Antarctica: Geopolitics, Climate Change, and Environmental Advocacy
During May, mineral resource competition and geopolitics started boiling up in the White Continent. News of Russia’s gas prospection activities for “scientific ends” in Southern Ocean waters put some Antarctic Treaty (AT) parties on edge. From presidential discourses opposing mineral exploitation in Antarctica, thus reaffirming the AT commitment to peace and science, to British legislators’ unease and concerns over the stability of the AT ban accord on mineral extraction, news diverted from the most existential threats to Antarctic stability, which is climate change and its adverse effects on the Planet.
Trends in global warming continue to threaten the integrity of the white Continent. Scientific evidence highlights trends in ice melting and prospects for sea rise levels; greenhouse emissions are increasingly affecting the ocean’s capacity to cool the Planet, depriving the sea of oxygen and creating anaerobic conditions impacting fish welfare. These trends limit the ocean’s role as the life support to preserve human species on the Planet. Finally, the recently reported avian flu outbreak, which started to affect the penguins, and the call from scientists and environmentalists for a stringent krill no-take zone to secure the food chain for mammals (whales and penguins) are the new risks adding to climate change looming over humanity and Antarctica, a continent for peace and science. Environmentalists, scientists, and conservationists are increasingly advocating Antarctica’s protection to keep it for future generations. This article reviews the hurdles to the accords and the lessons for conservationists and environmentalists pursuing greater ambitions.
Analysis of the 46th Antarctic Treaty Consultative Meeting, Kochi, India
At the 46th Antarctic Treaty Consultative Meeting (ATCM46) held in Kochi, India, this May (10th - 30th), expectations were high among environmentalists. India’s National Centre for Polar and Ocean Research (NCPOR) hosted the ATCM46 and the 26th Committee for Environmental Protection (CEP26) at the heart of the Antarctic Treaty System. According to NCPOR, the number of delegates was 404, 328 were in situ and 76 were online. Environmentalist advocates were on high alert regarding Antarctica’s Emperor Penguins and the krill needing more protection. Multiple stressors add to climate change’s adverse effects on the Planet. Stressors point to greenhouse emissions and plastic pollution impacting the seawater conditions necessary for marine well-being. These also include chemicals and other pollutants. Trends in rising temperatures in the sea put pressure on the seawater, impeding marine and fish biophysical functions. Oceans are essential in cooling the planet and providing Earth with life support to sustain life. Antarctic Oceans are at risk, and their living marine resources are in peril due to these trends in global warming. Thus, collective action is urgently needed.
The Antarctic Treaty (AT) signed in 1959 sought to avoid continuing the Cold War “on ice.” It sought the integrity and governance of the white Continent exclusively for peace and science as initially devised by its 12 original signatories (of which 7 have territorial claims over Antarctica). The AT’s mission to freeze territorial claims and devote the Continent to science and peace has proved resilient, and the “treaty remains a triumph by any measure.”
Today, the AT comprises 56 members and is open to accession with the parties’ approval as long they commit to active and proven scientific research, with research to be shared among the parties. Today, however, geopolitics and global warming are at Antarctica’s doorstep. Geopolitics of marine resource competition is entering the scene, and it seems to drive a surge in nationalistic sentiments around Antarctica’s resources. Russia’s prospecting activities in search of oil and gas have occurred for several years, it appears now. Still, the recent news of Russia’s Rosgeo vessel, which is said to have found vast amounts of gas in the Weddell Sea, exacerbates fears among parties that the ATS ban on mineral exploitation might be breached. Resource-driven geopolitics will continue to rage in a world of competition. As long as wars keep waging elsewhere, nationalism and calls for defense measures can be easily triggered. This can only divert from the most existential threats to humanity nowadays, such as climate change. However, advocates of defensive realism might feel not entirely misguided if some level of “deterrence” is achieved to ward off “predatory” practices or expansionism. Still, the objective of the ATS is to keep Antarctica for the goal of peace and the activity of science; the ATS might lose its most admirable ethos if nationalism is exacerbated.
At Kochi this year, expectations were not entirely fulfilled. Disappointment points to how decisions are reached at the heart of the ATS. This implies that a party can exercise its veto in the name of “national interest” or “rational use of resources." Reforming the consensus rule in a state-centric system is a more significant challenge. Decision-makers believe deliberations should be conducted privately and away from the eye of the press to build trust and avoid “losing face” in tradeoffs. However, climate change and geopolitical tension bring the current stalemate, hindering conservation goals, under scrutiny. Scrutiny has caused some scholars to discuss this rule concerning the link between the ATS's accountability to the international community. One of these approaches is the “complex standard of legitimacy” (Buchanan & Keohane, 2006), which focuses on the link between the international organization (IO) and the external epistemic community. Under this approach, by including transnational civil society’s voices and aspirations in policymaking, a channel of accountability is provided, one that IOs require for their legitimacy. Through normative moral power, epistemic communities add credibility to the deliberation of ideas based on their authoritative power and expert knowledge. They also bring scientific resources to policymakers who need them for their negotiations. The fact that they are non-self-interested actors provides them with a transcendent moral position (Hall & Biersteker, 2002, 2013). However, there are other non-state actors than ENGOs who have specific policy goals in these meetings. Interest groups such as IAATO and RFMOs are also included in the conventions. Thus, the rational, neo-utilitarian State representative might find it challenging to satisfy the conservationist’s goals on the one hand while striking a balance with private ends on the other.
Expectations Not Quite Fulfilled... Again.
The Antarctic and Southern Ocean Coalition (ASOC) said on X (ex-Twitter) on May 31st there was an agreement to devise measures to curtail and regulate the increase of tourism in Antarctica, but actors failed to adopt concrete measures at the ATCM46; however, it was decided to convene at a later date to agree upon these measures. Protecting the Emperor Penguin is pending for the third year, and according to ASOC, “the pace of action remains much too slow to combat the urgent threats faced by the Antarctic ecosystems,” which portrays disappointment over the failure to designate the Emperor Penguin as a Specially Protected Species.
In October last year, 2023, negotiations at the 42nd CCAMLR (Commission on the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources) held in Australia failed for the 7th time to declare the Peninsula Antarctica a Marine Protected Area (MPA). Geopolitics and the Ukraine war entered Antarctica territory. At the 42nd CCAMLR in Hobart, 2023, Russian delegates complained that Australia was unwilling to give their scientists visas to attend the proceedings in Hobart. This could only trump the “high-politics” diplomacy needed in negotiations, which is badly needed to break the stalemate accumulated for years to declare the Antarctic Peninsula an MPA; lessons can be drawn from the diplomatic maneuvering managed to bring reluctant parties to the table and declare the Ross Sea an MPA in 2016 after years of stalemate. High diplomacy is needed to help establish a krill no-take zone in fragile and rich ecosystems.
In 2023, conservationists felt their hearts had utterly sunk. But in June of that same year, an ambitious agreement on a legally binding tool to curb the loss of marine life reached a remarkable close at the UN multilateral forum. The BBNJ (marine biodiversity of areas beyond areas of national jurisdiction) Agreement on ocean governance and marine protection under UNCLOS (United Nations Convention on the Law of the Seas) was successfully agreed upon by the signatory countries, and each member now is in the process of ratification of the treaty. CCAMLR is an integral part of the Antarctic Treaty System (ATS); CCAMLR was adopted in 1980 to conserve and oversee the rational use of krill, fin fish, and other marine resources. CCAMLR explicitly states that the Commission is “open for accession by any State interested in research and harvesting activities,” Thus, the wording attempts to strike a balance between conservation and exploitation of marine resources in Antarctic waters. CCAMLR currently includes 26 members; the EU is one of these active members. The recently signed BBJN Agreement, or the High Seas Treaty by nation-states at the heart of the UN, seeks to protect 30% of the ocean by 2030, and the legal tool to achieve that objective is establishing more new MPAs on the high seas. It should not surprise that CCAMLR’s inability to name the Peninsula an MPA may prompt conservationists and NGOs to press member countries at CCAMLR to reach a favorable consensus on protecting krill as the "lynchpin of the Antarctic ecosystem” on which predators survive and human species depend in their role for “carbon sequestration." While negotiations under UNCLOS to agree on the BBNJ treaty required a widespread “consensus” or majoritarian views to uphold the final draft for members’ signature, at CCAMLR, the “consensus” rule implies that it takes just one member country to oppose a majoritarian agreement through the exercise of its veto for the proposal to be dismissed. The veto ensures a member country’s right to protect its national interests if these are perceived to be under threat. In effect, China and Russia exerted their veto at the 42nd CCAMLR annual meeting in Hobart, Australia, in 2023. Proposals for new MPAs in 2023 included East Antarctica, the Weddell Sea, and the Peninsula Antarctica, with a prohibition to catch krill through a krill no-take zone in the D’Urvile Sea Mertz zone, which is thought to have registered vulnerable marine ecosystems. This area "drives ocean circulation and traps greenhouse emissions,” hence the significance of reaching “conservationist” accords. At the next CCAMLR meeting in October 2024, tensions will be felt between the ATS and the UN High Seas Treaty (BBNJ Agreement) as ocean advocates see their ambitions move further south into Antarctic waters to protect penguins and the krill after lessons learned at CCAMLR’s struggle to name the Antarctic Peninsula an MPA.
What does the Antarctica issue mean for Chile?
Chile’s President Boric's visit to Antarctica with UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres was a performative act to call the world leaders’ attention to the global warming affecting Antarctica. Both UN Guterres and Boric stayed in the Chilean Antarctic Base and expressed their concern on ice melting and global warming through declarations and speeches: “What happens in Antarctica, does not stay in Antarctica," indicated UN Guterres in his official X account standing against the dramatic scenery of ice retreat. As penguins are at risk and CCAMLR struggles to adopt an MPA in the Peninsula of Antarctica, the UN Guterres’s visit to Antarctica was paramount to environmentalists. Guterres drew positive media attention, but the UN Secretary-General also brought some expert voices locally to reinforce that the ATS was an autonomous, separate international regime from the UN. However, this tension between the UN system and the ATS is more than welcome and necessary to accelerate the pace of accords based on science and to satisfy environmentalists’ demands. Climate change will not wait.
Another important meeting regarding the ATS and Antarctica will occur this year in Pucón, Chile. The SCAR Open Science Conference will be held on August 19-23 under the name “Antarctic Science: Crossroads for a New Hope.” SCAR (Scientific Committee on Antarctic Research) provides the scientific resources policymakers need in negotiations (SCAR also offers scientific resources for the IPCC.)
President Boric has announced another visit to Antarctica for January 2025 to strengthen the importance of southern Punta Arenas and the CAI center there for Chile’s strategic interest in the white Continent for peace and science (considering that Chile is one of the 7 original signatories of the AT with territorial claims overlapping those of Argentina and the UK).
What does the Antarctica issue mean for ENGOs?
Coalition-building is fundamental for broader advocacy, from epistemic communities to specialized environmental NGOs or ENGOs, from scientists to grassroots, through campaigns and performative politics. Networking at subnational, national, and international levels is essential. At the ATCM45 in Hobart, Australia, 2023, ASOC indicated that “it found the discussions on biodiversity and climate concerning. ASOC also noted that "everywhere else in the world, the climate and biodiversity crises were linked, and there was already evidence of this in Antarctica." ASOC stated that “an ATCM that could make timely management decisions was necessary for the global response to climate change and biodiversity loss” (ATCM, 2023: 93). Catapulting environmental grievances into public goods or policy outcomes requires for experts entering negotiations to influence decisionmaking. Stalemate can continue if non-state actors’ voices are not sufficiently heard in deliberations. The BBNJ Agreement, on the other hand, can stress this dilemma: tensions between advocates of the High Seas Treaty and CCAMLR's recent struggles highlight difficulties in how “conservation” continues to be defined. Tensions will remain at the heat of the ATS if there is an irreconcilable disagreement over the definition of “conservation" regarding the view on this issue by veto players. Still, this tension over what "conservation” means today in Antarctic waters or if krill fishing can be prohibited or subjected to stringent rules now will require “high-politics" diplomacy, one that could possibly engage these veto players on matters of conservation. However, high diplomacy seems elusive today, given the war in Ukraine fostering animosity in exclusively state-centric decision-making at the ATS.
For scholars and conservationists alike, the tension between “rational use of resources" for human consumption (or trade objectives) versus “conserving” for environmental “peace” requires entering the frontiers of International Relations, whereby Planetary Politics takes a new caveat under climate change and biodiversity loss testing the current system of rules in need of voices from science circles who might see a mandate to enter decisionmaking processes more directly than ever.
Soledad Soza, Doctoral Candidate in International Relations. MSc Political Science. BA Applied Linguistics.
Co-Editor Frontiers, Human Dynamics Journal
June 6, 2024
