The Ecologic Institute and the Atlantic Council, through their Emerging Leaders in Environmental and Energy Policy Network (ELEEP), created the Arctic Climate Change Emerging Leaders (ACCEL) Fellowship in the spring of 2014. The Fellowship aims to train the next generation of Arctic Ambassadors and is a unique summer opportunity for undergraduate and graduate students, as well as recent graduates, interested in building careers focused on international security, environmental issues, shipping and trade, energy and natural resources, or public relations and diplomacy. First outcomes are now available at the ACCEL website.

Over the course of the summer, ACCEL Fellows work at the nexus between policy and communications to raise public awareness about critical but under-discussed issues in the Arctic using intuitive, easy-to-understand mediums such as video, infographics, podcasts, and blogs. Substantively, the program focuses on transatlantic cooperation in addressing the following challenges:

1. The human impacts of climate change and Arctic development on indigenous populations;
2. Economic development, including resource exploration and extraction, and Arctic shipping;
3. The science of Arctic climate change and environmental implications; and
4. Geopolitics and security challenges in the Arctic due to climate change.

In the program's first year, the Fellows will work in partnership with Ecologic Institute's Arctic Summer College, as well as partners and experts around the globe, to produce dynamic content that will be compiled into an "Arctic 101" series. The fellowship will conclude with a special event at the Arctic Circle Conference in Reykjavik, Iceland.

Fellows were selected via an online competition that engaged over 115,000 people worldwide. To follow their work and learn more about the fellowship and the competition you can follow the program on twitter @ArcticAmb or on Facebook. See below for more information on the fellows. The first two Fellows began their Fellowship in mid-June 2014.