League of Nations
The League of Nations, abbreviated as LN or LoN, was an intergovernmental organisation founded on 10 January 1920 as a result of the Paris Peace Conference that ended the First World War. It was the first worldwide intergovernmental organisation whose principal mission was to maintain world peace, its primary goals, as stated in its Covenant, included preventing wars through collective security and disarmament and settling international disputes through negotiation and arbitration. Other issues in this and related treaties included labour conditions, just treatment of native inhabitants and drug trafficking, the arms trade, global health, prisoners of war, protection of minorities in Europe. At its greatest extent from 28 September 1934 to 23 February 1935, it had 58 members; the diplomatic philosophy behind the League represented a fundamental shift from the preceding hundred years. The League lacked its own armed force and depended on the victorious Great Powers of World War I to enforce its resolutions, keep to its economic sanctions, or provide an army when needed.
The Great Powers were reluctant to do so. Sanctions could hurt League members, so they were reluctant to comply with them. During the Second Italo-Abyssinian War, when the League accused Italian soldiers of targeting Red Cross medical tents, Benito Mussolini responded that "the League is well when sparrows shout, but no good at all when eagles fall out."After some notable successes and some early failures in the 1920s, the League proved incapable of preventing aggression by the Axis powers in the 1930s. The credibility of the organization was weakened by the fact that the United States never joined the League and the Soviet Union joined late and only briefly. Germany withdrew from the League, as did Japan, Italy and others; the onset of the Second World War showed that the League had failed its primary purpose, to prevent any future world war. The League lasted for 26 years; the concept of a peaceful community of nations had been proposed as far back as 1795, when Immanuel Kant's Perpetual Peace: A Philosophical Sketch outlined the idea of a league of nations to control conflict and promote peace between states.
Kant argued for the establishment of a peaceful world community, not in a sense of a global government, but in the hope that each state would declare itself a free state that respects its citizens and welcomes foreign visitors as fellow rational beings, thus promoting peaceful society worldwide. International co-operation to promote collective security originated in the Concert of Europe that developed after the Napoleonic Wars in the 19th century in an attempt to maintain the status quo between European states and so avoid war; this period saw the development of international law, with the first Geneva Conventions establishing laws dealing with humanitarian relief during wartime, the international Hague Conventions of 1899 and 1907 governing rules of war and the peaceful settlement of international disputes. As historians William H. Harbaugh and Ronald E. Powaski point out, Theodore Roosevelt was the first American President to call for an international league. At the acceptance for his Nobel Prize, Roosevelt said: "it would be a masterstroke if those great powers bent on peace would form a League of Peace."The forerunner of the League of Nations, the Inter-Parliamentary Union, was formed by the peace activists William Randal Cremer and Frédéric Passy in 1889 The IPU was founded with an international scope, with a third of the members of parliaments serving as members of the IPU by 1914.
Its foundational aims were to encourage governments to solve international disputes by peaceful means. Annual conferences were established to help governments refine the process of international arbitration, its structure was designed as a council headed by a president, which would be reflected in the structure of the League. At the start of the First World War the first schemes for international organisation to prevent future wars began to gain considerable public support in Great Britain and the United States. Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson, a British political scientist, coined the term "League of Nations" in 1914 and drafted a scheme for its organisation. Together with Lord Bryce, he played a leading role in the founding of the group of internationalist pacifists known as the Bryce Group the League of Nations Union; the group became more influential among the public and as a pressure group within the governing Liberal Party. In Dickinson's 1915 pamphlet After the War he wrote of his "League of Peace" as being an organisation for arbitration and conciliation.
He felt that the secret diplomacy of the early twentieth century had brought about war and thus could write that, "the impossibility of war, I believe, would be increased in proportion as the issues of foreign policy should be known to and controlled by public opinion." The ‘Proposals’ of the Bryce Group were circulated both in England and the US, where they had a profound influence on the nascent international movement. Within two weeks of the start of the war, feminists began to mobilise against the war. Having been barred from participating in prior peace organizations, American women formed a Women
Coast
The coast known as the coastline or seashore, is the area where land meets the sea or ocean, or a line that forms the boundary between the land and the ocean or a lake. A precise line that can be called a coastline cannot be determined due to the Coastline paradox; the term coastal zone is a region where interaction of the land processes occurs. Both the terms coast and coastal are used to describe a geographic location or region. Edinburgh for example is a city on the coast of Great Britain. A pelagic coast refers to a coast which fronts the open ocean, as opposed to a more sheltered coast in a gulf or bay. A shore, on the other hand, can refer to parts of land adjoining any large body of water, including oceans and lakes; the somewhat related term "" refers to the land alongside or sloping down to a river or body of water smaller than a lake. "Bank" is used in some parts of the world to refer to an artificial ridge of earth intended to retain the water of a river or pond. While many scientific experts might agree on a common definition of the term "coast", the delineation of the extents of a coast differ according to jurisdiction, with many scientific and government authorities in various countries differing for economic and social policy reasons.
According to the UN atlas, 44% of people live within 150 kilometres of the sea. Tides determine the range over which sediment is deposited or eroded. Areas with high tidal ranges allow waves to reach farther up the shore, areas with lower tidal ranges produce deposition at a smaller elevation interval; the tidal range is influenced by the shape of the coastline. Tides do not cause erosion by themselves. Waves erode coastline. Coastlines with longer shores have more room for the waves to disperse their energy, while coasts with cliffs and short shore faces give little room for the wave energy to be dispersed. In these areas the wave energy breaking against the cliffs is higher, air and water are compressed into cracks in the rock, forcing the rock apart, breaking it down. Sediment deposited by waves comes from eroded cliff faces and is moved along the coastline by the waves; this forms an cliffed coast. Sediment deposited by rivers is the dominant influence on the amount of sediment located on a coastline.
Today riverine deposition at the coast is blocked by dams and other human regulatory devices, which remove the sediment from the stream by causing it to be deposited inland. Like the ocean which shapes them, coasts are a dynamic environment with constant change; the Earth's natural processes sea level rises and various weather phenomena, have resulted in the erosion and reshaping of coasts as well as flooding and creation of continental shelves and drowned river valleys. The coast and its adjacent areas on and off shore are an important part of a local ecosystem: the mixture of fresh water and salt water in estuaries provides many nutrients for marine life. Salt marshes and beaches support a diversity of plants and insects crucial to the food chain; the high level of biodiversity creates a high level of biological activity, which has attracted human activity for thousands of years. More and more of the world's people live in coastal regions. Many major cities have port facilities; some landlocked places have achieved port status by building canals.
The coast is a frontier that nations have defended against military invaders and illegal migrants. Fixed coastal defenses have long been erected in many nations and coastal countries have a navy and some form of coast guard. Coasts those with beaches and warm water, attract tourists. In many island nations such as those of the Mediterranean, South Pacific and Caribbean, tourism is central to the economy. Coasts offer recreational activities such as swimming, surfing and sunbathing. Growth management can be a challenge for coastal local authorities who struggle to provide the infrastructure required by new residents. Coasts face many human-induced environmental impacts; the human influence on climate change is thought to contribute to an accelerated trend in sea level rise which threatens coastal habitats. Pollution can occur from a number of sources: industrial debris. Fishing has declined due to habitat degradation, trawling and climate change. Since the growth of global fishing enterprises after the 1950s, intensive fishing has spread from a few concentrated areas to encompass nearly all fisheries.
The scraping of the ocean floor in bottom dragging is devastating to coral and other long-lived species that do not recover quickly. This destruction alters the functioning of the ecosystem and can permanently alter species composition and biodiversity. Bycatch, the capture of unintended species in the course of fishing, is returned to the ocean only to die from injuries or exposure. Bycatch represents about a quarter of all marine catch. In the case of shrimp capture, the bycatch is five times larger, it is believed that melting Arctic ice will cause sea levels to rise and flood coas
Byzantine Empire
The Byzantine Empire referred to as the Eastern Roman Empire or Byzantium, was the continuation of the Roman Empire in its eastern provinces during Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages, when its capital city was Constantinople. It survived the fragmentation and fall of the Western Roman Empire in the 5th century AD and continued to exist for an additional thousand years until it fell to the Ottoman Turks in 1453. During most of its existence, the empire was the most powerful economic and military force in Europe. Both the terms "Byzantine Empire" and "Eastern Roman Empire" are historiographical terms created after the end of the realm. Several signal events from the 4th to 6th centuries mark the period of transition during which the Roman Empire's Greek East and Latin West diverged. Constantine I reorganised the empire, made Constantinople the new capital, legalised Christianity. Under Theodosius I, Christianity became the Empire's official state religion and other religious practices were proscribed.
Under the reign of Heraclius, the Empire's military and administration were restructured and adopted Greek for official use in place of Latin. Thus, although the Roman state continued and its traditions were maintained, modern historians distinguish Byzantium from ancient Rome insofar as it was centred on Constantinople, oriented towards Greek rather than Latin culture, characterised by Eastern Orthodox Christianity; the borders of the empire evolved over its existence, as it went through several cycles of decline and recovery. During the reign of Justinian I, the empire reached its greatest extent after reconquering much of the Roman western Mediterranean coast, including North Africa and Rome itself, which it held for two more centuries; the Byzantine–Sasanian War of 602–628 exhausted the empire's resources and contributed to major territorial losses during the Early Muslim conquests of the 7th century, when it lost its richest provinces and Syria, to the Arab caliphate. During the Macedonian dynasty, the empire expanded again and experienced the two-century long Macedonian Renaissance, which came to an end with the loss of much of Asia Minor to the Seljuk Turks after the Battle of Manzikert in 1071.
This battle opened the way for the Turks to settle in Anatolia. The empire recovered during the Komnenian restoration, by the 12th century Constantinople was the largest and wealthiest European city. However, it was delivered a mortal blow during the Fourth Crusade, when Constantinople was sacked in 1204 and the territories that the empire governed were divided into competing Byzantine Greek and Latin realms. Despite the eventual recovery of Constantinople in 1261, the Byzantine Empire remained only one of several small rival states in the area for the final two centuries of its existence, its remaining territories were progressively annexed by the Ottomans over the 15th century. The Fall of Constantinople to the Ottoman Empire in 1453 ended the Byzantine Empire; the last of the imperial Byzantine successor states, the Empire of Trebizond, would be conquered by the Ottomans eight years in the 1461 Siege of Trebizond. The first use of the term "Byzantine" to label the years of the Roman Empire was in 1557, when the German historian Hieronymus Wolf published his work Corpus Historiæ Byzantinæ, a collection of historical sources.
The term comes from "Byzantium", the name of the city of Constantinople before it became Constantine's capital. This older name of the city would be used from this point onward except in historical or poetic contexts; the publication in 1648 of the Byzantine du Louvre, in 1680 of Du Cange's Historia Byzantina further popularised the use of "Byzantine" among French authors, such as Montesquieu. However, it was not until the mid-19th century that the term came into general use in the Western world; the Byzantine Empire was known to its inhabitants as the "Roman Empire", the "Empire of the Romans", "Romania", the "Roman Republic", as "Rhōmais". The inhabitants called themselves Romaioi and as late as the 19th century Greeks referred to Modern Greek as Romaiika "Romaic." After 1204 when the Byzantine Empire was confined to its purely Greek provinces the term'Hellenes' was used instead. While the Byzantine Empire had a multi-ethnic character during most of its history and preserved Romano-Hellenistic traditions, it became identified by its western and northern contemporaries with its predominant Greek element.
The occasional use of the term "Empire of the Greeks" in the West to refer to the Eastern Roman Empire and of the Byzantine Emperor as Imperator Graecorum were used to separate it from the prestige of the Roman Empire within the new kingdoms of the West. No such distinction existed in the Islamic and Slavic worlds, where the Empire was more straightforwardly seen as the continuation of the Roman Empire. In the Islamic world, the Roman Empire was known as Rûm; the name millet-i Rûm, or "Roman nation," was used by the Ottomans through the 20th century to refer to the former subjects of the Byzantine Empire
Humboldt Current
The Humboldt Current called the Peru Current, is a cold, low-salinity ocean current that flows north along the western coast of South America. It is an eastern boundary current flowing in the direction of the equator, extends 500–1,000 km offshore; the Humboldt Current is named after the Prussian naturalist Alexander von Humboldt. In 1846, von Humboldt reported measurements of the cold-water current in his book Cosmos; the current extends from the southern Chile to northern Peru where cold, upwelled waters intersect warm tropical waters to form the Equatorial Front. Sea surface temperatures off the coast of Peru, around 5th parallel south, reach temperatures as low as 16 °C; this is uncharacteristic of tropical waters, as most other regions have temperatures measuring above 25 °C. Upwelling brings nutrients to the surface, which support phytoplankton and increase biological productivity; the Humboldt Current is a productive ecosystem. It is the most productive eastern boundary current system, it accounts for 18-20% of the total worldwide marine fish catch.
The species are pelagic: sardines and jack mackerel. The system's high productivity supports other important fishery resources as well as marine mammals and seabirds. Periodically, the upwelling that drives the system's productivity is disrupted by the El Niño-Southern Oscillation event with large social and economical impacts; the Humboldt has a considerable cooling influence on the climate of Chile and Ecuador. It is largely responsible for the aridity of Atacama Desert in northern Chile and coastal areas of Peru and of the aridity of southern Ecuador. Marine air is cooled by the current and thus; the trade winds are the primary drivers of the Humboldt Current circulation. Variability in this system is driven by latitudinal shifts between the Intertropical Convergent Zone and the trade winds in the north. Shifts within the South Pacific High at mid-latitudes, as well as cyclonic storms and movement of the Southern Westerlies southward contribute to system changes. Atmospheric variability off central Chile is enhanced by the aggravation of coastal low pressure systems trapped between the marine boundary layer and the coastal mountains.
This is prominent poleward from 27th parallel south to 42nd parallel south. The Humboldt current, occupying the upper ocean, flows equatorward carrying fresh, cold Sub-Antarctic surface water northward, along the outskirts of the subtropical gyre; the main flow of the current veers offshore in southern Peru, as a weaker limb continues to flow equatorward. Around 18th parallel south the fresh, cold waters begin to mix with the warm, high salinity Subtropical Surface waters; this collision causes partial subductions. Within this region, the equatorial undercurrent flows eastward along the equator, feeding the Peru-Chile undercurrent that moves poleward. Off the coast of central Chile, there is a coastal transition zone, characterized by high eddy kinetic energy; this energy forms mesoscale eddies. The CTZ has three distinct regions within its boundaries: high chlorophyll-a concentrations in wide regions off the coast of Peru, high chlorophyll-a concentrations in wide regions off the coast of Chile, high chlorophyll-a concentrations in narrow regions off the coast of northern Chile.
High chlorophyll-a concentrations are found within 50 km of the coast. The limb of the HCS that veers off the coast of Peru creates a decrease in ventilation within the system; this lack of ventilation is the primary driver of an intense oxygen minimum zone, formed in the sub-surface to intermediate depths. In the north, the EUC ventilates the OMZ, in the south the PCU advects low oxygen waters southward towards northern Chile; this OMZ is the fourth largest permeant hypoxic zone in the world's oceans. It occupies an area about 2.18 ± 0.66 × 106 km3. The core of this zone is centered off Peru, creating a shallow upper boundary that reaches from about 100 m down to 600 m. Another factor contributing to the OMZ is sinking and decay of primary productive resources; the OMZ forces many organisms to stay near the surface where nutrients and oxygen are obtainable. The presence of a shallow OMZ restricts the migration of zooplankton within the water column. Between 0 and 600 m, many species of zooplankton occupy this space within the OMZ.
This allows for a substantial exchange of carbon between the euphotic layer and the OMZ. 75% of the total zooplankton biomass move in and out of the OMZ. The OMZ serves as a refuge for organisms that can live in hypoxic conditions. Coastal upwelling is the main factor contributing to the high biological productivity of the Humboldt current. Upwelling within the current is not uniform across the entire system. Three notable upwelling subsystems are produced by this current: seasonal upwelling in Chile only during the spring and summer, because of the displacement of the subtropical center of high pressure during the period January–March, upwelling "shadow", less productive, but still large in northern Chile and Southern Peru, productive year-round upwelling in Peru; the upwelling shadow identified between 35°S and 15°S is caused by the oligotrophic subtropical gyre impinging on the coast. This creates a narrow, but productive, upwelling zone. Due to the upwelling zones within the Humboldt current, biological diversity is high.
The Humboldt Current is considered a Class I productive (>300 gC/
Mare Liberum
Mare Liberum is a book in Latin on international law written by the Dutch jurist and philosopher Hugo Grotius, first published in 1609. In The Free Sea, Grotius formulated the new principle that the sea was international territory and all nations were free to use it for seafaring trade; the disputation was directed towards the Portuguese Mare clausum policy and their claim of monopoly on the East Indian Trade. Grotius wrote the treatise while being a counsel to the Dutch East India Company over the seizing of the Santa Catarina Portuguese carrack issue. Grotius' argument was that the sea was free to all, that nobody had the right to deny others access to it. In chapter I, he laid out his objective, to demonstrate "briefly and that the Dutch have the right to sail to the East Indies", "to engage in trade with the people there", he went on to describe how he based his argument on what he called the "most specific and unimpeachable axiom of the Law of Nations, called a primary rule or first principle, the spirit of, self-evident and immutable", namely that: "Every nation is free to travel to every other nation, to trade with it."
From this premise, Grotius argued that this self-evident and immutable right to travel and to trade required a right of innocent passage over land, a similar right of innocent passage at sea. The sea, was more like air than land, was, as opposed to land, common property of all: The air belongs to this class of things for two reasons. First, it is not susceptible of occupation. For the same reasons the sea is common to all, because it is so limitless that it cannot become a possession of any one, because it is adapted for the use of all, whether we consider it from the point of view of navigation or of fisheries. Mare Liberum was published by Elzevier in the spring of 1609, it has been translated into English twice. The first translation was by Richard Hakluyt, was completed some time between the publication of Mare Liberum in 1609 and Hakluyt's death in 1616. However, Hakluyt's translation was only published for the first time in 2004 under the title The Free Sea as part of Liberty Fund's "Natural Law and Enlightenment Classics" series.
The second translation was by Ralph Van Deman Magoffin, associate professor of Greek and Roman History at Johns Hopkins University. This translation was a part of a debate on free shipping during the First World War, was published by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and Oxford University Press in 1916 as The Freedom of the Seas, Or, The Right Which Belongs to the Dutch to Take Part in the East Indian Trade; the First Edition of Mare Liberum in the de Koninklijke Bibliotheek The 1648 Ex Officina ELZEVIRIANA edition of Mare Liberum, Sive De iure quod Batavis competit ad Indicana commercia Dissertatio, republished by Elsevier B. V. in 2013 with ISBN 978-1-4832-8303-6 Mare Liberum and The Freedom of the Seas – HTML and PDF versions at Liberty Fund The Freedom of the Seas – formatted PDF at the Wikimedia Commons Borschberg, Hugo Grotius, the Portuguese and Free Trade in the East Indies and Leiden: Singapore University Press and KITLV Press, 2011. Ittersum, Martine Julia van, "Preparing Mare Liberum for the Press: Hugo Grotius’ Rewriting of Chapter 12 of De iure praedae in November–December 1608", New Series, 27–8: 246–80
Bangladesh
Bangladesh the People's Republic of Bangladesh, is a sovereign country in South Asia. It shares land borders with Myanmar; the country's maritime territory in the Bay of Bengal is equal to the size of its land area. Bangladesh is the world's eighth most populous country as well as its most densely-populated, to the exclusion of small island nations and city-states. Dhaka is largest city, followed by Chittagong, which has the country's largest port. Bangladesh forms the largest and easternmost part of the Bengal region. Bangladeshis include people from a range of ethnic religions. Bengalis, who speak the official Bengali language, make up 98% of the population; the politically dominant Bengali Muslims make the nation the world's third largest Muslim-majority country. Islam is the official religion of Bangladesh. Most of Bangladesh is covered by the largest delta on Earth; the country has 8,046 km of inland waterways. Highlands with evergreen forests are found in the northeastern and southeastern regions of the country.
Bangladesh has a coral reef. The longest unbroken natural sea beach of the world, Cox's Bazar Beach, is located in the southeast, it is home to the Sundarbans, the largest mangrove forest in the world. The country's biodiversity includes a vast array of plant and wildlife, including endangered Bengal tigers, the national animal; the Greeks and Romans identified the region as Gangaridai, a powerful kingdom of the historical Indian subcontinent, in the 3rd century BCE. Archaeological research has unearthed several ancient cities in Bangladesh, which enjoyed international trade links for millennia; the Bengal Sultanate and Mughal Bengal transformed the region into a cosmopolitan Islamic imperial power between the 14th and 18th centuries. The region was home to many principalities; as the Mughal Empire's wealthiest province, Bangladesh as part of the Bengal Subah was worth 12% of the world's GDP, larger than the entirety of western Europe. It was a notable center of the global muslin and silk trade.
As part of British India, the region was influenced by the Bengali renaissance and played an important role in anti-colonial movements. The Partition of British India made East Bengal a part of the Dominion of Pakistan; the region witnessed the Bengali Language Movement in 1952 and the Bangladesh Liberation War in 1971. After independence was achieved, a parliamentary republic was established. A presidential government was in place between 1975 and 1990, followed by a return to parliamentary democracy; the country continues to face challenges in the areas of poverty, education and corruption. Bangladesh is a developing nation. Listed as one of the Next Eleven, its economy ranks 43rd in terms of nominal gross domestic product and 29th in terms of purchasing power parity, it is one of the largest textile exporters in the world. Its major trading partners are the European Union, the United States, India, Japan and Singapore. With its strategically vital location between South and Southeast Asia, Bangladesh is an important promoter of regional connectivity and cooperation.
It is a founding member of SAARC, BIMSTEC, the Bangladesh-China-India-Myanmar Forum for Regional Cooperation and the Bangladesh Bhutan India Nepal Initiative. It is a member of the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation, Commonwealth of Nations, the Developing 8 Countries, the OIC, the Indian-Ocean Rim Association, the Non Aligned Movement, the Group of 77 and the World Trade Organization. Bangladesh is one of the largest contributors to United Nations peacekeeping forces; the etymology of Bangladesh can be traced to the early 20th century, when Bengali patriotic songs, such as Namo Namo Namo Bangladesh Momo by Kazi Nazrul Islam and Aaji Bangladesher Hridoy by Rabindranath Tagore, used the term. The term Bangladesh was written as two words, Bangla Desh, in the past. Starting in the 1950s, Bengali nationalists used the term in political rallies in East Pakistan; the term Bangla is a major name for both the Bengali language. The earliest known usage of the term is the Nesari plate in 805 AD; the term Vangaladesa is found in 11th-century South Indian records.
The term gained official status during the Sultanate of Bengal in the 14th century. Shamsuddin Ilyas Shah proclaimed himself as the first "Shah of Bangala" in 1342; the word Bangla became the most common name for the region during the Islamic period. The Portuguese referred to the region as Bengala in the 16th century; the origins of the term Bangla are unclear, with theories pointing to a Bronze Age proto-Dravidian tribe, the Austric word "Bonga", the Iron Age Vanga Kingdom. The Indo-Aryan suffix Desh is derived from the Sanskrit word deśha, which means "land" or "country". Hence, the name Bangladesh means "Land of Bengal" or "Country of Bengal". Stone Age tools found in Bangladesh indicate human habitation for over 20,000 years, remnants of Copper Age settlements date back 4,000 years. Ancient Bengal was settled by Austroasiatics, Tibeto-Burmans and Indo-Aryans in consecutive waves of migration. Archaeological evidence confirms that by the second millennium BCE, rice-cultivating communities inhabited the region.
By the 11th century people lived in systemically-aligned housing, buried their dead, manufactured copper ornaments and black and red pottery. The Ganges and Meghna rivers were natural arteries for communication and transportation, estuaries on the Bay of Bengal permit
Fridtjof Nansen Institute
The Fridtjof Nansen Institute is an independent research foundation specializing in research on international environmental and resource management issues, including political and legal aspects. The institute is named after the Norwegian Arctic explorer, scientist and Nobel Peace Prize laureate Fridtjof Nansen, it is situated in Polhøgda, in Bærum municipality outside Oslo. The Fridtjof Nansen Institute has 30-40 scholarly employees. Most of them come from the fields of political science and law, but historians and anthropologists are represented among the research staff. Geir Hønneland has served as FNI Director since 2015. FNI activities include academic studies as well as contract work for research and evaluations. Current FNI research has seven focal points: Global environmental governance and law Climate change Law of the Sea and marine affairs Biodiversity and genetic resources Polar and Russian politics European energy and environment Chinese energy and environment The institute was established in 1958, under the name of'the Fridtjof Nansen Foundation'.
This foundation was set up to take care of the buildings and grounds at Polhøgda, where Nansen lived and worked until his death in 1930, to ensure that Polhøgda would be used to uphold the legacy and promote the focal points of Nansen's life and activities. In line with Nansen's own scientific interests, the institute began by focusing on polar/marine issues as well as the law of the sea. Over the years, FNI has broadened its scope, in terms of academic disciplines, geographical spread and thematic issues. In recent years, FNI has gained considerable scientific recognition for its research work connected to the Anthropocene, the Arctic and Antarctic regions, climate change and climate policy, the law of the sea, the management of bio-diversity and genetic resources. FNI is ranked as Norway's most productive independent research institute – a position it has been accorded every year since 2013. In 2017 FNI was named'best European think tank on energy and environment' by Prospect Magazine in its annual Think Tank Awards.
This was the first time a Norwegian research institute was awarded the prestigious prize, presented to'give credit to the most original and rigorous work on the most pressing challenges facing people and businesses today', according to the organizers. Previous winners of the Think Tank Awards include such renowned establishments as the Brookings Institution, the RAND Corporation and the Centre for European Policy Studies. Several acclaimed scholars have been associated with and held leading positions at FNI, including social scientist Stein Rokkan, philosopher Arne Næss as well as sociologist and peace and conflict researcher Johan Galtung. Recent directors: Finn Sollie Willy Østreng Kåre Willoch Willy Østreng Arild Moe Peter Johan Schei Leiv Lunde Arild Moe Geir Hønneland Official website
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