Other actors on Svalbard

The Governor of Svalbard

The Governor of Svalbard is both Chief of Police and has the same authority as a County Governor on mainland Norway. The Governor is also the principal environmental protection authority in Svalbard. The Environmental Protection Department is responsible for:

• Nature supervision and environmental monitoring
• Safeguarding the environmental aspects of planning and construction, business enterprises and interventions in nature
• Management of protected areas, flora and fauna
• Oil spill preparedness, pollution control and waste disposal
• Registration, monitoring and maintenance of cultural heritage sites
• Control of import and export of animals and registration of domestic animals

Svalbard Integrated Arctic Earth Observing System (SIOS)

SIOS is an international observing system for measurements on and around Svalbard addressing Earth System Science questions. Important components of SIOS include:

• The observing system
• The knowledge centre
• The working groups
• The SIOS consortium
• SIOS data access point
• SIOS open calls and opportunities
• SIOS e-learning platform
• SIOS observation facility catalogue

Svalbard Research Office (SRO)

Svalbard Research Office is jointly operated by the Research Council of Norway and the Norwegian Polar Institute. The office is located in the Svalbard Research Park in Longyearbyen.

The Office will have a coordinating and advisory role for research actors and Norwegian authorities, and will thereby stimulate increased collaboration between research actors, both in Norway and internationally, in line with the mandate given by the Ministry of Climate and Environment and the Ministry of Education and Research in 2025.

The Research Council of Norway

The Research Council of Norway administers Svalbard specific seed money through two funding programmes:

• Svalbard Strategic Grant (SSG): aims at establishing new collaborative research networks on Svalbard, developing existing networks, increasing mobility between research communities on Svalbard, and making research data more accessible.
• Arctic Field Grant (AFG): awarded to students and researchers and covers additional costs for conducting field work on Svalbard and Jan Mayen.

Both of these programmes have application deadlines annually.