The Inuit Circumpolar Council has been upgraded to permanent consultative status at the International Maritime Organization, a move that the ICC says keeps its “seat at the table” regarding global shipping standards.
The International Maritime Organization is the United Nations’ shipping regulator.
Since 2021, the ICC had been the first and only Indigenous peoples’ organization to hold provisional consultative status at the IMO.
This month, that changed to permanent consultative status.
The ICC said full status will allow Inuit “to advocate directly on issues that affect their communities, lands, and waters.”
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“This milestone affirms the critical role Inuit play as ship owners, operators, coastal residents, and knowledge holders in shaping international shipping decisions,” said Herb Nakimayak, the former NWT MLA who is now the ICC’s lead representative at the IMO, in a news release.
He said full status for the ICC was “not only a step forward for Inuit, but also a meaningful step forward for all Indigenous peoples.”
ICC Chair Sara Olsvig said the IMO’s decisions “directly impact” Inuit communities across the Arctic and “influence our ability to maintain our ways of life.”
“Gaining permanent consultative status at the IMO ensures that Inuit perspectives will continue to inform global shipping policy now and into the future,” Olsvig was quoted as saying.
The Clean Arctic Alliance, a group of not-for-profits focused on the environmental aspects of Arctic shipping, said the ICC had an “integral role to play in the governance of global shipping and particularly of polar shipping.”
“The Clean Arctic Alliance looks forward to working alongside the Inuit Circumpolar Council in future IMO meetings to ensure the protection of the Arctic marine resources on which Arctic communities depend,” Clean Arctic Alliance lead advisor Sian Prior said in a statement, “and to cut the impacts of super pollutants, such as black carbon, from shipping, in order to lessen the shipping industry’s impact on Arctic sea and glacier ice.”
