Time to Revisit the Antarctic Treaty

Antarctica and its surrounding islands and waters are likely to come under greater pressure for resource development in the coming decades. Although mineral resources projects are currently banned (marine living resources harvesting is not), gradual development of resources in the sub-Antarctic could pave the way for acceptance of the idea of inching projects farther south, says Dr Alan Hemmings, polar specialist and adjunct associate professor at the University of Canterbury in New Zealand.

Hydrocarbon projects are an obvious possibility, as are minerals such as the rare earth metals. Back in the 1970s, there was talk of towing icebergs up to the parched parts of the world. This is still probably a far-fetched idea more likely to turn into a designer bottled water enterprise if anything these days. 

The point is though that Antarctica has an untapped and largely unknown resource potential, the sort of potential that can lead to confrontation between states as has been seen in the South China Sea. 

The topic of Antarctic resources is worth discussing now, says Hemmings, because of the realistic expectation that the world is going to be considering Antarctic resources in the not too distant future. “We are best to exercise considerable constraint in Antarctica and not enable it to be a place where we squabble over resources, because inevitably the big guys will win.

“If you are a claimant state in Antarctica, you believe you have better rights than others to the part you claim. You also believe you have the attributes of a coastal state in the sense of UNCLOS, so that you believe you have the right to control an exclusive economic zone. That takes us straight into a global debate about what happens in the marine environment,” he says.

“If we think about what kind of future we want in the Antarctic, I’d say we want a peaceful place where we regulate the things that we do collegially amongst the community of nations. If so, then we’ve got to be very careful and constrain what we try to do, because aside from the environmental considerations, we simply lack the international legal and institutional architecture that we have in most other parts of the world. 

“We can’t agree who owns any bit of the land. We’ve got a big section that nobody claims. So in that area, do the high seas go right up to the coast? Presumably they do.”

There are seven official claimants, Argentina, Australia, Chile, France, New Zealand, Norway and the UK and two semi-claimants, Russia and the U.S. “However, nobody else recognizes any of these claims. New Zealand, Australia and other countries might think that they have territory in Antarctica, but everybody else thinks that’s nonsense.” 

Only around 50 states out of nearly 200 in the world are involved in any way at all in the Antarctic system and probably only 29 of those, including the EU, are voting members. Much of Africa, Indonesia, Vietnam and the small island states are all missing from taking a role in Antarctic governance. These countries could nevertheless be affected environmentally and economically by activities in the Antarctic. 

Therefore, Hemmings believes that the current situation means that natural justice and global satisfaction cannot be guaranteed.

The Antarctic Treaty System was created during the Cold War. Its persistence over 50 years (from 1961 onwards) has tended to mythologize its achievements, says Hemmings. What contribution to global justice does the Antarctic regime deliver today to the general international community and what can reasonably be expected of it in the second decade of the 21st Century?

The great achievement of the Antarctic Treaty System, says Hemmings, is that it created a quasi condominium for the governance of Antarctica. “The trouble is, what seemed an entirely reasonable interim step – freezing claims without actually abandoning them – has just been left to hang for, now, well over half a century. The glimmering light of territorial sovereignty has inhibited a fuller development of collective governance. 

“If we could only release the system from the lingering formal attachment to the territorial claims – which are anyway never going to be realizable given the new geopolitical order – we could develop this condominium approach further. This would still leave us to argue for or against certain sorts of Antarctic futures – whether we were going to exploit the place or leave it alone as a global wilderness, and so on. 

“But as a place truly governed internationally, and outside the historic territorial framework of the rest of the planet, we would have the basis for substantially widening international engagement with – and responsibility for – the continent. Antarctica could finally be said to be the responsibility of all mankind.”

Antarctica is the only continent in the world that hasn’t seen war. Hemmings would like to keep it that way. It is time to reassess the acceptability of territorial claims, before resource use in the region loom large, he says.