All hyperlinks in this paper are correct as at April 2021
Introduction
Australia lays claim to 42 per cent of Antarctica, the fifth
largest continent on Earth. This unrecognised claim is one of seven that sit in
competition with those of the United States and Russia who reserve a right to
claim the whole continent. If resolved, these claims would give rise to the
world’s largest external territories—enough land and resources to attract
ongoing geopolitical competition.
Historically, territorial claims and the proposed
exploitation of resources are the bedrocks of Antarctic geopolitics. However,
the Antarctic
Treaty 1959 sets these aside. Under the treaty system, claims are
suspended, living resources and the environment they depend on are protected
and mining is banned. Scientific programs are allowed because treaty members
need them to establish the bona fides of their presence in Antarctica. As a
result, scientific cooperation is an important common interest linking
superpowers, emerging global powers and developing countries on the floor of Antarctic Treaty Consultative Meetings.
This science and diplomacy nexus is coming under pressure.
Some parties are using scientific activities to compete inside the Antarctic
Treaty System. These developments reflect a trend where global competitors such
as the United States and China are decoupling science and technology
cooperation. This paper draws on the resources of the Australian Parliament,
made available through the Parliamentary Library Summer Research Scholarship
2020, to look at how scientific cooperation is faring as a result of these
developments. The author acknowledges the scholarship as allowing a privileged
insight into this aspect of Antarctic policy making from an Australian
perspective.
The nexus
between science and diplomacy in Antarctica
Antarctica is the world’s largest wilderness, hosting
transitory human habitation in the name of discovery since the seventeenth
century when it drew European powers south in a competition for territory and a
global search for resources.[1]
Sovereign ambitions and geopolitical interest in Antarctica date from that era.
An international quest for scientific knowledge accompanied
the race to claim the seventh continent.[2]
This brought scientific and political interests into close proximity. This
connection has anchored a long‑standing science and diplomacy nexus in
Antarctic policy making.
Scientists took part in many discovery expeditions. They
observed Antarctica’s geological profile and collected samples which, on their
return, fuelled speculation about mineral deposits and petroleum reserves.[3] While these
resources have never been exploited, research into them has always been an
incentive for maintaining links between scientific activities and Antarctic
politics.
Expeditions fostered commercial exploitation of whales,
seals and eggs on an extinction-level scale.[4]
Over time, unregulated harvesting drove aquatic mammals to the brink and fish
stocks into decline.[5]
Distaste for this excess eventually prompted political advocacy to protect
living resources under an international regime that culminated in support for
conservation to be part of the Antarctic Treaty negotiated in 1959.[6] Despite global
calls for moderation, industries based on Antarctic living resources furnished
Britain, Japan, Norway, Russia and the United States with returns sufficient
for these governments to exert diplomatic efforts to preserve access to them.
Thus, in addition to the above-noted science and diplomacy connection,
unrequited resource expectations have long underpinned another nexus between
sovereignty and economic interests in Antarctic politics. These two aspects
intertwine in the operation of the Antarctic Treaty System today.
From the outset of Antarctic diplomacy, claiming territory,
scientific exploration and resource speculation progressed hand in hand albeit
slowly. Extreme weather and the limits of transport and logistics technology
curtailed the human advance on the continent until the mid-twentieth century.
Then, as the Cold War peaked, rivalry between Britain, Chile and Argentina over
the Antarctic Peninsula, and strategic competition between the United States
and the Soviet Union over nuclear control of the global south, made it
imperative to negotiate a treaty to de-escalate geopolitical conflict over
sovereignty.[7]
Antarctic
Treaty 1959
The Antarctic Treaty (the treaty) was negotiated
between the 12 countries whose scientists had been active in and around
Antarctica during the International Geophysical Year of 1957-58.[8] Scientists were there to
collaborate on research into the earth and its systems. Their multinational
efforts delivered scientific advances on a scale that one country operating
alone could not replicate.[9]
Then, and now, this kind of cooperation is synonymous with the treaty and its
operations.
The Antarctic Treaty was signed in Washington on 1
December 1959 by Argentina, Australia, Belgium, Chile, France, Japan, New
Zealand, Norway, South Africa, the United Kingdom, the United States and the
Soviet Union.[10]
It entered into force on 23 June 1961. Since then, another 42 nations have
acceded to the treaty, increasing the total number of parties to 54.[11]
Scientific
cooperation
Antarctic
diplomacy
Three significant political currents in
international affairs surrounded the diplomacy of Antarctic treaty making.
First, contested Antarctic geopolitics was a trigger point in Cold War tensions
between the then Soviet Union and the United States. Nuclear disarmament was
paramount and it was translated into the first objective of the
treaty—peaceful use. Peaceful use of Antarctica is geopolitical constraint on a
continental scale. The treaty achieves this by removing or reducing a number of
conflict triggers. It prohibits nuclear weapons and military deployments, and
mitigates the geopolitical competition associated with territorial claims by
suspending them. Instead, the treaty opens the continent to scientific use.
Second, conservation was a global policy issue
backed by multinational activism, and conserving Antarctica became a world-wide
aspiration. The treaty pre-empted clashes over the Antarctic environment
and resources by subsuming resource exploitation under conservation as the
second objective.[12]
This objective is a brake on economic interests. It constrains parties’
extending their reasons for being in Antarctica beyond science.
Third, the success of the multinational
research program under the Antarctic arm of the International Geophysical Year
1957–58 gave polar science political leverage on the international stage. The
final objective—scientific exploration and knowledge sharing—enshrines the
common ground of scientific cooperation that emerged from this undertaking as an
apolitical, alternative rationale for Antarctic engagement.[13] Scientific collaboration put
‘the interests of all mankind’ on an equal footing with sovereignty and
resources at the negotiating table. It became a pathway for competing powers to
substitute shared scientific activity for territorial competition. The consensus
approach to managing Antarctic affairs owes its start to this kind of
science-led diplomacy.
The Antarctic Treaty establishes a political region
from 60° south latitude down to the South Pole.[14] Regional governance features
science-led diplomacy and traditional diplomacy on an equal footing. The treaty
preamble positions international scientific cooperation as a foundation for
defining parties’ intentions towards Antarctica, an approach for which Article
X provides a diplomatic backstop. The latter binds parties to ‘exert
appropriate efforts, consistent with the Charter
of the United Nations, to the end that no one engages in any activity
in Antarctica contrary to the principles or purposes of the present Treaty.[15] As science is the
only activity treaty parties have legitimised, this arrangement places
scientific cooperation at the forefront of Antarctic governance.
Consensus
building and scientific norms
Article IV creates a unique political operating context
within the treaty area. It is the article for which the treaty is renowned.
Article IV freezes territorial claims across the southern continental zone,
achieved by controlling the legal positions between the parties that sign up to
it without using borders to divide the landmass.[16] By virtue of Article IV, the
treaty provides access everywhere without recognising sovereignty and places
conditions on that access by restricting activities to scientific research and
exchange.
Within the treaty area, the nexus between scientific
activities and traditional diplomacy relies on a norm that Antarctica is a
continent ‘dedicated to peace and science’.[17]
Antarctic diplomacy emphasises scientific activities as the main grounds for
consensus building in the space created, where Article X discourages
statecraft in pursuit of national ambitions by traditional means. Treaty
parties put this norm into practice as part of consensus law making in the
Antarctic Treaty System.[18]
As a result, parties publicly recognise international
scientific cooperation as a common rather than competing interest. Over the
last sixty years, they have come to rely on building consensus around
scientific activities as a measure of consistency in treaty interpretation.
Such consistency has become the anchor for scientific cooperation in Antarctic
policy-making. It allows contestation over territory to take a back seat, and
diplomats to use scientific activities to balance the strategic and national ambitions
governments espouse in their foreign policy and Antarctic plans with
year-to-year activities on the ground. Lately however, science-based consensus
building seems to have been coming under pressure from resurgent geopolitics as
emerging global powers such as China abandon this practice in pursuit of
greater national status and presence in Antarctic decision-making.[19]
Decision
making
Instead of apportioning jurisdiction over land, sea and
resources, the Antarctic Treaty confers on consultative parties the ability to
make decisions about the continent and its assets. The 12 signatories became
the original 12 consultative parties and decision makers. To join them, other
countries must accede to the treaty and comply with Article IX.2 which grants
decision making status for so long as ‘a party demonstrates interest in
Antarctica by conducting substantial research activity there’.[20] This institutional
requirement positions science as a leveller in Antarctic policy making, an
influence enhanced by the discipline’s requirements for objectivity and
evidence. In Antarctic diplomacy, science as a permanent adjunct to traditional
diplomacy offers decision-makers evidence-based options alongside the positions
parties craft to protect or pursue their national interests.
Treaty
membership
Treaty membership is sponsored by invitation. All
consultative parties must then agree to admit new members which preserves the
function of traditional diplomacy as the final say. The research activity
threshold ties activities in the name of science in with those conducted for
diplomatic reasons.
Meeting the threshold is not a one-off requirement. The
minimum prescribed activity is the establishment of a scientific station or
despatch of a scientific expedition.[21]
Parties typically demonstrate ongoing interest by conducting annual science
programs or collaborating with other nations active in Antarctic research,
which reinforces the Antarctic Treaty System as a cooperative arena.[22]
Annual Antarctic Treaty Consultative Meetings are standing
diplomatic conferences run on formal lines to administer the treaty and its
scientific programs. Meetings host 29 decision makers, the
12 original signatories and 17 acceding nations that have been recognised
against the research threshold test and admitted by the consultative cohort.[23] The other 25
non-consultative parties—acceding nations yet to attain the threshold—are
invited to attend but not to participate in decision‑making. As
observers, non-consultative parties are privy nonetheless to meeting agendas
and science-led diplomacy as it unfolds.[24]
Treaty membership is a trace history of scientific outreach
between global powers using Antarctic connections as a bridge during periods of
otherwise tense international relations.[25]
The membership profile is an uncommon mix of superpowers and emerging and
developing powers. Meetings are diplomatic forums where parties connect global,
national and Antarctic-specific interests using scientific activity as a means
to engage across all these levels.
There is a chronology of cooperation between past and
present allies, and competing powers such as the United States, Russia and
China. Previous examples of cooperation include the United States and Russia,
and Australia and China. The United States and Russia hosted scientists at each
other’s Antarctic bases while they faced off during the Cold War.[26] In the same era
Australia reached out to China to open avenues of communication not available
via diplomatic channels under the auspices of Antarctic scientific
collaboration. The Australian Antarctic Division opened its research programs
to Chinese participation from the mid-1970s. This enabled China—not an original
signatory—to reach the research activity threshold by 1983.[27] Australia went on to sponsor
the invitation from the Antarctic Treaty Consultative Meeting to China to seek
full treaty membership, and voted at the Sixth Special Antarctic Treaty
Consultative Meeting in 1985 to affirm China’s decision-making status.[28]
Scientific cooperation vs competition
Stamped with success at the geopolitical level, scientific
cooperation has developed a signature of its own in Antarctic diplomacy. At
Antarctic Treaty Consultative Meetings, diplomacy behind the scenes draws on
scientific cooperation as an alternative pathway to preserve operational
harmony in the region. In practice, treaty parties rely on cooperation between
their science programs to underwrite the diplomatic solution in Article IV.
At the 50th anniversary of the treaty signing in 2009, US
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton acknowledged the significance of scientific
cooperation, stating 'the treaty is a blueprint for the kind of international
cooperation that will be needed more and more to address the challenges of the
21st century, and it is an example of smart power at its best. Governments
coming together around a common interest and citizens, scientists, and
institutions from different countries, joined in scientific collaboration to advance
peace and understanding’.[29]
A decade later, in the lead up to the 60th anniversary in
2019, there were clear signs that the science and diplomacy nexus in Antarctic
policy making was coming under pressure from resurgent geopolitics. Parties are
now, it appears, pushing their Antarctic science programs towards serving
geopolitical agendas and national resource ambitions and away from the treaty’s
collaborative foundation.
A shift from scientific collaboration to competition heralds
a shift in the orientation of Antarctic diplomacy and potentially reintroduces
a flavour of instability to the sphere. At stake is the well-established treaty
norm of ‘peaceful exploration’ with its emphasis on scientific cooperation,
shared knowledge and freedom of access. On the diplomatic horizon, an
alternative based on ‘peaceful exploitation’ is making itself known as
consultative parties such as China, with a different set of priorities for Antarctica,
venture toward reinterpreting the treaty.[30]
Contemporary
geopolitical competition
This shift reflects the broader geopolitical context in
which strategic competition between the United States and China is reshaping
the international environment. ‘The cooperation strategy of the past four
decades or more is giving way to a decoupling trend in trade, investment,
science, technology, personnel exchanges and other fields. In science and
technology in particular, the United States, from the White House and Congress
to the Department of Commerce, the State Department and others, is using various
means, including legislation and diplomatic pressure, in an attempt to weaken
China’s institutional advantage in stimulating indigenous innovation. It is
predictable that competition between China and the United States in the field
of science and technology will become routine and more intense’.[31]
The flow-on effect as these global competitors decouple
science and technology has the potential to disrupt the norms and
consensus-based arrangements which give scientific cooperation an institutional
advantage in the Antarctic Treaty System.[32]
Against this backdrop, issues of territory and ambitions to exploit resources are
motivators for consultative parties outside the original twelve to assert
treaty interpretations better suited to their own national aims in Antarctica.
Opportunities to push for alternatives lie ahead as the profile of treaty
membership changes. While for now ‘countries continue to participate in
Antarctic Treaty governance, that has not stopped them jostling for position
and preparing for a time when the current arrangements change.’[33]
Pressure
points
Unresolved
territorial claims
Territory is a necessary ingredient of sovereignty in
international law.[34]
Antarctica became stateless when the treaty was ratified and the continent
attracts contemporary geopolitical interest because it still does not belong to
any state. In their diplomatic postures, countries may elect to consider
Antarctic territory as claimed, claimable or unclaimed depending on their
history with the continent, while trying not to ruffle the consensus-based
approach treaty parties have adopted to keep geopolitical and resource
ambitions among themselves in check.
Argentina, Australia, Chile, France, New Zealand, Norway and
the United Kingdom assert territorial claims based on discovery, exploration
and commercialisation of living resources.[35]
At the time of treaty negotiations, none of these seven had perfected a title
sufficient to assure their claims in the face of geopolitical competition over
Antarctica.[36]
This includes Australia’s claim to 42 per cent of East Antarctica.[37]
Article IV of the Antarctic Treaty preserves these
seven claims as they stood when it came into force in 1961. Among other
signatories historically active in Antarctica, the United States and Russia
reserve a right to claim all or part of Antarctica.[38] Article IV incorporates this
position into the diplomatic fabric of the Antarctic Treaty System along with
the seven existing claims. The framework also harbours silent positions.
Belgium, Germany, Poland, Sweden and South Africa explored Antarctica but had
not put forward specific claims prior to the Washington Conference.[39] Article IV
shelters these undeclared positions alongside the existing territorial claims
and reserved rights.
Figure 1:
Antarctic territorial claims
Territories indicated, left to right: Chile, Argentina, UK, Norway, Australia, France, NZ, Unclaimed
Source: F Lewis, ‘The coldest, windiest and driest
place on Earth: who runs Antarctica?’, Sydney Morning Herald, (online
edition), 29 November 2019.[40]
Scientific
competition for territory
During the International Geophysical Year 1957–58,
scientists from around the world worked together despite ‘tensions with respect
to differences of view over claims and governments’ pursuit of strategic
interests’.[41]
Article II and Article III of the treaty attract less attention but they are
just as important as Article IV, Article IX and Article X to Antarctic
policy-making. They extend ‘freedom of scientific investigation and cooperation
towards that end’ and ‘open exchange of scientific observations and results’ to
all treaty participants whether or not they are decision makers.[42]
Nations acceding to the treaty after 1961 have no grounds to
assert territorial claims along traditional lines. At the negotiating table the
treaty founders anticipated future claims and sought to exclude scientific
activities from geopolitical bargaining. The treaty staves off new claims under
Article IV by preventing countries from defining ‘occupation for scientific
purposes’ as an additional basis to assert, support or deny sovereignty.[43]
On the surface, post-treaty activities intended to promote
scientific engagement in Antarctica such as building new scientific bases or
expanding national research programs cannot be put to the dual purpose of
perfecting, enlarging or supporting new territorial claims.[44] However, the rapid expansion
of bases since the treaty came into force—over the last decade by China in
particular—is challenging this assumption. The treaty did not resolve the issue
of sovereignty and now China reserves the right to make claims there too.[45]
Scientific
triggers
The post-treaty record of scientific access to Antarctica
includes examples where parties have pre‑positioned national interests to
be called on if the treaty were to be reviewed or amended. According to one
academic, Russia used the pathway of scientific activity to execute post-IGY
plans to establish access to ‘ice free areas’ and ‘locations of interest’,
intent on discovering and securing access to minerals and hydrocarbons.[46] Russian diplomacy
at Antarctic Treaty Consultative Meetings conformed with the disclaimer of
‘keeping Antarctica as a region of peace, stability and cooperation and
preventing the possible emergence of international tensions’.[47] At home, it’s stated aim was
to build a comprehensive legal basis for a future territorial claim based on
‘extensive exploratory, scientific and similar activities spreading from the
initial bases in the Australian Antarctic Territory to all other parts of the
continent’.[48]
Russia has continued to steadily implement this strategy. It
established four bases in the Australian Antarctic Territory during the
International Geophysical Year and, in 1958, declared an intention to make them
permanent.[49]
Two of them, Vostok in the interior and Mirny on the East Antarctic coast, are
among the largest installations in Antarctica. Russia has since increased its
footprint from four to 10 facilities with three permanent and four seasonal
facilities in the Australian Antarctic Territory, one permanent station in
Norwegian-claimed Queen Maud Land and another on the Antarctic Peninsula in
contested West Antarctica. In 2017, Russia announced it would transform its seasonal
base Russkaya in unclaimed Marie Byrd Land into another year-round operating
station by 2020.[50]
On 23 May 2021, Russia confirmed its plans to recommission Russkaya Station as
an initiative of the state space corporation ‘Roscosmos’. The upgraded station
will host equipment for Russia’s GLONASS global satellite tracking system and
spacecraft tracking devices.[51]
Contemporary geopolitical players with a footprint of
scientific occupation such as China could follow suit with the aim of asserting
claims over areas where they cannot otherwise demonstrate compliance with
international law which requires a basis of possession, notification of claims,
maintenance of authority in the territory sufficient to protect acquired
rights, and freedom of commerce and transit.[52]
To assert an Antarctic claim without these, the prime movers need to disrupt
the norm of scientific cooperation that legitimises everyone’s presence under
the Antarctic Treaty.
Unclaimed
territory
Scientific occupation is a powerful motivator to pursue
reinterpretation of the treaty. Fifteen per cent of Antarctica has never been
claimed. Establishing a permanent base in this sector gives the host government
the appearance of being in the same position as the seven claimants at the time
of treaty negotiations. Were the treaty to be reviewed or put aside, the
unclaimed sector in the southwest—the fourth largest landmass on the continent
comprising 1,610,000 square kilometres—could serve as one pretext for parties
to adjust their posture towards scientific cooperation as a diplomatic
gatekeeper depending on where Antarctica fits in their contemporary national
ambitions and geopolitical agendas.
Resource
ambitions
How the gatekeeping function is formulated is another
pretext to note. At past Antarctic Treaty Consultative Meetings and in response
to Antarctic affairs raised in global forums, Russia, like other parties, has upheld
the science-diplomacy nexus by expressing support for the overarching
principles in the Antarctic Treaty, those of ‘peaceful use demonstrated through
freedom of scientific investigation and cooperation’.[53]
Treaty parties subscribe to this common policy narrative as
a way to reinforce the centrality of the Antarctic Treaty System in managing
Antarctic affairs. Australia adheres to the norm, maintaining a direct line of
sight between treaty compliance and national Antarctic policy settings in The
Australian Antarctic Strategy and 20 Year Action Plan. The plan
leads with Australia’s commitment to ‘strengthening the Antarctic Treaty system
and our influence in it, by building and maintaining strong and effective
relationships with other Antarctic Treaty nations through our
international engagement’.[54]
In contrast, Russia’s contemporary policy formulation opens the door to an
alternative vision. It emphasises ’standing for peace and stability in
Antarctica’ without direct reference to the Antarctic Treaty System and its
established science-based decision making practices.[55]
The policy threshold in Russia’s formulation facilitates the prospect of multi-faceted
activities in the South Polar Region. The subtle difference permits Russia to
position national interests—including future claims to sovereignty, support for
Russia’s space activities and the right to fish in Antarctic waters—among its
highest priorities. This adjustment to the prevailing diplomatic norms places
scientific cooperation into the service of national interests, making the
achievement of science-based consensus at Antarctic Treaty Consultative
Meetings for parties like Australia more challenging.
Russia’s posture aligns with its historic plans but the
posture itself is increasingly at odds with the constraints on the exploitation
of Antarctic living and mineral resources that the treaty enacts through fishing
quotas under the 1980 Convention on the Conservation of Antarctic Marine
Living Resources and a ban on mining under the 1991 Protocol on
Environmental Protection.[56]
Both instruments are reviewable. The challenge to enabling
resource exploitation by pushing these instruments to review is to attempt to
do so without collapsing the treaty and the sovereignty positions—including
Russia’s—that it protects on behalf of the 12 original signatories. Scientific
cooperation as a high‑order common interest between the original
signatories is still a buffer against such change but not an answer to
disruption should other consultative parties adopt this stance.
Alternative
treaty interpretations
The emerging alternative vision has an audience inside and
outside the Antarctic Treaty System. China is a rising power in Antarctic
affairs.[57]
It has been a consultative party for 35 years. Nonetheless, there is a growing
wariness of China’s commitment to the treaty. ‘China’s position on some areas
of international law, for example the South China Sea, indicates a preparedness
to make some radically alternative arguments into the future’.[58] In the main, as countries
achieve consultative party status, they align political postures and diplomatic
lines of action to conform with the prevailing nexus between science and
diplomacy in Antarctic policy-making. Transposed to the setting of Antarctic
Treaty Consultative Meetings, China looks to be applying its tactic of
challenging established interpretations of the ‘legal position on a particular
issue or rule’ to buy time to establish the bona fides of alternatives.[59] China’s recent
comportment at treaty forums, noted as ‘a vocal and at times disruptive,
unconstructive, presence in ATS meetings’ indicates the nexus between science
and diplomacy in Antarctic policy-making may not be immune to decoupling.[60]
China’s stated geostrategic, political-military, economic
and scientific interests and the consensus approach parties adopt under the
treaty status quo appear to be on a collision path.[61] ‘China wants to avail itself
of every available right in the Antarctic. It also wants access to minerals and
hydrocarbons, fishing, tourism, transport routes, water and bioprospecting’.[62] These economic
interests are constrained by the legislative brakes on resource exploitation.
In recent Antarctic Treaty forums China has used its ability to block
consensus, targeting the declaration of marine protected areas that curtail
Chinese fish and krill takes.[63]
China’s choice to agitate national versus cooperative
Antarctic initiatives brings into stark relief its objection to the way the
current decision-making hierarchy preferences claimants over consultative
parties based on claimants’ historical scientific supremacy.
In 2012 a comparison between scientific research activities
and political and diplomatic influence in the Antarctic Treaty
highlighted this pressure point in treaty relations. It showed ‘a subset of the
original 12 treaty signatories, consisting of the seven claimant nations and
the USA and Russia, not only set the political agenda for the continent but
also provide most of the science, with those consultative parties producing the
most science generally having the greatest political influence’.[64]
Clearly, conducting scientific activities leads directly to
decision-making authority and the ability to influence Antarctic policy more
broadly in local and global forums.[65]
An influence shortfall in Antarctic diplomacy is incompatible with China’s
vision for a new regional and global order.[66]
‘In 2014, Chinese President Xi Jinping announced that China was aspiring to
become a polar great power’.[67]
To assert this kind of leadership in the polar regions, ‘a state must have high
levels of polar scientific capacity and scientific research funding, a
significant presence, significant economic, military, political, and diplomatic
capacity there, plus a high level of international engagement in polar
governance’.[68]
Antecedents for China’s expansionist Antarctic policy lie in
the plans that led to its first permanent research base in 1983 and treaty
membership in 1985. China acknowledged at the time ‘that other countries have a
head start exploring the continent’.[69]
Echoing the Russian example, the expedition that built China’s first
station—Great Wall in West Antarctica—was reported as ‘part of the broader
visibility that China has assumed in trying to catch up with the rest of the
world and intended to enhance the international prestige of Chinese scientists,
and consequently China itself, as much as to pioneer new discoveries’.[70] Like Russia, at
home the Chinese leadership paid great attention to the expedition’s other
stated purpose which was to ‘look into Antarctic resources’.[71]
National scientific capability in Antarctica requires
infrastructure, advanced logistics and funding as well as scientific
competence. The United States has operated three stations in Antarctica since
1956. McMurdo Station on the Ross Sea is Antarctic’s largest base. Amundsen-Scott
Station occupies the strategically and symbolically significant South Pole. Palmer
Station extends the American footprint into the Antarctic Peninsula. While the
United States has fewer stations than Russia and China, it’s Antarctic Program
is the longest and largest on the continent comprising over 3,500 personnel, an
annual budget of $350 million and up to USD $7 billion in funds for scientific
research.[72]
China spent USD $1.7 million on its initial expedition,
prioritising a considerable investment in Antarctica at a time when its
domestic economic modernisation drive had just begun.[73] China
has continued this rate of investment over the past three decades. Great Wall
station was followed by another three bases in the Australian Antarctic
Territory built between 1989 and 2014. Zhongshan opened as a permanent base in
1989, then Kunlun in 2009 and Taishan in 2014.[74] Now the science and
technology edge in Antarctica is drifting China’s way and closing the political
gap. China’s scientific efforts are competing with the American and Russian
presence on the continent. It is building a fifth station ‘in the strategic
Ross Sea area where the United States, New Zealand and South Korea have
research stations. The new base will host a ground station for China’s Beidou
satellite system to rival the United States GPS and Russian GLONASS systems
already serviced from that sector’.[75]
A new
Antarctic norm
Over the last decade, China has gone from being ‘a minnow in
Antarctic affairs to a powerful player whose interests cannot be ignored. It
has done so through massive investments in polar capacity and by working
individually with key states to identify points of cooperation and mutual
benefit, using these to generate a dialogue to redefine Antarctica as a region
of ‘peaceful exploitation’.[76]
An alternative norm of ‘peaceful exploitation’ requires
garnering support to review or work around the economic constraints the
conventions on living resources and environmental protection impose. This helps
explain why ‘the greatest immediate impact that China is having on the
stability of the Antarctic Treaty System is through corrosion and changes in
the values and norms of the system’.[77]
Scientific cooperation is exhibiting signs of competitive stress as the
‘cumulative nature and effect of the breadth of Chinese activities, interests
and goals’ in Antarctica emerges.[78]
If treaty review is the strategic aim, putting pressure on the nexus between
science and diplomacy in Antarctic policy is a way to dislodge scientific
cooperation from its historic gatekeeping function. Looking ahead, this has
implications for Antarctic policy-making where the science and diplomacy nexus
may be less influential than it is now.
Treaty
milestones
Review
While the Antarctic Treaty is in place, existing
claims and any future ones that countries might want to make cannot move
forward.[79]
The treaty has no fixed period of operation but can be amended or modified
under provisions in Article XII. These provisions permit the original
consultative parties to seek a review and agree changes by consensus.
The year 1991 was the 30th anniversary of the treaty coming
into force. Once past that milestone, Article XII opened the review mechanism
to requests from any consultative party with decision-making status—those
upholding the research activity threshold—and voting requirements went from the
diplomatically more challenging unanimous agreement to majority support.[80]
The 1991 milestone was notable because, by then, the voting
cohort comprised the original 12 signatories and 14 new consultative parties
admitted between 1961 and 1990 with India and China as notable inclusions.[81]
At the changeover, none of these parties invoked a review.
There were geopolitical incentives to do so. There was contention over the
fairness of the treaty, manifested in a Malaysian-led and Indian-endorsed
effort at the United Nations to revoke it and declare Antarctica the ‘common
heritage of all mankind’.[82]
There was also discontent circling the decision by Australia and France to
overturn an agreed regime to mine Antarctica and substitute a mining ban under
the Convention on Environmental Protection.[83]
All 26 consultative parties marked the milestone by issuing
statements endorsing the signature role of scientific cooperation in Antarctic
affairs, ‘throughout their deliberations, the representatives have been mindful
that the successful operation of the Antarctic Treaty depends in large part on
the conservation of the tradition of peaceful scientific cooperation that has
been the hallmark of the Antarctic Treaty System’.[84]
This collective effort was symbolically and strategically
significant. It coincided with the diplomatic moment when the review mechanism
shifted from requiring a unanimous vote to a majority one. The declarations
upheld scientific cooperation as the foundation for consensus in Antarctic
affairs at a time when contention over sovereignty and competition over
resources pitted the science and diplomacy nexus against sovereignty and
economic interests. How consultative parties navigated this tension is also significant.
By reiterating scientific cooperation as the ‘go to’ for consensus building,
parties allowed their common interests to prevail over resource-driven
sovereign differences.
The period 2019–2021 marks another 30 years of operation. So
far, this anniversary is concluding without signs of a review. However, the
role of scientific cooperation in Antarctic politics is under intense scrutiny
as long-term prepositioning for alternative treaty interpretations becomes
obvious.
In 1991, China was among the new treaty members to issue
declarations reinforcing the overarching goals and operating principles of the
Antarctic Treaty System. Since 1991, the diplomatic weighting at Antarctic
Treaty Consultative Meetings has shifted past the sphere of influence dominated
by the scientific and political supremacy of the original signatories. China’s
behaviour in Antarctic forums now ‘is sending a message to Australia and to
other Antarctic parties about its Antarctic goals and capabilities, which at
this stage do not appear compatible in the long term with the precautionary
approach to environmental protection or to the continued consensus operation of
the ATS’.[85]
In response, there are calls for Australia to decouple its
long-standing scientific collaboration with China. ‘Australia should continue
to engage with China in collaborative science and Antarctic logistics where
that cooperation benefits our interests as well as the Antarctic Treaty System,
but we may need to reset the scientific relationship when our interests
diverge. Some areas of scientific cooperation will continue, while others may
cease’.[86]
Decoupling is in fact already underway.
Conclusion
The next 30-year treaty milestone lies ahead in 2049.
Positions in relation to Antarctica that countries inside and outside the
Antarctic Treaty System declare between now and then will be even more
strategically significant as gauges to measure where the diplomatic centre of
gravity at Antarctic Treaty Consultative Meetings is heading.
It will be important to watch what further inroads
scientific competition makes over scientific cooperation. The 90-year
anniversary of the Antarctic Treaty in 2049 will follow closely on the
heels of a 2048 review milestone set for the mining ban. It will be the first
time the science-diplomacy nexus is synchronous with the nexus between
sovereignty and economic interests.
By the time 2048–49 comes around, continued scientific
competition could see Russia, China and perhaps others establish sufficient
bona fides to assert ‘peaceful exploitation’ as a new Antarctic norm.
Positioning this outcome requires a long-term approach. While the bastion of
treaty membership carries forward with it the advantage that
non-militarisation, scientific research and protecting the Antarctic
environment are likely to continue to be managed and monitored collectively
under the treaty framework, shifts in members’ geopolitical alignments outside
Antarctic Treaty Consultative Meetings are already disrupting the centre of
diplomatic gravity inside it.
Such a shift would rub up against existing claimants’ long-held
positions. Australia and Norway are both claimants in East Antarctica and maintain
official views consistent with the consensus of non-exploitation of Antarctica.[87]
However, parties that subscribe to an alternate Antarctic future might also
wait until further shifts in membership numbers weigh in favour of an agenda to
assert a different, more economic interpretation of the Antarctic Treaty.
The nexus between science and diplomacy in Antarctic policy
making is a fault line along which scientific competition carries shifts in
global geopolitics to the floor of the Antarctic Treaty Consultative Meetings
on which the current model of governing Antarctica depends. Along this fault
line, disruptive diplomacy is making its mark. The ascent of geopolitical competition
over scientific cooperation will increasingly challenge scientific activities
as the assumed basis of good will for future relations between the occupants of
Australian-claimed East Antarctica and elsewhere on the continent.
Annex A
Official
claims
|
Territory
|
Claimant
|
Date
|
Claim limits
|
Area (km2)
|
|
|
Argentine Antarctica
(Department of Tierra del Fuego, Antarctica,
and South Atlantic Islands Province)
|
 Argentina
|
1942
|
|
 25°W–74°W
|
1,461,597
|
|
|
Australian Antarctic Territory
(External dependent territory of
Australia)
|
 Australia
|
1933
|
|
160°E–142°2′E
136°11′E–44°38′E
|
5,896,500
|
|
|
Chilean Antarctic Territory
(Commune of Antártica Chilena Province)
|
 Chile
|
1940
|
|
53°W–90°W
|
1,250,257.6
|
|
|
Adélie Land
(District of the French Southern and Antarctic
Lands)
|
 France
|
1840
|
|
142°2′E–136°11′E
|
432,000
|
|
|
Ross Dependency
(Dependency of New Zealand)
|
 New
Zealand
|
1923
|
|
150°W–160°E
|
450,000
|
|
|
Peter I Island
(Dependency of Norway)
|
 Norway
|
1929
|
|
68°50′S
90°35′W / 68.833°S
90.583°W / -68.833; -90.583
|
154
|
|
|
Queen Maud Land
(Dependency of Norway)
|
Norway
|
1939
|
|
44°38′E–20°W
|
2,700,000
|
|
|
British Antarctic Territory
(Overseas territory of the United Kingdom)
|
 United
Kingdom
|
1908
|
|
20°W–80°W
|
1,709,400
|
|
Total
|
13,899,908.6
|
Source: Secretariat of the Antarctic Treaty,
‘Parties’
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