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AS REPRESENTATIVES of the 39 nations which are party to the Antarctic
Treaty met in Paris this week for their biennial meeting, the subject uppermost
in their minds did not even appear on the official agenda. Should they abandon
an agreement, reached scarcely a year ago by the countries that originally
signed the treaty, to allow strictly controlled mining on the subcontinent?

The agreement in question is the awkwardly titled Convention on the
Regulation of Antarctic Mineral Resource Activities. The text was finally
agreed in New Zealand’s capital, Wellington, on 2 June 1988 after almost
10 years of negotiation, and has since become known as the Wellington convention
or CRAMRA.

Less than a year later, Australia stunned its treaty partners by announcing
that it was no longer prepared to support the convention, since it now felt
that no mining should be allowed in Antarctica, even under heavy control.
France soon announced that it shared Australia’s position; and since then,
a number of other countries which had originally voiced their support for
the Wellington convention have been indicating that they, too, may now be
unwilling to sign.

But other signatories to the treaty, most notably the US, New Zealand
and Britain are not yet convinced that a convention which took so long to
produce should now be ditched. They argue that the sort of broad convention
to protect the environment that Australia and France are backing all human
activities and banning any mining – is not the best way to go.

Britain, the US and New Zealand say that the Wellington convention remains
an important first step towards protecting the region, even if this is followed
by complementary agreements at some future stage. The New Zealand government,
for example, said in a White Paper presented to its parliament in August
that seeking an all-embracing convention from the start would be likely
to take many years. ‘That would delay action on specific protection measures
on which there is already a wide measure of agreement,’ said the White Paper.
‘We do not believe that we can afford to postpone action.’

Ironically, the original incentive to negotiate the Wellington convention
grew out of the treaty signatories’ concern about the impact that unrestricted
mining could have. ¿ìè¶ÌÊÓƵs had by then discovered traces of gold, platinum
and other minerals, as well as evidence that oil might lie deep in Antarctica’s
continental shelf. Both, if not properly handled, threatened to become major
sources of disruption.

The Wellington convention accepts that mining can be carried out on
the subcontinent, although so far, no one has found oil, or sufficient metals
to justify large-scale mining. The convention stipulates that mining may
take place only with the full agreement of all the signatories to the Antarctic
Treaty. The opposition of only one state would be sufficient to veto a mining
application, a condition which the US found hard to swallow initially, but
eventually agreed to accept.

Over the past few years, however, concern has been rising rapidly about
the impact of all types of human activity on the fragile Antarctic environment.
Shipping accidents – most recently the wreck of an Argentinian supply vessel,
the Bahia Paraiso, containing 60 000 tonnes of diesel oil off Palmer station
in January – leave their mark, as do the increasing numbers of tourists
and even scientists.

One of the biggest violators, according to Kelly Rigg of Greenpeace,
the environmental group, has been the French government, which has been
building an airstrip at the Dumont-D’Urville base since 1982. According
to Rigg, France is breaking specific clauses in the rules with its helicopters,
quarrying and heavy traffic which passes within 200 metres of areas where
penguins and snow petrels nest.

But Greenpeace, whose new vessel, the Gondwana, is currently on its
way to Antarctica to protest against what is happening to the subcontinent,
says that other nations are also at fault. For example, while Argentina
claims that its bases conform with the treaty’s regulations, Greenpeace
activists say that they have found loose rubbish, including plastics, rubber
and batteries, which regulations say must be removed from the area. And
although Uruguay had also claimed that it has taken its rubbish home, Greenpeace
says it has found evidence that the country’s camps had burned plastic,
polluted lakes, splashed paint on birds and used a bulldozer to create a
football pitch on the ice.

It was evidence like this that convinced Bob Hawke, the Australian Prime
Minister, to change his country’s policy towards the area. If Australia’s
move might have been anticipated as a response to rising pressure from environmentalists,
less expected was a decision by the French Prime Minister, Michel Rocard,
to join with Hawke’s position. The two prime ministers issued a joint statement
in Canberra on 18 August in which they proposed the negotiation of a new
Comprehensive Environment Protection Convention which would turn the Antarctic
into a wilderness reserve.

Political support for their joint initiative has been snowballing. The
Italian parliament, for example, passed a resolution in September indicating
its support for the proposals and explicitly prohibiting Italy from ratifying
the Wellington convention.

Belgium says that it is ‘postponing its approval’ of the mining agreement
while ‘examining alternatives for the better protection’ of the subcontinent.
And Ninian Stephen, Australia’s special ambassador for the environment,
said in a television interview last month that officials in both West Germany
and the Soviet Union had indicated to him that they would have ‘no problem’
with the Australian proposition ‘if it gets up and is generally accepted’.

Not suprisingly, Australia’s move has received widespread support from
environmentalist groups. The British groups, for example – including Greenpeace,
the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) and the International Council for Bird
Preservation – issued a joint statement last week, saying that it was ‘unacceptable
that in the search for the oil and minerals the last remaining wilderness
areas are put at risk so that short-term profits can be made’.

The three groups quote the words of the late Sir Peter Scott, founder
of the WWF, whose father Robert Falcon Scott died in Antarctica in 1912,
that ‘it is vital that we preserve some part of this planet in its pristine
condition . . . we should have the wisdom to leave a place alone’.

In Washington, a group of senators, led by Albert Gore of Tennessee,
have picked up such sentiments. In a resolution passed by the Senate they
called for a new Antarctic agreement that would establish a ‘global ecological
commons’ there (This Week, last issue). The resolution itself has little
legislative significance. However, the Senate’s attitude could prove critical,
since no international agreement the President reaches can enter into force
until senators ratify it with a two-thirds majority. And opposition is clearly
growing.

So far, however, there has been little indication from the Bush administration
that it is likely to change its stance. Officials at the state department
continue to argue that, in their opinion, the convention remains in practical
terms the best guarantee that the Antarctic will be adequately protected.

‘Australia would like to use the comprehensive framework to replace
the convention,’ says R. Tucker Scully of the State Department in Washington
DC. ‘I don’t believe that they will obtain the result of achieving a permanent
ban. There are governments that would take the view that we shouldn’t be
included in any comprehensive framework.’

There are some environmentalists who support this position. Lee Kimball
of the Ocean Resources Institute in Washington DC says that she would ‘love
to see mining developments banned in Antarctica’, but argues that a permanent
ban of the type Australia wants, ‘would not necessarily mean very much’,
since it would always be open to pressure for change. ‘If minerals are found
in significant quantities, and there are pressures to develop, then there
is a danger that a quick and dirty agreement will be reached,’ says Kimball.

The government of New Zealand has now circulated proposals to all participants
at the Paris meeting, suggesting that a meeting should be held next year
to discuss how environmental restrictions can be tightened up. Australia
also wants a meeting – but to discuss a new treaty that would be an alternative
to the Wellington convention.

Publicly, US officials are confident that they will be able to persuade
Australia to fall back in line behind the Wellington convention. Privately,
some admit that achieving this will be a difficult – if not impossible –
task. At the same time, however, they express concern that the whole issue
could lead to a diplomatically embarrassing split between those in favour
of, and those against, the Wellington convention. If things were to get
out of hand, this would threaten the consensus that underpins the Antarctic
Treaty.

No clear conclusion is therefore expected from the Paris meeting. In
contrast, it seems likely that intense negotiations will take place over
the next few months to find a possible compromise. Canberra, for example,
is watching with great interest how things turn out in Washington; Senator
Gareth Evans, the minister for foreign affairs, said in parliament at the
end of September that Senator Gore’s ‘very public intervention in this matter
will give a significant fillip to the Australian initiative’.

And Hawke has left little doubt about where he stands. ‘Ultimately,
it is the sheer weight of international public opinion that will determine
the future of Antarctica,’ he said. ‘Australia does not expect to meet with
unqualified success overnight, but as international awareness of the hazards
of mining in Antarctica continues to spread, more and more governments will
be persuaded that mining in Antarctica is a risk that should not be countenanced.’

* * *

The Antarctic Treaty and its participants

SHORTLY after the start of the International Geophysical Year in 1957,
Britain revived an idea for the establishment of a grouping of nations to
ensure the free development of science in Antarctica, and that the area
would not be used for military purposes. The highly successful IGY was a
major research effort, part of which focused on Antarctica. The IGY resulted
in many new discoveries about the Earth, and in the first use of artificial
satellites.

The US subsequently invited 11 countries to a treaty conference in Washington
DC, in late 1959. At the meeting, representatives of the 12 participating
nations signed a treaty. That Antarctic Treaty came into force on 23 June
1961. By October 1989, 39 countries had signed; 22 of them have active research
programmes on the continent.

The main terms of the treaty included:

Antarctica shall be used for peaceful purposes;

The freedom of scientific investigation in Antarctica and the cooperation
that existed in the IGY shall continue;

The contracting parties shall agree that to the greatest extent feasible
and practicable:

Information regarding plans for scientific programmes in Antarctica
shall be exchanged to permit maximum economy and efficiency of operation;

Scientific personnel shall be exchanged in Antarctica between expeditions
and stations;

Scientific observations and results from Antarctica shall be exchanged
and made freely available.

The Antarctic Treaty is open for accession at any time to any member
of the United Nations Organisation, or by any state which may be invited
to accede to the treaty with the consent of all the signatories.

Conservation legislation in the region is embodied in the Agreed Measures
for the Conservation of Antarctic Flora and Fauna, under the Antarctic Treaty,
and in the intergovernmental conventions for the Conservation of Antarctic
Seals (1972), and for the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources
(1980).