Three Wicked Problems in the Antarctic Commons: Biological Prospecting, Meteorite Hunting, and Mineral Exploration
Introduction:
Remote areas are particularly susceptible to a wide range of unlawful and legal gray zone activities involving the dual use of fishing fleets, offshore installations, research stations, and tourism infrastructure. In the context of Antarctica, such infrastructure could be usefully transformed into platforms for conducting activities of concern such as biological prospecting, meteorite hunting, and/or mineral exploration. These problematic activities should be on the minds of policymakers who are responsible for the Antarctic Treaty System. The current governance structures, legal rules, and control mechanisms are not well-designed to mitigate these kinds of challenges to the global commons.
Three Wicked Problems:
The lack of conceptual clarity will make it difficult for policymakers to craft solutions to that complex challenge. Biological prospecting, meteorite hunting, and mineral exploration do not admit to standard definitions. The only option is to turn to working definitions. However, that is problematic. Consider these examples. The Antarctic and Southern Ocean Coalition defines biological prospecting as “exploration of natural areas in search of native organisms that can be used in commercial products,” the U.S. Bureau of Land Management suggests that meteorite hunting is the collection of “natural objects originating in outer space that survive impact with the earth’s surface” for commercial, educational, and scientific purposes, and ScienceDirect defines mineral exploration as ”discovery and acquisition of new mineral deposit amenable to economic extractive operations now or in future.” None would naturally roll off the tongues of the unanointed.
Putting that conceptual problem aside, there is a real need for more international policy discussions about these complex challenges. In the Antarctic context, these sorts of activities could be of high value to a range of state and non-state actors. Mineral exploration holds potential value because Antarctica is expected to have large mineral deposits that have yet to be exploited. Meteorite hunting carries potential value because Antarctica is known to be one of the most prolific sources of meteorites in the world, particularly in the blue ice areas. And, biological prospecting carries potential value because polar environments provide “an opportunity to discover novel organisms” and “novel bioactivities” that could prove useful to commercial industries. These sorts of realities provide a strong motivation for some state and non-state actors to violate international norms to advance their own interests.
To be clear, there is a complex set of legal rules and regulatory constraints that would make it costly to conduct these sorts of activities. For example, The Protocol on Environmental Protection to the Antarctic Treaty explicitly prohibits “all activities relating to Antarctic mineral resources, except for scientific research” in the area south of 60 degrees South latitude, while the United Nations Law of the Sea Convention stipulates that no mineral mining can take place “in areas beyond national jurisdiction” without a “seabed mining exploration and exploitation contract” from the International Seabed Authority. These legal regimes place severe limits on commercial mining exploration in Antarctica and its immediate vicinity. However, the impacts of climate change and the desire of independent states to secure new sources of mineral resources are starting to erode those constraints, especially with the 2048 date approaching and the possibility of revising the Madrid Protocol on the table.
Rethinking Governance in a Climate-Altered Antarctica:
Given these realities, there is an increasing risk that deviant actors will seek to violate the existing legal prohibitions on biological prospecting, meteorite hunting, and mineral exploration through covert, unlawful activities and legal gray zone activities. To avoid detection, those actors might try to carry out those unlawful activities in the shadows of fishing fleets, offshore semi-permanent installations, research stations, and/or tourism infrastructure that are already operating in Antarctica. In the context of current intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance capacities in the Low South, there is a good chance that such dual-use activities would evade third-party detection and, by extension, the risk of imposition of international sanctions.
In our opinion, this is not a state of affairs that should be tolerated. There is a clear and pressing need for the International Community to come together and re-evaluate the fitness of the current governance structures, legal rules, and enforcement mechanisms with respect to biological prospecting, meteorite hunting, and mineral exploration in and around Antarctica. Otherwise, there is a serious risk that there will be a significant increase in harmful biological prospecting, meteorite hunting, and mineral exploration as climate change makes Antarctica more accommodating to human presence and economic exploitation.
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The post Three Wicked Problems in the Antarctic Commons: Biological Prospecting, Meteorite Hunting, and Mineral Exploration appeared first on Small Wars Journal by Arizona State University.