With conflict spidering across the Middle East, Coalition frontbencher Andrew Hastie this week declared the system that forged today’s international rules from the ashes of World War II “dead and buried”, as Canada’s visiting Prime Minister Mark Carney said there had been a “rupture”.
Anthony Albanese and his top ministers resisted calling time on the global order, but the Prime Minister did concede it was “under increasing pressure”.
It was against this backdrop that scientists and other researchers from across the region met in Hobart this week for a series of French government events celebrating longstanding co-operation with Australia on Antarctic research.
Among those speaking was Australian Antarctic Division assistant secretary Liz Brierley, who warned the Antarctic Treaty was under threat while highlighting pioneering Australian and French efforts to stand up the agreement and keep the southernmost continent strictly a place of peaceful scientific pursuit and conservation.
“The treaty system is widely regarded as the world’s most successful multilateral government framework, demonstrating how science-led, consensus-based decision-making can support environmental protection, stability and international co-operation in a geo-politically sensitive region, especially at a time of increasing geopolitical and resource pressures,” she said.
“Australia works closely with a range of parties to uphold the provisions of the treaty, enhance the protection of the Antarctic environment, and most importantly, to maintain our rules and norms of the treaty system.” Formerly a long-time policy maker at both the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade as well as the Department of Defence, Dr Brierley would not be drawn on which actors were undermining the system.
But she did say it “is under threat”.
“We are watching how some nations behave and there’s obviously different objectives out there and different ways of working,” she said, adding that those with questionable intentions “will probably stay in the system as long as it serves their benefit”.
The claim puts Australia on the frontline in the fight to maintain rules in the southern polar region, where disputes bubble over marine protected areas (MPAs) and minerals prospecting.
China and Russia have for years used their veto powers to block new MPAs as they eye the Southern Ocean’s vast krill and fish stocks.
Industrial fishing in the region could be devastating to the Antarctic ecosystem and down the line strip tens of billions of dollars from countries heavily reliant on eco-tourism, such as Australia.
Russia has also recently carried out extensive seismic surveys in the Weddell Sea.
While Moscow claims it is geological mapping, Western analysts point out that....
