Much of the Arctic consists today of pristine or only slightly modified ecosystems where indigenous people still maintain traditional values and life styles. It is an important source of oil and gas in an energy-hungry world, and it is therefore subject to perturbations associated with these extractive industries. Arctic landscapes are sensitive to geomorphic disturbances and communities once destroyed are difficult to reproduce. Projections by general models of climate change continue to show the Arctic as the region where the effects of change will be felt first, and our ability to achieve conservation and management objectives in the Arctic presumes a detailed knowledge of biodiversity for monitoring, as a baseline against which changes can be measured and evaluated.

The aims for our year at CAS have been:
• To establish an extended, truly panarctic network and to reinvigorate the Panarctic Flora (PAF) project, a task that is urgent if we are to understand the distribution and conservation of botanical diversity in the Arctic.
• To define “the Arctic” for the purpose of a scientific flora, and to decide upon zonal and sectorial subdivisions; to reach a consensus species concept by which to unify Russian, American, and West European traditions, which have, to this point, been highly divergent.
• To start the concrete work on a number of difficult plant groups where it is obvious that the different traditions have led to incompatible solutions.
• To formalise project structure, elect steering committee and editorial board, etc., in order to guarantee the fulfilling of, firstly, a consensus check-list and, secondly, a full scientific flora.

During the CAS project, the Panarctic Flora Project was re-established, and an extensive network of American, Nordic and Russian botanists has been created, an important and necessary step to understand the distribution and conservation of botanical diversity in the Arctic.