Introduction

At the heart of the current negotiations about a minerals regime for Antarctica lie two, or perhaps three, issues of very great difficulty. They may not be as complex as, say, the problems that faced the recently concluded United Nations Conference on the Law of the Sea when it decided, unwisely some would now say, to produce a complete and detailed code governing every aspect of deep-sea-bed mining. But the intellectual challenge facing the negotiators in the Antarctic context is probably greater. In the case of each of the hard issues, the gulf between the opposing opening bids is a huge one. Solutions, if they are to be found, will have to reconcile political and legal positions which look – at first glance and second glance as well – to be wholly irreconcilable. To produce those solutions will call for imagination, ingenuity, hard work and a great deal of the quality of forbearance to which Dr John Heap directed our attention in one of the earlier papers presented to this Conference (Chapter 6).

The areas of agreement

Before commenting briefly on these central and difficult issues, it may be useful to look at areas of agreement among the Consultative Parties which have either been recorded or are in the process of emerging. Recommendation XI-1, which was adopted at the Consultative Meeting held in Buenos Aires in mid-1981 and which forms the basis of the current negotiations on minerals, established common ground on a significant number of points.