What can we learn about ocean governance from the performance of the Arctic Council’s Task Force on Arctic Marine Cooperation?

ABSTRACT In the 2015 Iqaluit Declaration, the Arctic Council created a Task Force on Arctic Marine Cooperation (TFAMC) ‘to assess future needs for a regional seas programme or other mechanism, as appropriate, for increased cooperation in Arctic marine areas,’ and ‘to make recommendations on the nature and scope of any such mechanism.’ After working for two years, the Task Force came back to the council with a request that the TFAMC be renewed for a second two-year term with a more limited mandate focused on coordinating the efforts of the Arctic Council itself, a request approved in the 2017 Fairbanks Declaration. The eventual result was the establishment in 2019 of ‘a SAO-based mechanism to guide the marine work of the Arctic Council and improve coordination on marine issues in the Arctic Council.’ The SMM, whose ongoing place within the family of Arctic Council arrangements remains to be determined, held its first meeting in September-October 2020. Due to the impacts of the coronavirus pandemic, this meeting took the form of a series of webinars held over the course of a month with the overall goal of bringing together marine experts ‘to discuss among themselves, and with the SAOs and Permanent Participants, how the Council and its cooperation partners could jointly pave a way forward on some of the Arctic’s most pressing marine-related issues.’ This article provides a critical assessment of the performance of the TFAMC, asking what we can learn from the work of the task force about Arctic Ocean governance, the role of the Arctic Council in this realm, and the management of regime complexes more generally.