Timo Koivurova was elected to the ARCUS Board of Directors in 2012. His three-year term on the Board will end in 2015.
Timo is a Research Professor and the Director of the Northern Institute for Environmental and Minority Law for the Arctic Centre at the University of Lapland. He is also a Docent of International Law for the Faculty of Law, Economics and Business Administration at the University of Eastern Finland, and for the Faculty of Law at the University of Turku.
Timo has specialized in various aspects of international law applicable in the Arctic and Antarctic regions. His research work addresses the interplay between different levels of environmental law, the legal status of indigenous peoples, the Law of the Sea in the Arctic waters, integrated maritime policy in the European Union (EU), the role of law in mitigating/adapting to climate change, and the role of the Arctic Council in view of its future challenges and the possibilities for an Arctic treaty. He has been involved as an expert in several international processes globally and in the Arctic region. Timo is a member of the International Union for Conservation of Nature's (IUCN)World Commission on Environmental Law (WCEL) and has been invited by the Norwegian Research Council to serve as a member in the steering committee, which oversees large research programs. He was recently elected as a co-chair of the international environmental law interest group of the American Society of International Law. Professor Koivurova leads a project on Arctic environmental impact assessment. He has also served as the senior expert in strategic impact assessment in the Arctic, which was recently completed for the EU Commission.
Timo remarks that, "The Arctic is undergoing an intense bio-physical and socio-economic transformation, driven primarily by climate change and economic globalization. There is an urgent need for social sciences to understand the change human societies and various governance levels are facing, and to come up with ideas on how to advance sustainable human development in the Arctic.
It is important that the overall change that we are facing in the Arctic is done with concerted collaborations between various sciences, a task in which ARCUS is of immense importance."
Timo Koivurova can be contacted through email at timo.koivurova [at] ulapland.fi.