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Antarctica: Private Property or Public Heritage? by Keith Suter, Zed
Books, pp 209, £32.95/ $49.95 hbk, £9.95/ $15 pbk

For 30 years, Antarctica has experienced a Utopian dream: government
by an international community of scientists. As administrations go, Antarctica’s
has done pretty well, most notably by keeping the continent free of war
and indeed of almost all military activity.

But, for all its strengths, Antarctica’s government suffers a flaw common
to institutions everywhere: it does not take kindly to proposals for change.
By calling for reform in the system that runs Antarctica, Keith Suter, a
writer on international law based in Australia, will at best suffer furious
denunciation by members of the present Antarctic Treaty. At worst, they
will unite to kill his arguments with silence.

Adding to Suter’s difficulties is a perception among his wider potential
readership – of ordinary people concerned with environmental issues – that
Antarctica has passed off the agenda. When the members of the Antarctic
Treaty agreed last June not to extract minerals from the continent, even
environmentalist pressure groups announced that they had ‘won the Antarctic
campaign’. Antarctica’s latest period in the public eye, dating from the
discovery of the ozone hole in the mid-1980s and sustained by the publicity
stunts of groups such as Greenpeace, is probably over.

This is a pity. For, as Suter argues, the apparatus that administers
Antarctica will continue to face attacks. It is better to plan reforms constructively
today than to risk the collapse of the whole edifice at a later date.

The book’s title suggests that Antarctica faces two futures. Most readers
will guess from the publisher’s imprint that Suter favours ‘public heritage’
over ‘private property’. But this is no knee-jerk attack. Suter is careful
to distinguish opinions from facts, and also to include points that do not
necessarily support his ideas. He is even independent-minded enough to compliment
the government of South Africa for considering the environmental impact
of an Antarctic development.

The gist of Suter’s argument is that the Antarctic Treaty, signed in
1959 at the height of the Cold War, has been an enormous and unparalleled
success. As well as keeping the peace south of 60 degrees, it set precedents
for later international agreements banning nuclear weapons from South America
and space.

Despite these strengths, Suter believes that the treaty is ill-equipped
to face three present and growing challenges. The first, and the one which
causes most closing of ranks among members of the Antarctic Treaty, is the
call for the United Nations to take over the treaty’s responsibilities.
The second challenge is the new public awareness of Antarctica’s importance
in the environment, which Suter believes will keep the continent in the
spotlight. The third is the need for agreements covering areas that the
original treaty did not address. These include tourism, which Suter says
can be a positive force, and the extraction of Antarctic ice. Suter’s solution
is for a new authority, the Antarctic Public Heritage Agency, to run the
continent as the ‘public heritage of humankind’.

The Antarctic powers, of course, can defend the present system on all
these points. They say that the Antarctic Treaty is open to any nation that
wants to play a role in Antarctica. Indeed, with a membership that includes
Chile, Belgium and India, it represents as fair a slice of the world’s population
as any other international organisation. They can also argue that the treaty
is perfectly capable of assuming new responsibilities, as it did over the
conservation of marine life and the regulation of mining.

Suter warns that: ‘Antarctica’s legal and political future is now more
clouded than at any time since 1959.’ His proposals for the future, although
all open to argument, are sensible and level-headed. Are Antarctica’s custodians,
with their claim to be the most sensible government the world has ever seen,
open-minded enough to consider them?

Michael Cross is a freelance journalist. He visited Antarctica earlier
this year as a reporter in the Greenpeace ship Gondwana.