Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
from the agreement. Sensing hostile public opinion and criticism from Third World states,
CRAMRA was never adopted. Although CRAMRA was trying to establish potential rules
for future exploitation, it set off a tsunami of criticism. At that moment in the early 1980s,
there was no commercial, legal, or political pressure to exploit mineral resources in the
Antarctic. It remains, some 20-plus years later, a remote and expensive potential operating
environment. Far more productive and accessible areas exist elsewhere, including the Arctic
Ocean. Even if there were commercial potential, in the longer term, the cost of extraction
would be high as everything would have to be shipped in and out of Antarctica at
considerable expense - there is no existing infrastructure, the climate is hostile, there are
few natural harbours, it is remote, and generally more extreme than working conditions
typically encountered in the Arctic such as iceberg-filled waters. While some aspects of
Arctic-related technology would be transferable, the operating and logistical problems
confronting miners is of a higher order.
Future resource challenges
The resource potential of the Antarctic, notwithstanding the provisions of the Protocol on
Environment Protection, is unsettling precisely because it brings to the fore the unresolved
status of claimant and non-claimant alike. Resource-related issues can be used to
demonstrate how this sovereignty dilemma plays out in a variety of cultural, political, and
legal contexts, often far removed from the Antarctic itself. For example, the implications of
sovereign rights being recognized on the seabed off the polar continent is a divisive issue.
However careful some claimants have been to ask the UN body, the Commission on the
Limits of the Continental Shelf, not to formally consider their Antarctic data, the seven
claimants all act as if they believe that they are coastal states in the Antarctic. Most
ostentatiously, Argentina made a submission in April 2009 that included a map detailing
outer continental shelf limits in the deeply contested Antarctic Peninsula region.
Interestingly, as if recognizing the potential for this issue to be troublesome, the parties
issued a Ministerial De territories including the Australiansgovernmentclaration on the 50th
anniversary of the Antarctic Treaty in April 2009 reaffirming that 'the importance they
attach to the contribution made by the Treaty, and by Article IV in particular, to ensuring the
continuance of international harmony in Antarctica'. To reinforce this apparent display of
unity and restraint, the provisions of Article 7 of the Protocol were noted, prohibiting
mineral resource exploitation in the Antarctic.
All very laudable, perhaps, but the delimitation of outer continental shelves is problematic.
If states such as New Zealand make partial submissions (as in 2006), then they might make
full submissions in the future. And if they do so, then they bring to the fore the status of
national sovereignty claims in the Antarctic. Moreover, any submission is surely going to
