Case Study #1: Antarctica [backgroud info]

I thought I'd begin my sustainable development case studies project with the most obvious of places - Antarctica. [Yes, that was sarcasm.] The choice isn't quite as random as it seems, however; Antarctica [and it's sordid history of territorial claims] was the topic of my Master's thesis and so, presumably, I should be able to come up with something intelligent to say about it.

I'll do three posts this week about Antarctica. The first will provide some background information, the second will look at the debate over mining on the continent, and in the third I'll briefly discuss a building I designed for the South Pole - articulating what [in hindsight] I think are the more and less sustainable aspects of the project.

Some background:

Antarctica's remote location, dramatic environment, and absent indigenous population have fostered a mystique that is rivaled by few locations other than outer space. Even in an increasingly interconnected and homogenized world, this last terra incognita remains so far away and so logistically difficult to tame that is still retains an air of mystery left over, it seems, from an earlier age.

Many have viewed this Antarctica, a mythical empty landscape, as "the perfect tabula rasa" [Wheeler, Sara 1996]. Upon this frozen empty slate, national governments have projected innovative and radical visions of governance - multilateral management, nuclear disarmament, and immense-scale environmental preservation.

Antarctica is legally designated as a Global Commons, a term used to refer to "areas or resources that do not or cannot by their very nature fall under sovereign jurisdiction" [Vogler, John 2000]. An international Antarctic Treaty, ratified by the governments of 12 signatory nations in 1961, established this Commons status and today, representatives from 46 nations regularly attend Antarctic Treaty Consultative Meetings, at which the future of Antarctic activity is debated and determined.

In the decade following the signing of the 1961 Treaty, Antarctica became the source of increasing international attention; the continent had been set aside as a Global Commons, but there was considerable debate over what this should mean. Should Antarctica be viewed as a res nullis, the property of no one, or a terra communis, a resource shared by the world? And less ideologically speaking, regardless of the positive rhetoric of the 1961 Treaty, why should 12 nations possess the right to determine the future of a global common land? This heated debate - which still continues today - was fueled by evidence of large mineral deposits on the Antarctic continent.

In the 1980s Antarctica's status was redefined by a document titled Our Common Future, the outcome of a UN independent commission chaired by Gro Harlem Brundtland that had been formed to investigate long-term strategies for global environmental sustainability. The report outlined some of the controversies surrounding Antarctica, including the question of mining and the elitism of the consultative party system, but it also emphasized the achievement of the Antarctic Treaty in terms of setting an example of successful and international cooperation. The Report emphasized how, in 1961, Antarctica was upheld as an example of demilitarization, scientific cooperation, and peace; now, thirty years later, it could become a symbol of environmentalism, but this would require a deliberate effort to conserve the continent's unique environment. In claiming this, Our Common Future requisitioned the continent as part of a larger mission of global sustainability, changing the rhetoric of the debate over Antarctica from peace and demilitarization, to environmental preservation, and setting the stage for a complex international battle over mineral rights that [as we'll see later in the week] has yet to be resolved