Preserve the ice memory for future generations

The mission of the Ice Memory Foundation, together with all its partners, goes beyond the mere preservation of ice cores, and encompasses a broader approach to preserving, for the benefit of future generations, an exceptional scientific, environmental and historical heritage.

Ice Memory raises questions that go beyond the realm of scientific cooperation alone. The very-long-term preservation of these archives, their transmission to future generations and ensuring their accessibility to the scientific community require, in fact, a legal framework based on clearly established principles, rights and obligations, as well as institutional mechanisms that can ensure their long-term continuity.

It is therefore necessary to enshrine the fundamental principles underpinning Ice memory within a sustainable international legal framework, designed to guarantee the continuity beyond the Foundation. This framework must ensure, over the long term, the protection of the archives, both ice cores and data, as well as the conditions for their preservation, access and transmission.

Advocating at the international and political levels

Supported by UNESCO and recognized under the Antarctic Treaty System, the Ice Memory Foundation engages nations and international institutions to raise awareness of the urgent need to preserve glacial archives.
We call on nations to support Ice Memory by:

• Facilitating access to glaciers through diplomacy, logistics, and support to scientific teams
• Enabling ice-core drilling for science and heritage preservation
• Supporting the long-term conservation of heritage ice cores in the Ice Memory Sanctuary in Antarctica

Mobilizing the scientific community to contribute to the ice core heritage

The engagement of the global scientific community is essential to building the Ice Memory Heritage.

• IPICS (International Partnerships in Ice Core Sciences) has recognized the Ice Memory initiative since 2015 and encourages glaciologists to contribute.
• Scientists from Europe, North America, Asia, and South America have endorsed the initiative and support its strategic and operational development.
• Researchers from China, Japan, Brazil, Sweden, Norway, New Zealand, UK, Switzerland, Italy, France, and the United States are actively involved.