Antarctica Legislation 1960

Committee Serial No. 27. Considers H.R. 5222 and two identical bills, to provide support for research, other activities related to Antarctica, and two related bills proposing DOD as the executive agency responsible for supervising Antarctic affairs.

Committee Serial No. 27. Considers H.R. 5222 and two identical bills, to provide support for research, other activities related to Antarctica, and two related bills proposing DOD as the executive agency responsible for supervising Antarctic affairs.

Antarctica, one of the world's last great wildernesses, presents special challenges for international law. Fears that Antarctica would become a front in the Cold War catalysed agreement on the 1959 Antarctic Treaty which neither legitimised nor challenged the existing sovereign claims to the continent. The unique Antarctic Treaty System has provided the foundation for peaceful, harmonious and effective governance. There are, however, new anxieties about the frozen continent and the Southern Ocean. Antarctica already feels the effects of climate change and ocean acidification. Claimant states assert rights to the Antarctic continental shelf and interest in Antarctic resources grows. Tourism brings new environmental and safety risks. China and other powers are increasing their activities, with some questioning the consensus of the 'Antarctic club'. Security concerns are increasingly discussed, despite Antarctica's dedication to peaceful purposes. This book brings together the main primary international materials concerning the regulation and governance of Antarctica, including multilateral and bilateral treaties, United Nations materials, 'soft laws' and judicial decisions. It covers the spectrum of Antarctic issues from environmental protection to scientific cooperation to tourism. As it shows, Antarctic law has constantly adapted to meet new challenges and is a sophisticated, inclusive, dynamic and responsive regime.

This book provides an invaluable up-to-date survey of the legal framework for Antarctic activities, written by an author with direct practical experience of the Antarctic Treaty system. Reflecting the increase of activity in the area, the work examines the basic Antarctic Treaty of 1959 and the subsequent major additional treaties and regulatory measures to provide a clear and authoritative picture of the Antarctic legal system as a whole. The author demonstrates how these legal arrangements make an important contribution to international law generally notwithstanding the unique characteristics that set Antarctica apart.

Antarctica and the Southern Ocean cover one-tenth of the earth's surface. In a legal and environmental sense, Antarctica represents the geography of hope. It is the freshest and most pristine of regions, governed by a legal regime that offers Antarctica and its circumpolar water the unique possibility of becoming the world's first global wilderness preserve. But in today's age of resource scarcity, Antarctica still provokes much political, economic and legal debate. Over the past decade, international attention has increasingly focused on the legal status of the continent, the potential for hydrocarbon exploitation offshore, and opportunities for harvesting circumpolar living marine resources. In this fascinating treatment, Christopher C. Joyner undertakes the first serious examination of the intimate relationship between Antarctica and the law of the sea. Using Antarctica as a case study, Joyner probes large conceptual issues of ocean law and politics. He uses the intricate details of oceanography and law to unravel the dynamics of the Antarctic Treaty System. In doing so, he examines how the changing importance of Antarctic issues has affected the development of the law of the sea for the region, the ways in which states define their national interests, and the accommodation through various negotations that have contributed to the development of law for governing the Southern Ocean. While the study of law for the Antarctic is provocative in itself, this work goes much farther. The study critically analyzes the region's biogeography, the condition of sovereignty on the continent, the lawfulness of asserting jurisdictional zones offshore, and various legal implications for Antarctica's continental shelf, local island groups, circumpolar deep seabed, and the Southern Ocean's high seas. Moreover, the special legal efforts by the international community to protect the Antarctic seas from marine pollution and to conserve its living marine resources are comprehensively appraised. Thorough, authoritative, and objectively reasoned, Antarctica and the Law of the Sea provides an insightful assessment of how law can progressively develop for a resource-rich region of the world's ocean. As such, it should appeal to a broad range of international lawyers and social scientists who are interested in international relations, political economy, environmental politics, and the law of the sea.

Antarctica is the last, most inhospitable frontier on earth, yet it presents a great number of unresolved conflicts between nations, individuals, environmentalists, scientists and business groups. The International Law of Antarctica addresses the crucial question of how international law can respond to claims that will certainly shape tomorrow's Antarctica. The author adopts a policy-oriented approach and focuses on the primary issue of determining the effective norms by which the process of value shaping and sharing develops in Antarctica, and to what extent such norms satisfy the prevailing aspirations of the world community. Where discrepancies are significant policies are proposed that may better meet such aspirations, as well as methods for their implementation. Part I of this study describes the social, power, and legal processes relating to Antarctica; reviews the geographic, technological, economic, and historical context in which these processes evolve, and how their special features affect such processes; and finally postulates the basic community policies with reference to which the process of claims and decisions in Antarctica are analyzed. Part II focuses on national claims to Antarctica by reviewing claims relating to the modes to establish exclusive appropriation of the area. Part III is a detailed examination of specific claims to Antarctica resources: claims to mineral and living resources, and claims relating to space-extension resources, namely, Antarctica sea and air space. It is concluded by an appraisal of the congruence of the existing order of Antarctica with the postulated basic policies, critically reviewing proposals for a new order, and advancing long-term and more immediate alternatives.