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Context

• The Indo-Pacific Maritime Domain Awareness (IPMDA) initiative was announced in 2022 by the Quad grouping.
• It is a testament to the commitment to a free, open, inclusive, and rules-based Indo-Pacific.

Details

Announcement of IPMDA

• The IPMDA was announced by the Quad grouping, comprising India, Australia, Japan and the U.S., at the Tokyo summit in early 2022.
• At that time the motivation was to track “dark shipping” and build a “faster, wider, and more accurate maritime picture of near-real-time activities in partners’ waters”.
• This would be done by integrating three critical regions in the Indo-Pacific — the Pacific Islands, Southeast Asia, and the IOR.

Aim

• Enhancing maritime security and shared domain awareness in the region via technology and training support.
• Further it aims to enable partner nations to fully monitor the region, which will, in turn, uphold the aim of a “free and open Indo-Pacific”.

Objective

• IPMDA seeks to establish a comprehensive system for monitoring and securing maritime activities in the Indo-Pacific.
• It also seeks to ensure the safety of critical sea lines of communication, and promoting cooperation among like-minded nations in the region.

Purpose of IPMDA

• Its main purpose is to bring increased transparency to its critical waterways.

Method

• IPMDA harnesses innovative technology, such as commercial satellite radio frequency data collection, to provide partners across Southeast Asia, the Indian Ocean region, and the Pacific with near real-time information on activities occurring in their maritime zones.

Benefits to regional partners

• The cutting-edge maritime domain awareness provided under IPMDA supports the ability of Indo-Pacific partners to rapidly detect and respond to a wide range of challenges.
• These challenges involving illicit maritime activities such as ---
  • illegal, unreported, and unregulated fishing,
  • climate events, and
  • humanitarian crises.
• The initiative also involves regional information centers, helping to establish a common operating picture of the maritime domain across the Indo-Pacific region.

Significance

• IPMDA will build a faster, wider and more accurate maritime picture of near-real-time activities in partners’ waters.
• This common operating picture will integrate three oceanic regions – the Pacific Islands, Southeast Asia and the Indian Ocean.
• This will allow the tracking of “dark shipping” and other “tactical level” activities, such as rendezvous at sea by criminal actors – drug traffickers for example; as also respond to climate and humanitarian events, and protect their fisheries.

PRACTICE QUESTION Q. Maritime Domain Awareness (MDA) is increasingly becoming a prerequisite for the safe and efficient conduct of the maritime activity, which itself is a major engine for global economic growth. Substantiate this with special emphasis on the Indo-Pacific Maritime Domain Awareness (IPMDA) initiative.