Prof Klaus Dodds

This paper considers the governance of the Antarctic in the light of the fiftieth anniversary of the Antarctic Treaty in December 2009. Created in the midst of the Cold War, this treaty provided a mechanism for governing the Antarctic. Science and international collaboration were central to this new regime. Over the next five decades, the Antarctic Treaty System (ATS) has expanded as new legal instruments were developed and entered into force including the Protocol on Environmental Protection. New issues such as fishing and tourism along with an expanded membership have transformed the politics of Antarctica. Current controversies involving illegal, unregulated and unreported fishing, the law of the sea and the creation of the ‘coastal state’, tourism and whaling will continue to provoke serious challenges for the governance of Antarctica.

Introduction

In December 2009, a so-called Antarctic Treaty Summit, hosted at the Smithsonian Institution, will consider the achievements, enduring legacies and future lessons of the 1959 Antarctic Treaty. In the aftermath of the International Geophysical Year (1957-8), 12 participants (often called the original parties) led by the United States negotiated a treaty, which transformed the legal, political and scientific status of the frozen continent and surrounding Southern Ocean (Beck 1986, Joyner 1998, Collis and Dodds 2008). Signed on 1 st December 1959, the Treaty declared that “in the interests of all mankind [sic]”, Antarctica would be demilitarised and denuclearized. The disposal of radioactive materials was also prohibited. Science lay at the heart of the Treaty’s ethos regarding peaceful co-existence and the free exchange of information. The Treaty entered into force in 1961 and the treaty’s participants effectively managed Antarctica on behalf of the international community.

A great deal has changed since those early days when the Cold War still mattered greatly in shaping the international relations of the superpowers and their allies. In 2009, there are now 47 parties to the Antarctic Treaty (the latest was Monaco in May 2008) and every inhabited continent has now a representative – although Africa is poorly represented with only one member, South Africa. The Antarctic Treaty is routinely described as being at the cornerstone of a system of governance alongside a host of other legal instruments and institutions that shape the governance of Antarctica. The Antarctic is no longer politically remote and scientists, fishing personnel and tourists have all travelled to the continent and surrounding ocean. The fastest growing category of visitor is the tourist especially via ship and due to the automation of equipment the number of scientists based in the region may well decline notwithstanding the enhanced levels of activity during the International Polar Year (2007-9).

As this paper will demonstrate, the globalization of Antarctica has also brought to the fore a host of issues that simply were not on the diplomatic radar screen in the autumn of 1959. In the longer term, this will test the veracity of the Antarctic Treaty System (ATS) and its capacity to secure a not only a regional model of governance but also to retain legitimacy beyond the membership (Stokke and Vidas 1996). The Antarctic is increasingly implicated in wider circuits of ideas, commodities, industries and technologies (Hemmings 2007).

Historical Context

By the time the 12 parties gathered around the negotiating table in October 1959, seven claims to the polar continent had been pressed. Argentina, Australia, Chile, France, New Zealand, Norway and the United Kingdom made up the claimant states. The foundations for these claims including assertions of prior discovery and exploration and subsequent evidence of ‘effective occupation’ usually in the form of living resource regulation, mapping and surveying and the construction of bases and camps in national sectors (Bush 1982). Most problematically, Argentina, Chile and the United Kingdom all claim the Antarctic Peninsula and surrounding islands (Dodds 2002).

Five other IGY polar participants joined the treaty discussions - Belgium, Japan, South Africa, the Soviet Union and the United States. Both the United States and the Soviet Union (now Russia) have reserved the right to make a claim in the future especially if the legal status quo associated with the Antarctic Treaty were ever to collapse. Japan, by virtue of the post-war Peace Treaty, is explicitly prevented from making any territorial claim. The original non-claimants present at Washington DC in 1959 have never acknowledged the validity of the seven existing territorial claims. Article IV of the Treaty declared that the territorial question would put to one side in order to secure scientific and political co-operation. No party has, by signing the Treaty, either endorsed or revoked the legal status quo ante.

The claimant states have shown little willingness to dispense with their claims because Article IV does not demand it. However, Article IV and the promotion of science more generally provided a mechanism for co-operation along with other elements such as Article V banning nuclear explosions and testing (and disposal)– even if within Article V it is acknowledged that this is a prohibition contingent on wider international agreements. The Treaty also states that the parties are acting on behalf of “the interests of all mankind [sic]’ and the ‘continuance of international harmony’. The Treaty also declared that it would ‘further the purposes and principles embodied in the Charter of the United Nations’. This was, in part, considered to be important in order to prevent more substantial United Nations involvement. India has raised the question of Antarctica’s status in 1956 and 1958 and the 12 parties in the main did not wish to further ‘internationalize’ the continent at this stage (Beck 1986, Howkins 2007).

The treaty also lays considerable emphasis on the free exchange of scientific information and the rights of signatories to establish research programmes throughout the continent. In other words, claimant states could not express any right to veto plans by others to create a scientific station in their national sector. Article VII reiterates the freedom of access (which was intended to counter any sense that activities should be restricted to particular territorial sectors) and other sections helped to realise President Eisenhower’s commitment to ‘open skies’ by establishing a capacity to carry our aerial inspection and the need to provide notification of planned activity including the introduction of military personnel. The treaty neither considered mineral resources nor living resources such as fishing. It was recognised at the time that the treaty was a starting point.

This historical context is essential to any understanding of the contemporary governance of Antarctica. In this review, we consider how the region has been changed by a range of circumstances and developments while acknowledging a number of outstanding challenges including the management of illegal, unregulated and unreported fishing in the Southern Ocean, the regulation of whaling, environmental alongside health and safety implications pertaining to a burgeoning tourism industry, overlapping legal regimes including Law of the Sea and bio-prospecting (Joyner 1992, Herber 2006). This short review will not be able to do justice to these complex topics (including others such as climate change, ozone depletion and ice cap stability) but it will highlight one very important general trend. In December 1959, the delegations involved in the negotiation of the Antarctic Treaty did so in a context where Antarctica was still largely isolated from the global political mainstream. This is no longer the case and the last fifty years demonstrate only to clearly how the governance of Antarctica has become ever more complex and multi-layered as states, non-state organisations, media networks and international actors participate and shape polar governance and political relations.

The Antarctic Treaty System: Governance, Membership and Challenge

The main governing mechanism of Antarctica remains the Antarctic Treaty System (ATS). Created in the aftermath of the 1959 Antarctic Treaty, the signatories to the Treaty committed themselves to a meeting (initially every two years and now every year) to discuss and negotiate matters of interest. From 12 original parties, the ATS has 47 member states including 28 Antarctic Treaty Consultative Parties (ATCPs) and 19 non-consultative parties. The ATCPs retain decision-making and policy-making power for all the membership. There are 28 ATCPs and this includes the original 12 and 16 others who have demonstrated as the treaty demands ‘substantial scientific interest’ usually in the form of establishing a research station/established polar research programme. The Netherlands is the only ATCP not to have built its own research station. Others have committed themselves to base construction and in some cases this has led to an overconcentration of bases in the comparatively accessible Antarctic Peninsula region. Scientific visibility and credibility remains important in shaping the membership profile but so does political status. In the 1980s, for example, India and China alongside Brazil were quickly elevated to Consultative Party status. While other parties such as West Germany had to demonstrate their scientific credentials over a longer period of time, leading Third World states were quickly admitted in order to strengthen the global profile of the ATS. In the 1990s onwards, a new wave of accession has occurred including former Soviet Union states such as Ukraine and new European Union states such as Estonia. Other states such as Pakistan, which did establish a polar programme including a summer only station called Jinnah were not invited to join the ATS.

The ATS’ membership has expanded alongside the institutional thickening of governance. From a comparatively simple Treaty, the ATS began to negotiate a series of agreed measures (e.g. Agreed Measures for the Conservation of Antarctic Fauna and Flora 1964) and conventions (e.g. Convention for the Conservation of Antarctic Seals 1972 and Conservation for the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources 1980) designed to enlarge capacity to govern living resources such as seals and fish while more recently, the Protocol on Environmental Protection (entered into force in 1998) has placed ecological management, wilderness values and environmental impact assessment at the heart of all activities in the region (Rothwell 1996). The Protocol has six operational annexes – environmental impact assessment, conservation of Antarctic fauna and flora, waste disposal and waste management, prevention of marine pollution, area protection and management, and liability arising from environmental emergencies. In the case of the Convention for the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources (CCAMLR, 1982), a scientific committee was established to advise participants with regard to so-called total allowable catches. The stated goal of CCAMLR is to ensure sustainable exploitation of fish stocks within the Southern Ocean. Whaling, while of interest to the ATS, is dealt in the main by a different body, the International Whaling Commission (established in 1946).

The Protocol has, moreover, helped to clarify the potential significance of Antarctica’s mineral resources as Article 7 declares that, “any activity relating to mineral resources, other than scientific research, shall be prohibited”. This helped to defuse the tension that existed in the 1980s concerning the so-called minerals question even if Article 25 leaves open the possibility for negotiating amendments to the Protocol. It is also the case that geological and geophysical exploration regarded as scientific research can still continue. Attempts to create a Convention on the Regulation of Antarctic Mineral Resource Activities (CRAMRA) occurred between 1982-1988 but were rejected as leading states such as Australia and France publically rejected the process. In reality, the negotiations had revealed the growing influence of environmental non-governmental organizations such as Greenpeace and the Antarctic and Southern Ocean Coalition (ASOC) and the international media to challenge the legitimacy of the ATCPs. Members of the global south including Malaysia had accused these ATCPs of seeking to ‘carve up’ the Antarctic and its mineral resources for their own gain. Interestingly, the position of the G77 and environmental movements coincided in the sense that both groups were hostile to any potential mineral exploitation in Antarctica, albeit for different reasons.

Organizationally, a decision was taken to establish a secretariat in Buenos Aires with the explicit purpose of improving information co-ordination and storage especially as each year a different member state hosts the annual Antarctic Treaty Consultative Meeting (ATCM). In 2009, the United States hosted the 32nd such meeting. The Secretariat, long a subject of discussion within the ATS, is another manifestation of growing institutional thickness. One of the consequences of the minerals controversy in the 1980s was to expose the workings of the ATS to greater public scrutiny and led to an opening up of the consultative meetings (ATCM) including to non-governmental organizations. Although there is still some areas of the treaty that are still part of reserved business involving the ATCP only, the contemporary ATCM is unrecognizable from the earliest meetings in the 1960s.

This institutional thickening was important for three fundamental reasons. First, it tied the existing membership ever closer together in terms of collective responsibility. It is important to bear in mind that the 1959 Antarctic Treaty was nearly lost as the governments of Argentina and Chile had considerable difficulty in persuading their legislatures to ratify the Treaty in 1960-1. Concern was raised that these countries were ‘giving up’ their sovereign rights in the Antarctic. Moreover, Australia did not want the Soviets to be a fellow signatory and countries like Britain were on the verge of pulling out of the region on the grounds of financial costs. Institutional development helped to build trust and cement a series of inter-state and inter-personal relationships. It was highly significant that Britain and Argentina still managed to conduct Antarctic business notwithstanding the 1982 Falklands conflict (Beck 1986).

Second, the Treaty’s membership through the development of agreed measures, conventions and protocols established a broader political legitimacy in a world transformed by decolonization and expanding membership of the United Nations. Moreover, Antarctica was increasingly attracting the attention of non-governmental organizations especially environmental groups in the 1980s and 1990s. The Antarctic and Southern Ocean Coalition (ASOC) became an acknowledged presence in consultative meetings. This has been augmented by the presence more recently by a tourist (International Association of Antarctic Tour Operators) and fishing (Coalition of Legal Toothfish Operators) organizations. All these parties implicitly (and explicitly) recognised the authority of the ATS and as importantly the ATCP recognise the legitimacy of other commercially based activities. It may well be that we will witness some kind of representation for those interested in other emerging activities such as bio-prospecting.

Finally, when challenges did come to the ATS in the 1980s from Third World states such as Malaysia in the United Nations and environmental NGOs such as ASOC, the membership was able to retain its legitimacy. The Third World led challenge was particularly noteworthy because Malaysia and its allies complained that the ATS did not possess international legitimacy because it had been created when parts of the Third World were still colonized. Moreover, the presence of apartheid South Africa in the ATS was also considered to be morally offensive. The ATS endured these challenges because it did engage with those actors in institutional settings such as the United Nations General Assembly but also by being sufficiently flexible. The controversial Convention on the Conservation of Antarctic Mineral Resources (CRAMRA) was dropped in the late 1980s in favour of a Protocol on Environmental Protection, which banned all forms of mining in the region. By adopting the Protocol, alongside growing Third World membership of the ATS, the latter was able to negate this UN-based critique.

The ATS membership has been forced to make changes and adapt. Notwithstanding the presence of the Cold War superpowers and many members of the G8/G20, the ATS has changed its mode of operation towards greater transparency and information exchange especially with regard to interested non-state parties and the global media. The 1980s were transformative in that sense as Antarctica became a global issue. For some, the continent was considered akin to other global commons such as the deep seabed and the earth’s atmosphere and as such was considered as part of a global dialogue about governance and rights. The mineral resources of the region were indicative of this trend and closely followed discussion of the Third Law of the Sea Conference, which culminated with the signing of the Law of the Sea Convention in 1982. Environmentalists shared that conviction concerning Antarctica’s global status but argued that no mineral exploitation should ever be entertained. Scientists further contributed to these rival geographical imaginations by warning of the impact of anthropogenic climate change. The parties to the 1959 Antarctic Treaty were asked, with ever increasing frequency, to explain how they were acting in the ‘interests of mankind’.

The implication of all these political activities were immense and plans to develop a convention for the regulation of mineral resource activities (CRAMRA) were shelved in favour of an environmental protocol, which committed the Consultative Parties to no forms of mining and mineral exploitation. Environmental protection was reaffirmed as central to the working of all parties concerned with Antarctica. The debates over the future of Antarctica via the United Nations became less fierce as critics acknowledged the efficacy of the ATS and its commitment not to exploit Antarctica. More recently, countries such as Australia and New Zealand have been at the forefront of attempts (over a decade or so) to engage former chief critic Malaysia and to encourage scientific exchanges for the purpose of encouraging the country to join the ATS itself in due course. While Malaysia has not joined the ATS it has acquired a particularly transitory form of membership, which means that the country gets access to the ATCM and is allowed to circulate informal papers to these meetings while at the same avoiding the obligations of membership.

Challenging the ATS

In order to show some of the contemporary challenges facing the ATS, this section highlights a series of challenges that illustrate well ongoing Antarctic governance dilemmas. This does not imply that the ATS is incapable of responding to these concerns, however. Indeed the ATS membership is aware of the issues below. At the heart of most, if not all the outstanding concerns facing the Antarctic, is the knotty problem of sovereignty. The Antarctic Treaty does not, because it was not designed to, resolve the basic question – who owns Antarctica? The question that might now be posed is whether the Antarctic Treaty and associated legal instruments can cope with the growing range and intensity of human activity affecting Antarctica.

• Illegal, Unregulated and Unreported Fishing

Over the last two decades, illegal, unregulated and unreported fishing (IUU) has grown in scale and geographical scope. As fish stocks in other parts of the world have become endangered even collapsed, distant water fishing fleets have considered the Southern Ocean to be commercially attractive. Fish stocks such as the Patagonian Toothfish and Ice Fish have been harvested often illegally.

CCAMLR provides a mechanism for which the signatories attempt to mange and regulate fishing in the zone of application, which includes areas north of the Antarctic Treaty region (i.e. north of 60 degrees South). This was important because some of the most lucrative fishing zones are to be found off the continental shelves of islands such as Prince Edward (claimed by South Africa) as well as Heard and MacDonald ( Australia). Claimant states including Britain and South Africa with regard to their overseas territories South Georgia and Prince Edward Islands respectively have sought to patrol those waters. In August 2003, an Australian fisheries protection vessel chased and eventually caught a ship Viarsa I suspected of IUU fishing off Heard Island. The ship was eventually caught in international waters off the South African coastline and Australia cited the right to pursuit in the case of suspected IUU fishing under Article 111 (right of hot pursuit) of the 1982 Law of the Sea Convention.

CCAMLR has also sought to exert influence on third party states including those who provide trans-shipment facilities for IUU fishing vessels including Mauritius in the Indian Ocean. Moreover, CCAMLR established a catch certification scheme that helped to label fish such as the Patagonian Toothfish caught in a legal and sustainable manner. However, the problem of illegal fishing has not been eradicated and there are concerns that Southern Ocean fish stocks could also be greatly diminished along with seabirds caught accidentally during long-line fishing. One problem that constantly hampers efforts to regulate fishing is the sheer size of the Southern Ocean and its remoteness from centres of population. Another factor to be acknowledged is that CCAMLR co-exists with other legal regimes responsible for fish in the region – this includes the management of specific fish stocks via instruments such as the 1993 Convention for the Conservation of the Southern Blue Tuna (Hemmings 2006).

2. Law of the Sea and the ‘coastal state’ in Antarctica

Under Article 76 of the 1982 Law of the Sea Convention, a coastal state can submit data to the Commission on the Limits of the Continental Shelf (CLCS) and seek clarification of the outer limits of its continental shelf beyond 200 nautical miles up to 350 nautical miles. A parallel development had been occurring in the Arctic. In April 2008, the CLCS recognised most of the submission by Australia in relation to the extended continental shelf of Australia and its offshore islands and territories including Heard, MacDonald and Macquarie. Australia itself has asked CLCS not to consider, for the time being, the data it submitted in relation to the extended continental shelf of what it calls Australian Antarctic Territory (AAT). However, the extended continental shelf areas of Australia’s sub-Antarctic islands (Heard, MacDonald and Macquarie) were considered, because they are located north of the Antarctic Treaty Area. Interestingly, the extended continental shelves from these islands now extend into the Antarctic Treaty Area and thus raise interesting issues regarding the interaction between the 1982 Law of the Sea Convention and the 1959 Antarctic Treaty – the latter freezes territorial claims with respect to the AAT but not their sub-Antarctic islands (Hemmings and Stephens 2009).

This is an important development not only for Australia but also for the wider ATS community. In August 1994, Australia declared an exclusive economic zone off the claimed AAT. From the Australian perspective, successive administrations have sought to enhance their sovereign rights pertaining to the Law of the Sea as a costal state while at the same avoid alienating other parties who do not acknowledge the AAT in the first place. One challenge for the future will be reconciling the extended continental shelves of sub-Antarctic islands with Antarctic governance especially Article IV.

The problem posed by Australia in essence lies in the existence of two overlapping legal regimes – the Antarctic Treaty and the Law of the Sea. The Australian submission, although it did refer to their AAT, highlighted the fact that the Law of the Sea provides a mechanism for ‘coastal states’ to exert sovereign rights of seabed resources. Other claimant states such as Britain, Norway and New Zealand may also seek to define and secure such rights to the outer limits of the continental shelf surrounding their Southern Ocean territories. Whenever those asserted rights cross into the Antarctic Treaty region, it raises awkward issues such as the recognition of coastal states (i.e. the claimant states) and the status of the seabed of the Southern Ocean – is it a global common? Article 7 of the Protocol on Environmental Protection expressly forbids any form of mineral exploitation inside the Antarctic Treaty region. Julia Jabour has argued that Australia is unlikely to assert any seabed resource exploitation below 60 degrees South because “the overlap raises uncertainties about the exploitation of those resources and also out of respect for the Antarctic Treaty System and Australia’s privileged position within it” (2009: 429).

• Tourism

When the Antarctic Treaty was negotiated, Antarctic tourism was in its infancy and did not even feature as a topic of conversation amongst polar policy makers. Since the 1980s, this view has changed. Tourism is now the most important commercial development concerning continental Antarctica. In summer season 2007-8 over 50,000 people (including crew) entered the Antarctic and the vast majority arrived via ships (IPY 2007-9 website). The prime tourist region is the Antarctic Peninsula and surrounding islands such as South Shetland. This concentration of activity is logical in the sense that the Peninsula region is closest to mainland South America and attractive to tourists because the transit time is 2 days as opposed to a far longer crossing via Australia and New Zealand. Polar gateways such as Punta Arenas and Stanley in the Falkland Islands have benefited from this activity. Former Russian crewed ice strengthened vessels operating in Cold War Arctic waters have been redirected towards the Antarctic in the post Cold War era.

The major industry association/lobby group concerned with Antarctic tourism is the International Association of Antarctic Tour Operators (IAATO), which works closely with the ATS. IAATO have developed voluntary guidelines for its members and IAATO instituted a voluntary ban on ships carrying more than 500 people entering Antarctic Treaty waters. IAATO does not have any regulatory authority, however. In the last five years, however, non-IAATO ships have entered these waters carrying more than 500 passengers. In the season of 2006-7, the IAATO member vessel Golden Princess carried over 2700 passengers (rising to over 3,000 if one includes crew) to the Antarctic. In some cases, this has involved thousands of visitors in vessels that do not have an ice class classification, which even if they don’t attempt any direct landings in Antarctica might nonetheless require emergency support in the event of an accident. In November 2007, the ship Explorer sunk in Antarctic waters and more than 150 people had to be rescued. Concerns have inevitably been expressed over search and rescue regarding the larger vessels (and associated obligations) and the impact of visitor numbers on a select number of sites in the Antarctic Peninsula region. Moreover, there are also ongoing concerns relating to the flagging of these larger vessels especially as many established flag states are not party to the Antarctic Treaty.

Alongside the development of ship-based tourism, there is also land-based activity situated in a variety of sites. These bases and summer only camps cater for visitors eager to climb Antarctica’s mountains and explore the remoter parts of the continent. Although numbers are small compared to the ship based activity, concern has been expressed about how the Antarctic is becoming an increasingly large and diverse tourist destination, which might in due course host hotels and further tourist infrastructure.

• Whaling

The politics of whaling is one of the most explosive currently affecting the Antarctic and Southern Ocean. Regulated by the International Whaling Commission (IWC), the ATS does not explicitly consider this subject even though there is no reason why the Protocol on Environmental Protection might not consider this activity (Report of the Canberra Panel, Rothwell et al 2009). One other reason why whaling has not been considered is that it prevents any worsening of relations or even ‘poisoning’ of the working environment of the ATS itself.

Since 1986 a whaling moratorium was declared for the Southern Ocean under the terms of the International Convention for the Regulation of Whaling. As Japan appreciated, the IWRW had a provision for the continuation of whaling on the grounds of scientific research. Japan has engaged in whaling much to the displeasure of Australia and New Zealand. In the case of Australia, for example, it has passed legislation banning whaling in its exclusive economic zones including the AAT. Japan does not recognise Australia’s jurisdictional authority and the two countries have been locked into a bitter dispute about this resource practice and what the Japanese whaling programme (JAPRA II). The Humane Society International (HSI) secured an important decision form the Australian Federal Court in 2008, which stated that a Japanese whaling company was in breach of Australian law when it kills whales in the Australian Whale Sanctuary (created in 1999). This judgement is historic – for the first time Japanese whalers have been taken to court and their activities judged to be illegal despite a Japanese government permit. The Rudd government has not sought to enforce the federal court judgement fearing diplomatic damage to Australian-Japanese relations. Moreover, if enforced by the Australian authorities, it would involve a clear-cut assertion of jurisdiction in waters adjacent to the claimed AAT.

These are a just a few issues influencing the contemporary governance of the Antarctic and space does not allow consideration of other developments such as bio-prospecting (the search for, extraction and testing of chemical compounds and genetic material in living organisms). Bio prospecting is an increasingly important spin off from scientific research and national governments are eager to maximise their investment from scientific programmes (see Herber 2006). This development will place pressures on established conventions such as the free exchange of information – such exchanges may well be increasingly conditioned by commercial considerations.

Conclusions

The Antarctic Treaty remains the cornerstone of Antarctic governance. This document retains considerable saliency and indeed has been championed by some as a potential model of Arctic governance. It needs to be remembered, however, that the origins of the treaty negotiations lay in the 1957-8 IGY and the circumstances pertaining to the Cold War. Science was also critical to the workings of the ATS and the ability of scientists and their national sponsors to establish bases across the Antarctic continent were a critical as was the right of base inspection in terms of confidence building. Some 4,000 scientists now occupy over 60 research stations at the height of the summer season. With logistical and communications improvements, new research stations have been established on the polar plateau. In the past, ice-free ground close to the polar coastline hosted the vast majority of the Antarctic stations.

In essence the managerial challenges pertaining to the Antarctic can be summarised as being largely a function of the region’s diminishing isolation in a variety of political, scientific, commercial, cultural and environmental contexts. In the late 1950s, the polar continent was, for most people, a place that they were unlikely to see let alone visit. Five decades later, Antarctica is well established within global tourist markets and a regular feature on television screens. Environmentally, the region is firmly established within global climate change debates and commercially, the Southern Ocean hosts fishing and whaling activity. Politically, the ATS has an increased membership and member states co-exist with a range of international bodies and non-governmental organizations concerned with the governance of the polar continent. The International Polar Year of 2007-9 has been an important source of further publicity including scientific projects, which promise to penetrate still further into the continent’s interior.

While the ATS is not likely to disappear, its capacity to manage and regulate will continue to be challenged by actors, events and processes that one day might include mineral exploitation – the contested sovereignty of the region remains a haunting presence. Reconciling international regimes such as the Antarctic Treaty with the Law of the Sea will, in the meantime, continue to test policy makers and interested observers alike.

Acknowledgements

I thank Alan Hemmings for his immensely helpful comments on an early draft and for the many helpful suggestions by the executive editor and the referees for Global Policy. I also acknowledge the funding support provided by the British Academy.

References

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The author is Professor of Geopolitics at Royal Holloway, University of London. He is author of five books including Pink Ice: Britain and the South Atlantic Empire (I B Tauris, 2002) and Geopolitics in Antarctica: Views from the Southern Oceanic Rim (Wiley, 1997), k.dodds@rhul.ac.uk