Arctic Marine Shipping Assessment

The Institute of the North, co-edited (along with Senior Fellow Dr. Lawson Brigham) the Arctic Marine Shipping Assessment, a major project of the Arctic Council under the Protection of Marine Environment (PAME) working group. This assessment is a direct follow-up to the Arctic Marine Strategic Plan and the Arctic Climate Impact Assessment, two key Arctic Council reports.

The eight Arctic states will work together to enhance Arctic marine safety, protect the marine environment and expand Arctic marine infrastructure as a result of approving the Arctic Marine Shipping Assessment 2009 Report at the Arctic Council Ministerial meeting in Norway.

In the Tromsø Declaration, the Arctic states noted “that increased marine access and navigation in the Arctic Ocean call for development and implementation of suitable national and international regulations, where appropriate, to advance the safety of Arctic marine shipping, including marine pollution prevention, reduce accident risk and facilitate effective emergency response.”

The council is urging its member states to cooperate with the International Maritime Organization on development of relevant measures to reduce the environmental impacts of shipping in Arctic waters.

According to the declaration, the ongoing IMO work to update the Guidelines for Ships Operating in Arctic Ice-covered Waters needs to be completed, with “its relevant parts be made mandatory and global IMO ship safety and pollution prevention conventions be augmented with specific mandatory requirements or other provisions for ship construction, design, equipment, crewing, training and operations aided at safety and protection of the Arctic environment.”

The assessment is intended to provide a baseline data of shipping activity in the Arctic for 2004, potential scenarios concerning Arctic shipping for 2020 and 2050, as well as other critical information.

 

Type the title hereIn April 2008, the Institute helped support a scenario creation exercise under the direction of the Global Business Network, the world's foremost scenario consultancy based in San Francisco. Scenarios do not claim to be predictions. The point is not to gather evidence for some induction about a most probable future. The point is rather to explore and understand more deeply a number of different possibilities in order to make better reasoned choices among them. The product generated by this workshop will be incorporated into the AMSA. Links are provided to information concerning the workshop.