The continent for science

Abstract

The purpose of this chapter is to highlight some facets in the politics, history and substance of Antarctic science over the past fifty years. Part I focuses on institutional arrangements and political context and Part II on advances in the knowledge content of the science. The geographic region designated for Antarctic science is ambiguous. Its delimitation differs depending on whether one follows the definition offered by the Scientific Committee on Antarctic Research (SCAR), the body charged by the International Council of Scientific Unions (ICSU), a non-governmental organization, or if one chooses the definition found in the legal text of the Antarctic Treaty (AT), the intergovernmental regime for governing Antarctic affairs. The Treaty defines its region of application as the continent and its nearby islands south of 60°S latitude. SCAR fixes on the Antarctic Convergence (Polar Front), the demarcation favoured from the start by the USSR, and therefore extends its studies into the Sub-Antarctic. The Protocol to the Antarctic Treaty for the Protection of the Environment (1991) – with its own scientific committee – applies to the same area but more obliquely, since its representation of the Antarctic Environment includes ‘dependent and associate ecosystems’ which have never been defined. Interpretative flexibility is indicative of how Antarctic science has been and still is enmeshed in Antarctic politics and how the boundaries drawn in some respects are human constructions. SCAR as a science body chooses natural boundaries (note that it includes areas like Tristan and Gough outside the Convergence but biologically connected) while 60°S is an expedient political boundary as are all political boundaries in the long run.