Intrigue, greed and hostility burn in the Antarctic
IMAGINE A LAND untouched by war, unspoilt by humans, where all nationalities are welcome—a veritable Shangri-La. Such a place exists in Antarctica, the Earth’s southernmost region. Home to 40m penguins and a mere 1,000 people, the continent is owned by no one.
Since 1961 it has been governed by the members of the Antarctic Treaty, which says it should be used for peaceful purposes only. For decades the treaty was widely regarded as a model of effective global co-operation. During the cold war it removed the southern pole from the geopolitical struggle waged between the capitalist West and the Soviet Union.
But now this model is falling apart. On October 25th an international conference tasked with preserving marine life in the Antarctic ended in acrimony as Russia and China vetoed every proposal. “Russia’s interest in constructive global co-operation is zero,” said Cem Özdemir, Germany’s agriculture minister. And earlier this year America imposed sanctions on Russia’s Antarctic flagship, the research vessel Akademik Alexander Karpinsky, which has been surveying for oil and gas—pushing the boundaries of an international ban on exploiting the region’s resources.
Behind these tensions is a new scramble for the Antarctic, intensified by the re-emergence of geopolitical rivalry between great powers, climate change and a race to exploit its resources. Start with the rush by both new and existing Antarctic players to build and expand bases on the continent. China’s activities are growing the fastest. Although it had a late start, only signing the treaty in 1983, it has doubled the number of research bases it operates over the past decade; earlier this year it opened its fifth station, which is equipped with dual-use civil-military satellite monitoring facilities (see map).
Other countries have also become more assertive. Russia has ramped up its investment. In November India will assess designs for a third research station. Saudi Arabia joined the treaty club in May. Iran says it plans to open its first base, claiming “property rights”, even though it is not a party to the treaty. Treaty members may legally build bases. But some of what is happening at them may breach the pact’s prohibitions against military activity and resource extraction.
Although no countries are openly flouting the treaty’s prohibition of “any measures of a military nature, such as the establishment of military bases and fortifications”, several appear to be exploiting a loophole that allows countries to use members of their armed forces and their equipment for research and “any other peaceful purpose”. This gives countries enough wriggle room to swing a seal. China’s strategy has been to employ dual-use technologies and facilities in order to improve the capabilities of the People’s Liberation Army, according to America’s defence department. One example is building ground stations for its Beidou satellite-navigation system, which can help make weather mapping, as well as missiles, more accurate. Yet America can hardly complain, since it first set up Antarctic stations for its own GPS navigation system in the 1990s.
Some are concerned that China’s newest base could collect signals-intelligence and telemetry from rockets launched in Australia and New Zealand. Expanded arrays at another of its bases may be able to monitor Western and Indian naval activity in the Indian ocean, according to the Centre for Strategic and International Studies, a think-tank in Washington. Telescopes at Antarctic bases can be used to gain military advantage by detecting satellites, drones and missiles during war, the Australian government’s Civil-Military Centre has warned. Cheating may be getting still more widespread, as indicated by an influx of bases “with no apparent sound scientific basis”, according to the RAND Corporation, a think-tank with close ties to America’s armed forces.
The treaty insists that countries report on their activities and allow inspections to ensure these are all peaceful. But Anne-Marie Brady, the author of a book titled “China as a Polar Great Power”, says that countries often fail to report their military activities. As of 2023, only ten had consistently submitted the required documentation for the past decade. In any case, says Alan Hemmings, a polar expert at the University of Canterbury in New Zealand, inspection guidelines are outdated: they fail to specify what should be scrutinised.
A second motive behind the new scramble for the Antarctic is economic. For years the idea of mining the Antarctic seemed fanciful: it is cold, dangerous and far away. But global warming is making its waters more accessible and new technologies could make mining possible. Climate change is also giving fleets greater access to stocks of krill, the world’s most underexploited fishery. Xi Jinping, China’s president, has explicitly said his country should exploit Antarctica’s resources.
The continent is believed to hold vast deposits of oil, gas, copper and other valuable minerals, though quite how much is uncertain. The Protocol on Environmental Protection, an addition to the treaty signed in Madrid in 1991, imposed a complete ban on mining. “But this has not stopped China from positioning itself strategically,” says Ms Brady. When China opened a new base near the Ross Sea, in an area claimed by New Zealand, a Chinese polar glaciologist said that it was notably close to regions of “resource potential”.
Russia is equally transparent about its resource ambitions, says Klaus Dodds, a professor of geopolitics at Royal Holloway, a part of the University of London. In recent years it has done seismic surveys of the Antarctic seas with the Karpinsky. RosGeo, Russia’s state geological company which operates the vessel, reckons that the Antarctic seas contain roughly 511bn barrels of oil, ten times the amount produced in the North Sea in the past 50 years. Russia has made its intentions quite clear. RosGeo has openly said its survey work will substantially clarify “our expectations of the oil-and-gas bearing prospects of the Antarctic shelf seas”. Yet the Madrid Protocol does not differentiate between legitimate scientific exploration and mineral prospecting, opening a loophole that lets countries like Russia carry out resource assessments under the guise of research.
Mineral discoveries could encourage countries to challenge the mining ban in 2048, when amendments to the “Madrid Protocol” can be passed by a three-quarters majority rather than the consensus required until then. But as countries scramble to secure minerals critical for the green transition amid intensifying rivalry between the great powers, resource extraction could begin much earlier. One possibility, argues Mr Dodds, is that a country may begin mining unilaterally—and set off a free-for-all. But the more likely outcome, he says, is a continued slow erosion of the rules through persistent breaches of the treaty that eventually leaves it unenforceable. Russia, for instance, has frustrated efforts by other countries to inspect its bases. In 2018 it blocked a runway near one of its bases to keep away Norwegian inspectors, who noted “considerable activity” at it as they circled in the air.
Russia also appears to be flouting the rules by increasingly fishing illegally in protected areas, says Elizabeth Buchanan of the Australian National University. In 2020 New Zealand authorities caught a Russian boat that was pretending to be outside a marine reserve by broadcasting false information on a vessel-monitoring system. Yet attempts to punish the fishing boat by withdrawing its licence were thwarted when Russia threatened to veto any penalties.
Such disregard for the rules has become more common as relations between Russia and the West have iced over. The wars in the Middle East and Ukraine have amplified mistrust among treaty members, making co-operation more awkward, says Claire Christian, the executive director of the Antarctic and Southern Ocean Coalition, the only non-profit organisation that is allowed to attend treaty meetings. With votes often split along geopolitical lines, “it has become nearly impossible to agree on even minor issues,” she says.
Even the penguins are baffled
Geopolitical tensions are also thwarting efforts to protect Antarctica’s fragile ecosystem. Though countries promised to create a network of marine protected areas in 2002, only two have been established since then, because Russia and China have repeatedly vetoed them. The two autocracies have even blocked efforts to designate Emperor penguins a protected species.
The danger is that repeated breaches of the treaty and a logjam on reforming it could make it irrelevant. If that were to happen, then unresolved territorial disputes would come to the fore. When the treaty was signed, seven countries—Britain and its former colonies, Argentina, Chile, France and Norway—had already grabbed almost all of the continent (see map). Since America and Russia did not recognise their claims and reserved the right to make their own ones, the treaty froze the status quo: it neither recognised nor disputed existing claims but prohibited countries from making new ones. “Who owns what”, says Mr Dodds, ”is the issue that haunts the Antarctic treaty.”
For all its flaws, the treaty has kept the peace for over 60 years. But it is achingly fragile and being sorely tested. Its collapse could lead to chaos in the polar south. ■