The changing of the guard

The Ministry of Climate and Environment has appointed Kari Nygaard as chairperson of the Fram Centre’s highest governing body, the Steering Committee of FRAM— High North Research Centre for Climate and the Environment. She takes over the role from Bo Andersen.  

A few years as chair of the Fram Centre’s Steering Committee 

The strongest feeling I have after a little more than five years in this leadership role is gratitude for having had the opportunity to be part of it all. It has been a privilege to work with all the people, especially Helge M Markusson and Kathryn Donnelly in the Fram Centre secretariat, and the members of the Steering Committee during these years. In addition, the past few years have shown me the prodigious breadth of interdisciplinary expertise among the institutions and researchers involved in the collaboration.

But the most important question is whether we have achieved what the Fram Centre collaboration was aiming for. My understanding was that the ministry wanted to strengthen the interdisciplinarity and breadth of the collaboration and move it out of silos that the old flagship programmes were becoming. Subjectively speaking, I believe that the answer is at least partly yes. In particular, I have received a lot of positive feedback that interdisciplinarity, though at times imposed, has been extremely useful for most of the major programmes. The five-year major programmes have ensured long-term continuity, but may have limited flexibility.

Both the major programmes and the smaller projects have produced a great deal of good research. However, it remains to be seen whether the major programmes have been scientifically successful. The plan is to have them externally evaluated after they are completed. We must also acknowledge that these major programmes have demanded a great deal of organisation, which has at times been challenging. The scope of this work has been underestimated by me, the Steering Committee and the researchers themselves. The lessons we have learned will hopefully be put to use in future programmes.

I am pleased that the Fram Centre collaboration has established a well-functioning dissemination group under Helge’s leadership, and that we now have a functional reference group, thanks to Kathryn’s efforts.

The members of the Steering Committee have skilfully and adeptly formed an overview of the challenges. There have been very few votes in the Steering Committee; we have consistently tried to operate according to the principle of consensus. That means no one gets exactly what they want, but any dissatisfaction is evenly and acceptably distributed among the members of the group.

Perhaps our most hard-won achievement has been a significantly greater understanding that the research conducted by the collaboration must be relevant for environmental management. I feel that the researchers at the Fram Centre have largely embraced this idea. The collaboration should not be doing the kind of research that can be done in a project funded by open sources—it should be policy-driven.

With support from the Research Heads’ Group, the Steering Committee is working through the first months of 2026 to prepare calls for new programmes and projects for the period starting in 2027. The work has begun, and I am convinced that the Steering Committee, under Kari Nygaard’s leadership, will develop the current situation into something even better than what we have achieved during my tenure.

Thank you for these years, and thank you to the Ministry of Climate and Environment for their willingness to fund this collaboration.

Bo Andersen 

Exciting

My name is Kari Nygaard, and I have had the pleasure of serving on what was the highest governing body (the general assembly) of the Fram Centre for 12 years. I have a strong interest in the Arctic and the Fram Centre, and I have had the pleasure of participating both through NILU (and NIVA) and through board positions at the Norwegian Space Agency.

I have worked at several institutes, starting at the Institute of Marine Research in the late 1980s, and then moving to NIVA, where I earned a PhD in marine microbiology. After twenty years at NIVA, I moved to NILU, where I led the institute for 12 years. I now run my own company.

I have extensive experience serving on boards in academia, the Research Council of Norway, the Norwegian Space Agency and Kjeller Innovasjon. In addition, I have held several international board positions.

It will be exciting to lead the research work that is primarily funded by the Ministry of Climate and Environment. The Fram Centre is an important collaboration among 21 members with strong expertise in climate- and environment-related research. The work is extremely important for the management of the Arctic and requires close collaboration among researchers from the member institutions of the Fram Centre.