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Arctic Council PAME meeting to focus on tourism development in North

Taking part in the event, which will run until September 27, will be about 40 representatives of ministries and departments of the Arctic Council

ROSTOV-ON-DON, September 24 (Itar-Tass) - The Arctic Council’s Working Group on Protection of the Arctic Marine Environment (PAME) is opening a meeting in Rostov-on-Don on Tuesday. Press secretary of the Southern Scientific Centre of the Russian Academy of Sciences (RAS) Gennady Belotserkovtsev told Itar-Tass that the meeting participants plan to discuss the problems of tourism development, the issues of ecology and transport communication of the North Polar Region of the globe. The decisions taken at the meeting will be sent to the international community.

“Resolutions of the Arctic Council are declarative in nature and will be offered for the implementation to the relevant agencies of the countries included in the working group,” Belotserkovtsev said.

Taking part in the event, which will run until September 27, will be about 40 representatives of ministries and departments of the Arctic Council.

The delegations of Denmark, Iceland, Canada, Norway, Russia, Singapore, the United States, Finland and Sweden, as well as representatives from the European Union and other international organizations will take part in the PAME meeting.

The delegates will pay special attention to changing the ice situation in the Arctic. The climate factor has already affected shipping in the region and opened the prospects for the development of previously inaccessible natural deposits.

The Arctic Council was established in 1996 to protect the unique nature of the North Polar Region. The Ottawa Declaration of 1996 formally established the Arctic Council as a high level intergovernmental forum to provide a means for promoting cooperation, coordination and interaction among the Arctic States, with the involvement of the Arctic Indigenous communities and other Arctic inhabitants on common Arctic issues, in particular issues of sustainable development and environmental protection in the Arctic.

The AC members are currently eight states bordering on the Arctic.

On May 15, at a meeting of the Arctic Council in the Swedish city of Kiruna, 6 more countries - China, India, Italy, Japan, Singapore and South Korea - got the AC permanent observer status.

The AC decisions are taken at special meetings of the ministers of the member states. The AC has six working groups. Their meetings are held twice a year. Their decisions and recommendations are taken into account at the Council’s ministerial meetings, which are held every two years.

The Ministry of Natural Resources and the Ministry of Transport are Russia’s national representatives in the PAME.

The PAME meeting is to be held in Russia for the second time. For the first time it was held in Murmansk in 2006.

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