Antarctic Treaty

According Garrett Hardin (1968), each herdsman wants to keep as many cattle as possible. The rational herdsman decides that adding additional animal to his herd will increase his utility. But each herdsman shares the commons, so if each herdsman decides to keep increasing cattle to the commons, the end result will be the depletion and ruin of the commons.

The commons here can be compared to Antarctica. Antarctica is an unregulated area of land which yields benefits to tourist companies who want to keep increasing tourist numbers as each additional tourist yields these companies higher utility (i.e. higher profits). The main assumption that Hardin uses is that the commons is unregulated. In this globalised world, it is rare, in my view, to find an industry that is unregulated – especially when it comes to nature and the environment. What matters in this debate though, is not whether there are regulations but how effective the regulations are.

One solution to the negative impacts explained last week is to reduce tourist numbers. This could potentially reduce the introduction of invasive species and the impact on penguin habitats. But as is obvious in my post from 27 October, tourist numbers are rising and I think this solution is unlikely. Companies running expeditions such as Poseidon Expeditions, Quark Expeditions, Chimu Adventures are profit maximising companies. This means they want to make as much money as possible and so reducing passenger numbers is undesirable because this reduces revenues and profits. Nevertheless, the Antarctic Treaty endeavours to do just this. In recognition of greater human visits to Antarctica, the Antarctic Treaty has been set up to prevent an environmental catastrophe.

The Antarctic Treaty

It was formed in 1959 and came into force in 1961 to govern human activities. It comprises of 46 countries, of which 28 have advisory status (i.e. power to make decisions). The treaty believes that the following provisions are the most important (Secretariat of the Antarctic Treaty, n/d):

1. Antarctica shall be used for peaceful purposes only (Art. I).

2. Freedom of scientific investigation in Antarctica and cooperation (Art. II).

3. Scientific observations and results from Antarctica shall be exchanged and made freely available (Art. III).

It claims these are the most important, however on reading these, my first impression is that there is no mention of the environmental concerns. Research seems to be the main agenda. As you will read later in my blog, research centres can also have negative impacts on the continent. So this is one flaw that I spotted when I began researching the treaty.   

The Rules of the Treaty are known as the Antarctic Treaty System, consisting of three international agreements:

1. Convention for the Conservation of Antarctic Seals (1972)

Aims to reduce commercial exploitation of seals.

2. Convention on the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources (1980)

Aims to conserve and manage marine living resources in Antarctic. The following measures, among others, are being taken (Fabra and Gascon, 2008):

a. Develop a management regime for krill that takes into account the impact of fishing on dependent species

b. Establish a monitoring program

c. Develop fisheries management policies

3. Protocol on Environmental Protection to the Antarctic Treaty/ Montreal Protocol (1991)

Protocol on Environmental Protection to the Antarctic Treaty/ Montreal Protocol

The relevant agreement that relates to tourism is number 3: Protocol on Environmental Protection to the Antarctic Treaty. This protocol was established in 1991 once it was recognised that the number of tourists were increasing. This treaty is broken up into six annexes including:

1. The requirement of an environmental impact assessment/initial environmental evaluation for every activity before it’s due to start 

2. Rules concerning the conservation of fauna and flora 

3. Rules on waste disposal and waste management 

4. Rules on marine pollution 

5. The establishment of protected areas 

6. Preventative measures and contingency plans shouldoperate in case of an environmental disaster. 

(Accessed through: Secretariat of the Antarctic Treaty, 2011)

Of the Annexes, number three and number six mention tourism. There were previously no restrictions or regulations on tourism, but this changed in 2009 when an agreement was made among member countries to limit tourism by reducing the size of cruise ships, capping the number of passengers that land in Antarctica to 500 and capping passengers on the shore at any given time to 100 (BBC, 2009). This agreement was discussed in the Antarctic Treaty Consultative Meeting in Baltimore. Box 1 displays the general principles that came out of these discussions.

Box 1: General principles of Antarctic tourism agreed in 2009
Source: Lamers et al. (2012)

So hopefully from this post I have illustrates that action is indeed being taken to help reduce the human impacts on Antarctica. The international community is not ignoring what is happening to wildlife in Antarctica and it’s important to acknowledge this. International treaties help regulate and reduce negative environmental issues. In particular, Annex 3 which relates to waste management is a useful starting point to improve the environment. 

This is where I’m going to end today. Because regulation aims to reduce the human impact, this is one point to positive impacts, so the updated score for negative impacts vs natural/positive impacts is 3-2. These treaties signify that we acknowledge and want to reduce our wrong doings. But are these really effective? Keep a look out for the next post where I will determine whether its one more point to negative impacts or not.