In News:

• As per the government officials, two issues limit India’s ability to further expand its maritime role.
• These are infrastructure constraints and continued delay in posting Indian liaison officers at others facilities and centres in the region.

What’s in Today’s Article:

• The Indo-Pacific Partnership for Maritime Domain Awareness (IPMDA) – About, various institution integrated to IPMDA
• Information Fusion Centre-Indian Ocean Region (IFC-IOR) – About, significance
• News Summary

The Indo-Pacific Partnership for Maritime Domain Awareness (IPMDA)

• Indo-Pacific maritime domain awareness initiative was launched at recently held Quad Summit at Tokyo.
• It is an initiative for information sharing and maritime surveillance across the region.
  • The IPMDA would offer a near-real-time, integrated, and cost-effective maritime domain awareness picture.
  • It will respond to humanitarian and natural disasters, and combat illegal fishing.
  • It will also allow the tracking of “dark shipping” across Indo-Pacific region.
  • It will support and work in consultation with Indo-Pacific nations and regional information fusion centres in the region.
• This initiative will integrate three critical regions in the Indo-Pacific — the Pacific Islands, Southeast Asia, and the IOR.

Various Fusion Centres will be integrated in IPMDA

• In addition to the IFC-IOR, other existing regional fusion centres that will be integrated are
  • the IFC based in Singapore;
  • the Pacific Islands Forum Fisheries Agency based in the Solomon Islands, and
  • the Pacific Fusion Centre based in Vanuatu

Information Fusion Centre-Indian Ocean Region (IFC-IOR)

About

• In December 2018, Indian launched the IFC-IOR, at Information Management and Analysis Centre (IMAC) Gurugram.
• It was established for regional collaboration on maritime security issues. This includes:
  • Maritime terrorism, illegal unregulated and unreported fishing (IUUF), piracy, armed robbery on the high seas, and human and contraband trafficking.
• The IFC-IOR aims to engage with partner nations and multi-national maritime constructs.
  • The idea is to develop comprehensive maritime domain awareness and share information on vessels of interest (i.e., information on white shipping).
    • White shipping information refers to exchange of advance information on the identity and movement of commercial non-military merchant vessels.
    • White is the colour code for commercial ships, Grey is for military vessels and illegal ships are coded as black.
• So far, this fusion centre has information sharing links with 50 nations and multinational/maritime centres.

Significance

• Maritime security is a paramount concern
  • The IOR is vital to world trade and economic prosperity of many nations.
  • More than 75% of the world’s maritime trade and 50% of global oil consumption passes through the IOR.
  • However, maritime terrorism, piracy, trafficking, IUUF, arms running and poaching pose myriad challenges to maritime safety and security in the region.
• Illegal unregulated and unreported fishing (IUUF) growing into a bigger threat
  • In recent years, IUUF has been seen as growing into a bigger threat to maritime states than international piracy.
  • This is because they deplete stocks and deprive vulnerable regional economies of an important food source.
  • IUU fishing also tramples sovereign rights, undermines the rule of law, and robs coastal states of a valuable economic resource
• Need for collaborative effort
  • The scale, scope and the multi-national nature of maritime activities, make it difficult for countries to address these challenges individually.
  • Hence, collaborative efforts between maritime nations in the IOR, is essential.
• Part of the India’s SAGAR (Security and Growth For All in the Region) initiative
  • The centre was established as part of the government’s SAGAR framework for maritime co-operation in the Indian Ocean region.
  • It hosts international liaison officers from partner countries. This include both:
    • India’s immediate neighbours in the Indian Ocean region and
    • from further afield, including Australia, France, Japan, Singapore, the UK and the US.
  • The two other data fusion centres likely to be involved in this initiative are:
    • the Singapore Navy’s Information Fusion Centre, and
    • the Australia-sponsored Pacific Fusion Centre.

News Summary

• As the Quad grouping looks to roll out an Indo-Pacific maritime domain awareness (MDA) initiative, two issues limit India’s ability to further expand its maritime role.

Challenges faced by India:

• The challenges that are limiting India’s maritime role are:
  • infrastructure constraints and
  • continued delay in posting Indian liaison officers at others facilities and centres in the region.
• There are requests from several countries to post international liaison officers (ILOs) at the Indian Navy’s Information Fusion Centre-Indian Ocean Region (IFC-IOR).
• However, India cannot induct any more at the moment due to infrastructure constraints.

Posting of Indian Navy Liaison Officers at Other International fusion centres (IFCs) are pending

• It is not just important to have ILOs in India, but also equally important that Indian Navy officers be posted at similar centres in other countries.
• Proposals to post Indian naval liaison officers (LO) at various regional fusion centres have been pending for more than two years. Some of them include:
  • the Regional Maritime Information Fusion Centre (RMIFC), Madagascar, and
  • the Regional Coordination Operations Centre, Seychelles.
• India joined the Indian Ocean Commission (IOC) as an observer in March 2020 and the proposal to send an LO to the RMIFC has been pending since.
• Another proposal to post an LO at the European-led mission in the Strait of Hormuz (EMASOH) in Abu Dhabi has also not been approved so far.

Significance of ILOs joining India’s Fusion Centre

• Value addition
  • ILOs bring to the table one’s local expertise which Indian officials might not be aware of and can’t be determined from here.
  • It also helps in building linkages with various agencies in their home countries.
• Joining India’s information sharing framework is a strategic statement
  • Countries in the neighbourhood joining India’s information sharing framework is a strategic statement that these countries are aligning with India for their security needs.
• Better Maritime Picture
  • ILOs joining Indian Fusion Centre and vice-versa will ensure linkages of the IFC-IOR with the other IFCs and eventually becoming the repository for all maritime data in the IOR.
  • The benefits of maritime picture are vast:
    • It will allow tracking of dark shipping and other tactical-level activities, such as rendezvous at sea,
    • It will improve partners’ ability to respond to climate and humanitarian events and
    • It will protect their fisheries, which are vital to many Indo-Pacific economies.