[1] Its main function is to advise the governments of the eight Arctic member nations[2]—Canada, Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, Russia, Sweden and the United States—on environment-related issues such as pollution.
[3] The work of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) was influenced significantly by AMAP's assessment reports on "Snow, Water, Ice and Permafrost in the Arctic" (SWIPA).
[5] According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory (PMEL)—a United States federal laboratory—the annual Arctic Report Card, which tracks the ways in which the environment has changed, undergoes an independent peer review organized by the AMAP.
[9][10] AMAP has collaborated on two of the four peer-reviewed Global Mercury Assessments undertaken by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), including the report published in 2019.
[10] In Murmansk in 1987, then Soviet Secretary-General, Mikhail Gorbachev, introduced the idea of Arctic nations cooperating on various issues including environment protection.
[18] When the "high-level intergovernmental forum", Arctic Council, was established on September 19, 1996[19] in Ottawa, Canada, it was mandated to oversee and coordinate the five Working Groups, including the AMAP.