The Antarctic Committee for Environmental Protection: past, present, and future

Polar Record ◽  
2007 ◽  
Vol 43 (3) ◽  
pp. 239-246 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rodolfo Andrés Sánchez ◽  
Ewan McIvor
Keyword(s):  
Environmental Protection ◽  
Detailed Analysis ◽  
Environmental Issues ◽  
Future Scenarios ◽  
New Era ◽  
Challenges And Opportunities ◽  
Antarctic Treaty ◽  
The Antarctic ◽  
Antarctic Environment

ABSTRACTThe Committee for Environmental Protection (CEP) was established under the Protocol on Environmental Protection to the Antarctic Treaty to advise the Antarctic Treaty Consultative Meeting (ATCM) on matters relating to protection of the Antarctic environment. After almost a decade of work, the committee has consolidated itself as a highly relevant and important component of the Antarctic Treaty system. Through a detailed analysis of meeting reports, as well as first-hand information and experience, this study describes the activities of the CEP during its first nine years of operation, provides likely explanations for some trends observed and proposes future scenarios by highlighting major challenges and opportunities. In particular, the instigation of strategic planning shows potential for launching a new era of CEP activities focused on the environmental issues requiring the greatest attention. This overview will assist readers to understand the role of the CEP as the main environmental advisor to the ATCM, and the reasons for the Antarctic Treaty parties to support the Committee's work to foster a spirit of cooperation as a prerequisite for continuing protection of the Antarctic environment.

scholarly journals Providing expert scientific advice on the Antarctic environment

1994 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-1 ◽  
Author(s):  
D.W.H. Walton
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Human Activities ◽  
Scientific Advice ◽  
Politics And Science ◽  
The World ◽  
Antarctic Treaty ◽  
The Antarctic ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Antarctic Environment

It is hard to divorce most human activities, including science, completely from politics. Politics is about perceived certainty whilst science is about doubt – they make strange bedfellows. Politicians detest probabilities whilst scientists abhor the absolute. Nowhere is the relationship between politics and science more publicly developed than in the Antarctic Treaty System. In the only continent devoted to peace and science it might be supposed that, after more than thirty years, the role of science would be both more robust and more pivotal in decision-making than elsewhere in the world. So it appears at present but will it remain so?

New Trends in the Protection of the Antarctic Environment: The 1991 Madrid Protocol

1992 ◽  
Vol 86 (2) ◽  
pp. 377-399 ◽  
Author(s):  
S. K. N. Blay
Keyword(s):  
Mineral Resource ◽  
Environmental Protection ◽  
International Protection ◽  
Antarctic Treaty ◽  
The Antarctic ◽  
Antarctic Environment

In June 1991, the Antarctic Treaty states, meeting in Madrid, Spain, approved the Protocol on Environmental Protection to the Antarctic Treaty (the Madrid Protocol). The Protocol was adopted by the Antarctic Treaty Consultative Parties and opened for signature on October 4, 1991. Negotiated over a three-year period, the Protocol, together with its annexes, is the most comprehensive multilateral document ever adopted on the international protection of the environment. It promises to be a significant blueprint for preserving the Antarctic. An ironic feature of the Protocol is that, while it bans mining in Antarctica, it had its origins in the 1988 Convention for the Regulation of Antarctic Mineral Resource Activities (CRAMRA), which permitted mining.

How Cautious is Precautious?: Antarctic Tourism and the Precautionary Principle

2001 ◽  
Vol 50 (4) ◽  
pp. 963-971 ◽  
Author(s):  
Shirley V. Scott
Keyword(s):  
Precautionary Principle ◽  
Environmental Issues ◽  
Principal Factor ◽  
The Precautionary Principle ◽  
Antarctic Treaty ◽  
Scientific Laboratory ◽  
Global Concern ◽  
The Antarctic ◽  
Antarctic Environment ◽  
Antarctic Treaty System

Literature on the Antarctic Treaty System (ATS), particularly that written by citizens of States that are Consultative Parties to the Antarctic Treaty, has often been celebratory in character. The ATS, we have been told, is a model of international co-operation. The regime has prided itself on addressing issues ahead of crisis situations; and, since the conclusion, and subsequent entry into force, of the Environmental Protocol, with its protection of the Antarctic environment. This acclaim of the system that manages Antarctic affairs may be to a large extent warranted. Antarctica has remained peaceful and its value as a scientific laboratory has in recent years been enhanced through the contribution of Antarctic science to understanding environmental issues of global concern. But the environmental credentials of the Treaty System will be immeasurably weakened if it continues to display such a huge anomaly between its treatment of mining and that of tourism. Tourism is covered by only a very weak application of the precautionary principle while the application of the precautionary principle to the issue of mining has been ‘extreme’. The principal factor behind this anomaly appears to be political opportunism.

The 1991 UN session: the environmental protocol fails to satisfy the Antarctic Treaty System's critics

Polar Record ◽  
1992 ◽  
Vol 28 (167) ◽  
pp. 307-314 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter J. Beck
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
United Nations ◽  
Environmental Protection ◽  
South African ◽  
The State ◽  
Research Station ◽  
Antarctic Treaty ◽  
Apartheid Regime ◽  
The Antarctic ◽  
Antarctic Environment

ABSTRACT1991 saw the ninth successive United Nations (UN) discussion on the ‘Question of Antarctica.’ The adoption of two more resolutions critical of the Antarctic Treaty System (ATS), including South African participation therein, reaffirmed the unchanging nature of the UN episode and the lack of consensus on the management of Antarctica. Key developments affecting Antarctica continue to occur away from New York: during 1990—91 the negotiations conducted at Vifia del Mar and Madrid for the Protocol on Environmental Protection to the Antarctic Treaty (PREP) and the measures agreed at the Bonn Antarctic Treaty Consultative Meeting proved the point. The critics of the ATS were appeased by neither PREP and its mining prohibition nor the recent dismantling of the apartheid regime in South Africa.Two UN reports were published on the state of the Antarctic environment as well as the proposed establishment of a UNsponsored research station in Antarctica. One resolution adopted in December 1991 called for annual UN reports on the Antarctic environment, although fiscal and other considerations meant that the research station proposal was effectively shelved. Another resolution urged South African exclusion from ATS meetings. The tenth annual UN discussion on Antarctica is scheduled for the close of 1992. There exists growing evidence that the critical campaign is losing momentum, although it seems premature to anticipate Antarctica's imminent demise as an UN agenda topic.

Oiled wildlife response for Antarctica: Practical and realistic solutions

2014 ◽  
Vol 2014 (1) ◽  
pp. 1559-1568
Author(s):  
Michael Short
Keyword(s):  
Environmental Protection ◽  
Oil Spills ◽  
Marine Pollution ◽  
Commercial Fishing ◽  
Contingency Plans ◽  
Antarctic Marine ◽  
Station Base ◽  
Antarctic Treaty ◽  
The Antarctic ◽  
Antarctic Environment

ABSTRACT Through the Antarctic Treaty on Environmental Protection all of the Antarctic member nations are required to have in place contingency plans for oil spills including oiled wildlife response. The current risks for marine pollution incidents to the Antarctic environment include refuelling activities associated with Antarctic stations/bases; routine station/base activities; and shipping associated with stations/bases, tourism, commercial fishing and whaling. Between 1981 and 2011 there have been reported 33 spills or near spill incidents associated with the Antarctic marine environment. Wildlife at risk from oil spills include seabirds (flying birds and penguins), pinnipeds and cetaceans. Antarctic and polar environments both provide a number of logistical and practical complications given their climatic and geographic character. The key elements for response actions for Antarctic wildlife identified are divided amongst primary, secondary and tertiary oiled wildlife response activities. Primary activities identified include focussing containment and clean up efforts to protecting wildlife as a priority using tools such as sensitivity mapping, stochastic and real time modelling. Secondary activities specific to individual wildlife groups were identified and included specialised hazing, exclusion and pre-emptive capture mechanisms focussed to the Antarctic environment. Tertiary activities are considered with regards to the real capacity of Antarctic stations to respond, take and rehabilitate oiled wildlife given the Antarctic environment and its limitations. The paper identifies realistic mechanisms and systems considering the climatic, logistical and practical issues of the Antarctic environment. Although specific to Antarctic bases the paper outcomes can be equally applied to other polar environments.

An international hierarchy of science: conquest, cooperation, and the 1959 Antarctic Treaty System

2021 ◽  
pp. 135406612110338
Author(s):  
Joanne Yao
Keyword(s):  
International Relations ◽  
20Th Century ◽  
International Institutions ◽  
Social Performance ◽  
Early 20Th Century ◽  
Antarctic Treaty ◽  
The Antarctic ◽  
International Status ◽  
Antarctic Treaty System

The Antarctic Treaty System (ATS), created in 1959 to govern the southern continent, is often lauded as an illustration of science’s potential to inspire peaceful and rational International Relations. This article critically examines this optimistic view of science’s role in international politics by focusing on how science as a global hierarchical structure operated as a gatekeeper to an exclusive Antarctic club. I argue that in the early 20th century, the conduct of science in Antarctica was entwined with global and imperial hierarchies. As what Mattern and Zarakol call a broad hierarchy, science worked both as a civilized marker of international status as well as a social performance that legitimated actors’ imperial interests in Antarctica. The 1959 ATS relied on science as an existing broad hierarchy to enable competing states to achieve a functional bargain and ‘freeze’ sovereignty claims, whilst at the same time institutionalizing and reinforcing the legitimacy of science in maintaining international inequalities. In making this argument, I stress the role of formal international institutions in bridging our analysis of broad and functional hierarchies while also highlighting the importance of scientific hierarchies in constituting the current international order.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document