The Arctic: Population: About 4 million people, in eight countries: Canada, Denmark (Greenland), Iceland, Norway, Sweden, Finland, Russia, and the United States. Governance: The eight countries have separate governments. They cooperate through informal arrangements like the Arctic Council, which includes six Indigenous Peoples Organizations as members alongside the eight country members.

The Antarctic: Population: No native population—though thousands of people travel there each year for scientific research, tourism, and fishing. Governance: The Antarctic Treaty System, established in 1959. It bans military activity and ignores claims for territory on Antarctica, and prevents natural resource exploitation like mining and oil & gas exploration.

This poster is a part of a set of five posters for the International Polar Year, IPY 2007-2009. As editorial objectives, we - the editorial staff - have tried to address the questions: Why, and how, are the Polar Regions and polar research important to all people on Earth? Our goals has been that these should be a broad sample of polar issues, and that they would work as a "textbook" on a wall. High-school age students has been identified as the main target group. Each poster stands on its own but is recognizable as part of the series through the common design template. The lifespan of these products is not limited to the IPY period (March 2007 - March 2009) and the ambition is that these will be useful beyond this period.

The Polar People poster gives background and overview information presenting the diversity of issues related to human society and research in the Polar Regions.

This poster has been prepared with the intent for printing by any interested party. The poster can be downloaded for free and unrestricted. Please see http://www.grida.no/polar/ipy/2842.aspx for more information