legitimacy in science activism by polar researchers in Germany. We present findings from our preliminary analysis and observations of the polar research community in Germany, including a variety of documents, participant observations, and interviews. Drawing on the history of the IPYs overarching aspects, we identify legitimacy motives and themes of polar research in Germany.

In summary, we see three broader expressions of legitimacy. First, polar science as climate change research; second, legitimacy through science communication and third, legitimacy via informing policy. We conclude our contribution with an outlook to the upcoming IPY-5 (2032-33) and geopolitical frames potentially (re)emerging.

Supporting legitimacy of polar research topics through the Climate Crisis framework

Looking back to the first two IPYs (1882-1883, 1932-1933), polar research was framed as a way to better understand weather patterns, with the World Meteorological Organization and its predecessors taking a leading role.⁵⁾Bulkeley R (2010) The First Three Polar Years – A General Overview. In: Barr S & Lüdecke C (eds) (2010) The History of the International Polar Years (IPYs). Berlin Heidelberg: From Pole to Pole, Springer: 1–6. The three first years (including the IGY, 1957-1958) are described as allowing groundbreaking work out of different disciplinary perspectives (geophysics, oceanography, and others).⁶⁾See Wood KR & Overland JE (2006) Climate Lessons from the First International Polar Year. Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society 87(12): 1685–1697; see Albert MR (2004) The International Polar Year. Science Editorial 303(5663): 1437–1437.

However, since the IPY-4, in which Germany was prominently involved, polar research and research around the climate crisis became interlinked and, in some cases, even interchangeable. Thus, the climate crisis can be increasingly understood as a source of legitimacy to drive polar research forward, including German knowledge contributions.

As a result, researchers perform a delicate balancing act. On the one hand, polar research enjoys added legitimacy by virtue of its contribution to our understanding of climate and earth systems. On the other hand, polar research ought to be legitimate in its own right without having to generate knowledge for broader models beyond the regions. The questions of what kind of knowledge should be produced and where to set priorities with regard to all polar research topics are therefore no longer necessarily driven by the interpretative authority of the researchers.

Fostering legitimacy through outreach and education

Legitimacy can be linked to the expertise ascribed to a person. Communicating authentic, personal and emotional experiences about expeditions to the polar regions has increasingly developed into an education tool. The IPY-3/IGY already worked to make polar science more popular among the public, particularly engaging with younger generations.⁷⁾Krause RA (2010) Daten statt Sensationen. Der Weg zur internationalen Polarforschung aus einer deutschen Perspektive. Reports on Polar and Marine Research 609/2010 For example, at the IPY-4, the working group ‘polar teachers’ was established within the German Society for Polar Research.

Reflecting on audiences for legitimacy, we can observe several initiatives aiming to make teaching experiences more authentic, such as sending teachers on expeditions, for instance, during the German MOSAIC expedition. The international expedition completed a year-long drift (from September 2019 until October 2020) of the research vessel Polarstern through the central Arctic Ocean.

However, many of the teaching materials produced in this context display a clear emphasis on STEM-fields, with social sciences left to play a supporting role. They also make use of polar exploration narratives and limit self-criticism and reflexivity concerning polar knowledge production, e.g. few discussions regarding the involvement of different systems of knowledge. As such, we question what image of polar research is conveyed.

Challenging scientific legitimation through politics

While accepting the normative premise of fieldwork permits, researchers in Germany involved in IPY projects have long raised concerns and critiques regarding the “practical obstacles to research due to increasing bureaucracy,” as it can be read in the welcoming speech of the 19^th International Polar Conference 1998.⁸⁾19th International Polar Convention in Bern (28.09.-02.10.1998) Begrüßung und Eröffnung durch den Vorsitzenden der Deutschen Gesellschaft für Polarforschung Prof. Dr. Georg Kleinschmidt (german, translation by authors, p. 79). Polarforschung 66 (1/2): 79–91. Essentially, these researchers argued that science conducted for the purpose of informing political decision-making – ‘the greater good’ – should, in turn, not be hindered by political regulations.

These complaints are by no means novel, with researchers frequently lamenting the bureaucratic hurdles of fieldwork as part of the IPY processes, particularly with regard to research permits.⁹⁾Ruck K et al. (2022) International access to research infrastructure in the Arctic. Polar Record 58(e30). The latter are considered a particularly tricky subject in the Arctic regions, where local and national research permits are often paired with Indigenous peoples’ approval processes. The Agreement on Enhancing International Arctic Scientific Cooperation appeared to have had little success in easing these permitting processes thus far.

In February 2022, however, these concerns quickly became superfluous when the Russian full-scale invasion of Ukraine upended the majority of international research efforts in the Russian Arctic.¹⁰⁾Kopra S (2023) Arctic Collaboration: The Arctic Institute’s Spring Series 2023. The Arctic Institute, 14 February, https://www.thearcticinstitute.org/arctic-collaboration-the-arctic-institute-spring-series-2023/. Accessed on 26 May 2025 While most Western nations stopped political and scientific cooperation with Russia following the outbreak of the war, some actors still hold on to the narrative of Arctic exceptionalism.

This narrative suggests that nations can always find a way to (scientifically) cooperate in the Arctic regions, even when they stand on opposite sides of geopolitical conflicts in other parts of the world.¹¹⁾Gricius G & Fitz EB (2022) Can Exceptionalism Withstand Crises? An Evaluation of the Arctic Council’s Response to Climate Change and Russia’s War on Ukraine. Global Studies Quarterly 2(3): 1–6. As such, this narrative has frequently been evoked to shore up the legitimacy of political and scientific cooperation in the Arctic regions, portraying the latter as bastions of peaceful and diplomatic exchange.

Looking Backwards and Forwards

As we are living through a period of geopolitical conflict that is frequently likened to a ‘new’ Cold War,¹²⁾Cornwall W (2022) ‘It Looks like Iron Curtain 2.’ Arctic research with Russia curtailed after Ukraine invasion: Sanctions upset joint studies on polar bears, salmon, and birds. Science. it should come as no surprise that polar political researchers and pundits are once more shining a light on these examples of scientific cooperation.

All IPYs reflect distinct geopolitical circumstances. Celebrating the 50^th anniversary of IPY-1, the “compilation and analysis of IPY-2 observations were restricted first by the economic situation and then, from the mid-1930s, by the rapid spreading of armed conflict across the world.”¹³⁾Bulkeley R (2010) The First Three Polar Years – A General Overview. In: Barr S & Lüdecke C (eds) (2010) The History of the International Polar Years (IPYs). Berlin Heidelberg: From Pole to Pole, Springer: 1–6. Looking back at the IPY-3 (1957-1958), historical accounts of this IPY/IGY hinge on the geopolitical conflict between the Cold War adversaries of the USSR and the United States.¹⁴⁾Lüdecke C (2004) The First International Polar Year (1882-83): A big science experiment with small science equipment. Proceedings of the International Commission on History of Meteorology 1(1): 55–64. IPY-4, in contrast, can be understood as a response to the perceived urgency of studying climate change in the polar regions.¹⁵⁾Carlson D (2010) Why Do We Have a 4^th IPY? In: Barr S & Lüdecke C (eds) (2010) The History of the International Polar Years (IPYs). Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer. 299–312.

Projecting ahead to the upcoming IPY-5 scheduled for 2032-2033, we can already observe the recurrence of Cold War narratives and the prominence of the geopolitical conflict involving Russia in the preparation process, with a researcher stating, “[i]f we define priorities, it’s for the whole Arctic,” highlighting the conundrum of defining research priorities for the entire Arctic while not being able to include new data or insights from and about large parts of the Arctic located in Russia.¹⁶⁾López-Blanco E et al. (2024) Towards an increasingly biased view on Arctic change. Nature Climate Change 14: 152–155.

In Germany’s recently released Arctic policy guidelines for the coming years, these concerns regarding a partially obstructed and conflict-driven view of the Arctic regions take center stage. Consequently, the guidelines emphasize the need to strengthen research collaboration and cooperation with non-Russian partners on critical issues, such as the climate crisis.

Dr. Jacqueline Wingens is an associate researcher at the German Institute of Development and Sustainability (IDOS). Svenja Holste is a PhD candidate at Bielefeld University’s Worldviews of Ice Project. Charlotte Gehrke is a researcher at the German Institute of Development and Sustainability (IDOS).