| Summary: | The 2015 Progress Report on Implementation of the 2009 Arctic Marine Shipping Assessment (AMSA) Report Recommendations (the 2015 Progress Report) is the third biennial effort by the Arctic Council’s Working Group on the Protection of the Arctic Marine Environment (PAME) to document and track progress in implementing the 17 recommendations in the AMSA Report approved by Arctic Council Ministers. Six years after its original publication, the AMSA Report continues to resonate as both a comprehensive and an authoritative analysis on the subject of Arctic shipping. Under the leadership of Canada, Finland and the United States, the AMSA Report focused on ships, their uses of the Arctic Ocean, their potential impacts on humans and the Arctic marine environment, and their marine infrastructure requirements. As with the two previous AMSA Progress Reports, the 2015 Progress Report once again uses the original AMSA recommendations as markers against which progress by the greater community of Arctic stakeholders is measured. While primarily focused on joint efforts made by Arctic States acting through various international or regional fora, the report also highlights examples of individual Arctic State initiatives, as well as certain efforts by Permanent Participants, industry associations and NGOs operating in the Arctic. Inasmuch as the content captured within this report acknowledges success and progress in several areas, the 2015 Progress Report should not been seen as exhaustive nor should it divert attention away from areas where additional work remains to be done.
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