Arctic Shipping

In 2019, WWF collaborated with the Inuvialuit Game Council (IGC) and published the Western Arctic Mariner’s Guide to help identify and avoid marine mammals, minimizing shipping-related disruption to wildlife and Indigenous and local communities. WWF has also published an Eastern Arctic Mariner’s Guide and the Hudson Bay Complex Mariner’s Guide.

We are working with the federal government and Indigenous and local communities to ban heavy fuel oil in Arctic shipping. Heavy fuel oil is the most toxic, hazardous, and difficult to clean up of any ship fuel in the world. We are also working to improve oil spill response capacity in the North, pointing out the gaps in oil spill preparedness plans and working to help improve the state of oil spill response in communities.

WWF-Canada will continue to work with partners to better understand the risks posed by shipping, find ways to mitigate those risks — especially in areas of high conservation value — and create a more robust regulatory framework to protect marine wildlife and the habitat they depend on. We will also focus on reducing greenhouse gas emissions and black carbon from shipping, both of which contribute to the climate crisis.