Indo-Pacific Partnership for Maritime Domain Awareness
Also called: IPMDA · Topic: India and her Neighbours · NCERT: Beyond NCERT
Meaning
The Indo-Pacific Partnership for Maritime Domain Awareness (IPMDA) is a Quad initiative announced at the 2022 Quad Leaders' Summit. The Quad is a group of four countries: India, the US, Japan and Australia. Maritime Domain Awareness (MDA) means knowing what is happening at sea, such as which ships are moving and where. IPMDA gives maritime agencies across the Indo-Pacific sea data in near-real time, which means almost as events happen. The data is mainly used to catch illegal fishing and to respond to disasters. IPMDA matters because small coastal and island states have very large sea areas but too few ships and planes to watch them. India and Australia agreed at their 2023 2+2 Ministerial Dialogue to take IPMDA forward.
Example
The Maldives is a chain of coral atolls about 130 km from Minicoy (Lakshadweep), across the Eight Degree Channel. It has a very large sea area to guard. With shared IPMDA data, its coast guard can spot fishing boats that may be operating illegally without patrolling every part of that sea.
Don't confuse with
- IFC-IOR (Information Fusion Centre – Indian Ocean Region): India's own hub in Gurugram, opened in 2018 and run by the Indian Navy, where partner countries share shipping information. IPMDA is a data partnership run by all four Quad countries, not by India alone.
- Indo-Pacific Regional Dialogue (IPRD): an annual Indian Navy conference where experts and officials discuss ideas such as IPMDA. It is a forum for talks and produces no data.