The greening of antarctica : environment, science and diplomacy, 1959 - 1980

Abstract

In the years following the signing of the Antarctic Treaty in 1959, Antarctic affairs developed in directions not intended or anticipated by its signatories. The Treaty was negotiated to defuse and resolve conflicts over territorial sovereignty and permit peaceful scientific access to the continent. Instead of simply fulfilling and maintaining their original intentions, the Treaty parties slowly built an environmental regime. Deliberately and incidentally, consciously and unconsciously, the parties added to their foundational yet tenuous charter agreements which delimited a growing Antarctic region as a space for environmental protection and management-always with science and scientists at its heart. They were wresting from the cold and sterile views of geophysics a new vision of a living, fragile and green Antarctic. How did this major conceptual shift happen? How did this environmental regime develop? How did Antarctica become green? This thesis explores the emergence of this environmental regime through changing and competing visions of the Antarctic in the 1960s and 1970s. In particular, it traces how those visions were negotiated in diplomatic and scientific settings and subsequently articulated and codified in Antarctica's international treaties and agreements. Following the Antarctic Treaty in 1959, the parties negotiated the Agreed Measures for the Conservation of Antarctic Fauna and Flora (AMCAFF) in 1964, the Convention for the Conservation of Antarctic Seals (CCAS) in 1972, and the Convention on the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources (CCAMLR) of 1980; they also gave serious consideration to the issue of mineral resource exploitation in the 1970s. In analysing these negotiations and agreements, this thesis particularly pursues two major themes: the relationship of science and international politics, and of scientists and diplomats, and the relationship of environmental ideas and ideas about international order. This thesis argues that the Antarctic environmental regime developed because the political settlement of 1959 could not be maintained in the face of changing conceptions of the Antarctic, which arose from continued scientific inquiry, changing global environmental sensibilities, and new geographies of international law and resource exploitation, and provided an opportunity for the Treaty parties, both individually and collectively, to advance their interests.