There has been debate among shipping stakeholders, rightsholders and experts about the extent to which climate change and sea ice change is directly influencing increases in shipping activity in the polar regions relative to other social, technological, political and economic factors such as commodity prices, tourism demand, global economic trends, infrastructure support and service availability. Understanding the connection between climate change and polar shipping activity will allow for more reliable projections of possible future traffic trends and will aid in identify- ing appropriate adaptation and infrastructure needs required to support future management of the industry. Recent studies have observed increasing statistical correlations between sea ice change and shipping trends in the polar regions, and many have concluded that although economic factors remain the main driver of shipping activities, followed by infrastructure availability, climate change does indeed play a varying but important role in influencing operator intentions. The 'opening of polar seaways' due to sea ice reduction is indeed 'enabling' opportunities for polar shipping among all types of vessels due to increasingly accessible areas that were previously covered by multi- year ice, but the extent to which climate change will specifically 'drive' an increase in shipping demand remains highly dependent on the vessel type and the reasons for operation. There are certain vessel types, such as those sup- porting international trade, mining operations or community re-supply, where analysis shows no correlation or weak correlations with sea ice change, suggesting that climate change is enabling these types of ships via increased open water areas and season lengths but that it is not necessarily driving demand. Conversely, there are certain vessel types, such as yachts and cruise ships, where correlations between sea ice change and traffic increases are stronger, and where there is evidence to suggest that these vessels are indeed driven to visit the polar regions because they perceive waterways as exotic and exciting due to being newly accessible or they want to have a Polar experience
IPCC
Climate Change 2022: Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability
IPCC Report