Arctic Council Working Group on the Protection of the Marine Environment

14 February 2019

PAME is one of six Arctic Council working groups. PAME was first established under the 1991 Arctic Environmental Protection Strategy and was continued by the 1996 Ottawa Charter that established the Arctic Council.

PAME is the focal point of the Arctic Council’s activities related to the protection and sustainable use of the Arctic marine environment and provides a unique forum for collaboration on a wide range of activities in this regard.

Deputy Secretary, Philip Stamp, attended the working group meeting from 4-7 February 2019 in Malmo (Sweden) where work on finalising several reports and proposals took place ahead of their May ministerial.

Of particular interest to OSPAR were:

• The finalisation of the state of knowledge report on underwater noise in the Arctic, led by Canada and the World Wildlife Fund (WWF);

• A follow up proposal on underwater noise for inclusion in the PAME work plan (2019-21); the first phase of which would use ship tracking data to generate noise maps for the Arctic region;

• The finalisation of the desk top study on marine litter in the Arctic on which OSPAR was co-lead;

• The agreement of a proposal for phase II of the marine litter project, with a focus on developing a regional action plan; the existing co-leads (including OSPAR) would remain but with the addition of all Arctic countries.

The meeting also announced the finalisation and launch of an Arctic Ship Traffic Data website.

OSPAR's latest assessment of impulsive noise can be found here

OSPAR's latest assessments of marine litter can be found here

Click here to read OSPAR's Marine Litter Regional Action Plan