Managing the frozen commons - Antarctica: Global Science from a Frozen Continent - page 293

respect was not only SCAR's fault. In the period before CEP, when there was also no
Antarctic Treaty secretariat, it was very convenientfortheATCPstoaskSCARwithits
competence and long collective memory to advise on practical environmental questions.
Looking now 20 years back at the high tensions of the 1980s, the question can
be posed whether starting the minerals discussion was worth it, and whether once
these were completed, was it for the better that consensus was broken?
The argument for starting the minerals discussion was one that frequently has
been applied constructively in other Antarctic affairs, namely to treat an issue before
it becomes an intractable problem. It would clearly have been even more dif

cult

to negotiate a Convention on minerals after a site-speci c commercial activity had

been proposed. But as the view today is the same as two decades ago, namely that
it will be many decades before any such activity is realistic, it may be argued
that it was too early to spend so much effort at a non-existent challenge.
CRAMRA exists as a negotiated but not rati ed convention. In this sense it may

have considerable value should the issue surface in a more tangible way. And the
negotiations on environment and liability helped paving the way for the Environmental
Protocol and its annexes. So the negotiating efforts were by no means a complete waste.
Some will argue that the failure of CRAMRA was an illusory victory for the
environment, for in reality it made the environmental protection weaker. This line of
reasoning is that in a future changed political and industrial situation, the ATCPs could
by consensus amend the mineral prohibition, and in that case there are few other
constraints in place. Also under CRAMRA consensus was required to allow commercial
mineral activities to proceed, and thereafter there were stringent regulations. Some of
these have been replaced by the Environmental Protocol, but not all.
But these are hypothetical considerations, and it seems now unlikely that such
a situation will arise. It can instead be said that the efforts during these years led to two
other first was that a much larger variety of nations came onto the

Antarctic political scene, giving the ATCPs more global anchorage. Secondly, it taught
the ATCPs that they could weather an internal crisis, and

' victories ' . The

find their way back to
consensus. That was an experience that should have long-lasting bene ts.

Possibly this rediscovered cohesion helped in the solution of another dif cult

challenge, namely to establish a permanent secretariat for the Antarctic Treaty and the
ATCMs. This was an issue that became more pressing during the 1980s, but with no
resolution. During the following decade the critical question of location was not
resolved; potentially it could be several places in the southern hemisphere. Argentina
pushed strongly for Buenos Aires, and in 2001 they and the UK finally found an

accord, which removed the latter's opposition. The Secretariat has been in full
operation since September 2004. In addition to supporting the ATCMs, its roles
include facilitating the exchange of information between the ATCPs and informing
the public about the ATS. A full record of all considerations under the Antarctic
Treaty is now readily available at http://www.ats.aq .