The 1959 Antarctic Treaty is recognised as one of the world’s most successful and lasting international agreements, setting aside an entire continent for peaceful and scientific collaboration. This is obvious on the ground. I’ve spent weeks with teams of researchers from various countries at geopolitical loggerheads working together in isolated camps on the ice, or navigating the heaving Southern Ocean in shared cabins on research vessels.
But Alan Hemmings, a specialist in Antarctic governance at the University of Canterbury, says that despite many committed people and good intentions, the inter-governmental system is at risk of falling into disuse.
Antarctic Treaty negotiations were once at the vanguard of environmental initiatives that came only much later elsewhere, he says, with “good ideas about protecting Antarctic fauna and flora and setting up protected areas as early as 1964”.
But since the Madrid Protocol – signed in 1991 and in effect since 1998 – which complements the Antarctic Treaty to increase environmental and ecosystem protection, Hemmings says nations seem to have been largely bogged down, making few decisions and taking decades to implement them.
“We once had a new component of the Antarctic Treaty System at decadal intervals. When sealing looked like it was going to resume, we got the Convention for the Conservation of Antarctic Seals. When fishing began to take off, we got the Convention for the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources. When we thought we were going to go mining, we had a convention to regulate Antarctic mineral resource activities.”
On that pattern, he says nations should have agreed on conventions to regulate Antarctic tourism and bioprospecting by now. But instead, tourism measures adopted in 2004 are still waiting for enough countries to implement them, and at the latest annual meeting held in Milan this month, parties could not even agree on whether emperor penguins should be added to the list of specially protected species, despite strong evidence they are threatened because climate change is shrinking their sea-ice breeding areas.
“It is remarkable to me that we designed the Antarctic Treaty System at the height of the Cold War when we faced an existential threat of nuclear conflagration. And yet, now we’re not confident enough that we can keep those sorts of issues at arm’s length.”
When asked if he fears the treaty could collapse, Hemmings says a de facto collapse has happened already. “We have this hollowed-out system … sure, we meet every year, but we no longer can agree anything and we’ve not adopted anything to deal with the issues that have arisen since the Madrid Protocol.”
He doesn’t expect any nation to exit entirely. However, we have to at least “consider the possibility that the United States under the Trump administration abrogates all or some part of the Antarctic Treaty System”. Hemmings is more concerned about a lack of participation, rendering negotiations ineffective.
The potential of resource exploration is an obvious point of tension, and not just coming from countries portrayed as rogue players, such as Russia and China. To counter these interests, Hemmings says nations must find a way to reframe Antarctic governance to be more friendly towards states that joined the treaty after the 12 founding nations, which include New Zealand.
“If we don’t make the Antarctic Treaty System something in which they can see themselves and their aspirations for the polar regions, we shouldn’t be surprised they are either disinterested or actively hostile until it is changed.”
The earliest time any nation could start pushing for change is in 2048. But even then, any request for modification would require majority support, and that majority must include three-quarters of the states that were party to the treaty in 1991.
Hemmings says countries such as New Zealand and Australia promote themselves as Antarctic gateways, but: “perhaps we also ought to view ourselves as gatekeepers” to hold up the value of a global common good.
