Antarctica is undergoing a ‘silent battle for its spoils that started with its discovery and has continued without interruption ever since’, says the book's author. ‘The battle . . .is about to intensify’ and ‘will be one of the most complex and truly international contests for habitable space (and mineral resources) of modern times. . . . . in which . . [the]. . .entire continent will be up for grabs’. Dramatic stuff, indeed. But all is not lost. Abdel-Motaal argues that we can safely open up the seventh continent as a haven for climate refugees, and exploit its mineral resources, provided we use the right legal instrument – in particular by adopting the best features of the Svalbard Treaty, which governs exploitation of that Arctic island group under the sovereignty of Norway while respecting the rights of all Contracting Parties.
The book seems to have been stimulated by the pending arrival, in 2048, of the end of the 50-year moratorium on mining that came into effect in January 1998 with the entry into force of the Antarctic Treaty's Protocol on Environmental Protection, otherwise known as the Madrid Protocol. Those familiar with Antarctic legislation will recall that between 1982 and 1988 the Consultative Parties to the Antarctic Treaty had negotiated a Convention on the Regulation of Antarctic Mineral Resource Activity (CRAMRA), designed to control mining activities on the continent. Shortly thereafter Australia and France broke ranks, eventually persuading others to join them in abandoning the mining convention, and, indeed mining of any kind. As Abdel-Motaal points out, this was not solely for environmental reasons. For example, the UN General Assembly was against the convention because it wished to see equitable sharing of Antarctica's resources beyond the Parties to the Antarctic Treaty, and some Antarctic claimant states feared that CRAMRA might have an impact on their claims of territorial sovereignty. Instead, as is now well known, the Treaty Parties adopted the Madrid Protocol as a mechanism for protecting Antarctica as a wilderness reserve. The Protocol bans mining, but allows Parties to propose its review after 50 years.
The book contains an important subtext. Bearing in mind the likely growth in refugees as the global population soars to 9 or 10 billion by 2050, and as the globe continues to warm, Abdel-Motaal suggests that the Antarctic Peninsula and its offshore islands will soon be little different from West Greenland in climate (or Svalbard, for that matter), and could, under a different legal regime, be considered a suitable place to house climate refugees. Warming can also be expected to expose mineral resources currently buried by ice, while technological advances in coming years are expected to ease the task of mining in such a frigid environment (indeed, mining of various kinds is now widespread in the equally frigid Arctic).
Exploring different possible scenarios for managing Antarctica under such circumstances, Abdel-Motaal fixes on the Svalbard model as potentially the most suitable. She describes this model as having turned Svalbard into international territory managed under the sovereignty of Norway. It is in effect a demilitarized zone to which any national from a signatory country could emigrate with an equal right to land and commercial activity, managed under (diminished) sovereignty by Norway.
Membership of the Svalbard Treaty now comprises some 40 nations. Applying this model in Antarctica would reconcile the sovereignty of the claimant states with the principle of Antarctica as part of the common heritage of mankind. The seven claimant states would see their sovereign rights confirmed. The currently unclaimed portion would be divided between the USA and Russia, which reserved their rights to claim at the time of signing of the Antarctic Treaty. The rest of the world would be able to enjoy Antarctica's living space and benefit from its resources, as in Svalbard. Clearly effecting such a transition in Antarctica would not be easy, given that three territorial claims overlap – those of the UK, Chile and Argentina, and one region remains unclaimed. But we have become used to resolving boundary disputes, for example within the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNLOS).
Breaking up the Antarctic Treaty would seem like heresy to those who regard it as one of the most successful international agreements of the post World War II era. But as Abdel-Motaal points out, the Treaty does have significant shortcomings, not least the inability of its Parties to protect significant ecosystems, a defect pointed out in recent years by SCAR (the Scientific Committee on Antarctic Research). Furthermore she considers the Environmental Impact system, where ultimate responsibility rests with the state proposing the activity, to be inadequate, not least in the absence of enforcement (teeth) to ensure that what needs to get done is done. Besides that, Environmental Impact Statements fail usually to address the cumulative impact of activities, and the inspections of any individual Party's activities by others seldom lead to significant improvement.
Hence, as Abdel-Motaal points out: ‘Contrary to popular perception, the environmental provisions of the Madrid Protocol are far weaker than the environmental safeguards in the CRAMRA that it displaced”. Furthermore the “liability regime is limited to environmental emergencies, without any obligation for environmental restoration’. In a sense, then, Antarctica and the Southern Ocean could be seen as ‘unmanaged commons’. This sense is further reinforced by the fact that two unregulated commercial activities are already widespread in the Antarctic: tourism, and bioprospecting. In contrast, the stringent environmental protection seen in Svalbard suggests that Antarctica's most fragile ecosystems would be better protected under the sort of sovereign control offered by the Svalbard model, not least because land-use planning is a key part of Svalbard's environmental management – a concept absent from Antarctica, where the research stations of several countries are piled higgledy piggledy in places like King George Island.
I would take issue with Abdel-Motaal's insistence that tourists are ‘flocking’ to Antarctica, which suggests to me the lack of a sense of proportion. However, her observation that tourists pay into an environmental fund used for education, and nature conservation, thus linking tourism and conservation in Svalbard, strikes me as something worth applying in the south.
Besides her provocative recommendations, Abdel-Motaal offers a comprehensive analysis of the historical development and current operation of the Antarctic Treaty System that currently governs activities both on the continent and – through the Convention on the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources (CCAMLR) – throughout much of the Southern Ocean. She does not pull her punches, but provides an honest appraisal – warts and all. This is a most useful text that should see widespread application in the educational and policy making communities, and among Antarctic operators of one kind or another. The world is not static, change is all around, and there are lessons to be learned from the Arctic that could well be applied in the south to improve matters there. The book is well worth a read.
