Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
(CRAMRA) establishes a threshold of knowledge concerning a proposed
activity and its anticipated effects
'
which must be crossed before mineral
.
39
It requires that decisions should be based on
activities may proceed
'
'
information adequate to enable informed judgments to be made about
their possible impacts
'
'
no such activities shall take
place unless this information is available for decisions relevant to those
activities
, and makes clear that
.
40
CRAMRA has not come into force (and is unlikely to do so)
because of opposition from Australia and France to the high level of
protection it affords to the Antarctic area.
41
Whichever of these approaches to decision-making is to be preferred,
they both give rise to common issues concerning the production of
information in a system for ecological protection. The
'
rst is how the
information necessary for adjudication on the adequacy of information
is itself to be produced. One means of securing this would be to require
that the environmental statements or reports produced in connection
with environmental assessment should state clearly both the respects in
which information is felt to be inadequate, and the extent to which that
absence prevents reliable assessment of an activity
spotentialimpactsas
well as containing proposed programmes of research and monitoring
either to reach a suf
'
ciently informed basis for decision-making or to
assess the impacts of an activity if it is authorised. The intention behind
these requirements is to provide a platform for judgments to be made on
whether suf
cient knowledge is available on which to base a decision,
and, if not, how this might be obtained.
The second is that, whilst it might be possible to generate information
about ecosystems that an activity may affect, the question arises as to
whether either
'
suf
cient
'
or
'
adequate
'
information is likely to be avail-
able about an activity
s potential impacts without some practical expe-
rience and monitoring of the effects of trial projects. In this regard,
Iconsiderinthe
following section
the practice under the Antarctic
regime of allowing activities to proceed on a staged basis whilst infor-
mation is gathered on them.
'
39
C. R. Redgwell,
(1994) 43
International and Comparative Law Quarterly, 608. Convention on the Regulation of
Antarctic Mineral Resource Activities, Wellington, 2 June 1988, not in force, 27 ILM 868
(1988).
40
Convention on the Regulation of Antarctic Mineral Resource Activities, Articles 4(1)
and 4(2).
41
C. C. Joyner,
'
Environmental Protection in Antarctica: The 1991 Protocol
'
'
Fragile Ecosystems: Preclusive Restoration in the Antarctic
'
(1994) 34
Natural Resources Journal,889.
