The conservation perspective on Antaretie tourism
Cassandra Phillips
Abstract
The paper describes the legal regime (Antaretie Treaty and Environmental Protoeol), which
provides a high level of protection. Antaretie tourism, alm ost all ship-based, is expanding
rapidly (9000in 1995-96). Conservationists are ambivalent, seeing advantages in the spread of
awareness but reasons to keep Antaretie tourism under limits. Antarctica's main values are as
the fargest wildemess on earth, the largest wildlife sanctuary, a crucial region for scientific
research, and as an intemationally gove med continent. All these values have repercussions for
tourism regulation. There are limited lessons for Arctic tourism, with the lack of native
inhabitants and the political situation making the Antaretie distinet.
The political background
Unlike the Arctic, the Antaretie belongs to nobody and everybody, or at least to the 80% or so
of the world's population in the 42 member countries of the Antarctic Treaty, in two categories
of26 Consultative (or voting) Parties and 16 Non-consultative Parties. These Consultative
Parties inc1ude most of the world's largest countries, inc1uding China, India, Russia, USA,
Brazil, South Africa, and most of Europe. Seven Parti es (inc1uding Norway) do claim
sovereignty over parts of Antaretica, and the competing claims threatened to spill over into
rnilitary action after the Second World War. However, Antaretiea has successfully been
maintained as a place for explorers and scientists, not tanks and weapons, and the International
Geophysical Year of 1957-58 led to the remarkable agreement to preserve the whole continent
for peaceful and scientific purposes only. The poten ti al antagonists agreed in the 1959 Antarctic
Treaty to ban all military activity and not to press their territorial claims, but in effect to leave
them frozen'on ice'.
The Antaretie Treaty covers all land and ice shelves south of 600S. In contrast to the Arctic,
only 2% of the Antarctic land is seasonally free of snow and ice. As weU as the mosses and
lichens, there are only two species of vascular plants on the whole continent. Over the Treaty's
37-year history, it has been reinforced by a number of other measures and conventions,
inc1uding measures to protect fauna and flora on land and conserve the living marine resources
south of the Antarctic convergence.
One form of commercial exploitation, the exploitation of minerals inc1uding oil and gas, was
not mentioned in the Antarctie Treaty. Throughout the 1980s the re was heated debate on
whether mining should be allowed in this virtually pristine and very vulnerable wilderness. In
1988 a convention to regulate mining was agreed by the Treaty Parties, but the resulting
international outcry and the efforts of the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) and many other
environmental groups led instead to the signing in Madrid in 1991 of the Environmental
Protocol which banned all mining in the Antarctic for at least 50 years. In fact, it was the
catastrophic wreck of the oil tanker Exxon Valdez in March 1989 in Alaska that gave the world
only too c1ear an example of the reality of the threats of oil exploitation in vulnerable polar
regions. I believe that if it had not been for the Exxon Va/dez, the Antarctic mining convention
probably would not have been overturned and replaced by the Madrid Environmental Protocol.
59
1991 Environmental Protocol
The Madrid Protocol will enter into force when all of the 26 Antarctic Treaty Consultative
Parti es have ratified" it. So far they have all done so except for Finland, Russia, Japan, India,
and USA All have agreed to respect its terms while formal ratification is being completed. The
Protocol represents a crucial step towards comprehensive environmental protection in
Antarctica. Before its agreement, environmental measures were not much better than an ad hoc
and patchy set of recommendations that were difficult to enforce. It affects all aspects of human
activities in the Antarctic, including tourism, and further provisions on financial liability for
environmental damage are still being negotiated. The main points include:
• The formal designation of Antarctica as a'naturaI reserve, devoted to peace and science'and
establishing principles for environmental protection in the whole region
• The prohibition of all rnining activities, except for scientific research
• Establishing a Comrnittee on Environmental Protection with wide advisory functions
• Instituting legally binding measures goveming waste management and disposal, the
prevention of marine pollution, the conservation of native fauna and flora, a comprehensive
protected area system, and most importantly very strict environmental impact assessment
(EIA) procedures for all activities whether govemmental or non-govemmental (such as
tourism)
In summary, the Antarctic Treaty, together with the Madrid Protocol, norninally gives the
whole Antarctic area strict protected area status. Human activities are not total ly banned except
in a few very small areas, but they are very strictly regulated everywhere. The Arctic only has
this level of protection in some areas. However, the extent to which this protection can be
adrninistered and enforced is still something of a grey area, since sovereignty claims are not
recognised and there is no regulatory authority except a system of consensus-building at the
annual Treaty Meetings. Enforeement has to be left to eaeh Treaty Party controlling their own
nationals. The Antaretic Treaty still does not even have any permanent Secretariat, although this
is urgently needed. Another difference between the Arctic and the Antarctic is also erucial in
considering the management of tourism the faet that the Antarctie, 10% of the globe's land
surface, has no native human inhabitants, only some 3000 scientists spending periods of
weeks or mo nths working there.
The development of tourism in the Antarctic
The first tourists to visit Antaretica travelled by air from Chile in 1956. Air travel, especially
over-flights, were popular in the late 1970s, but eeased abruptly in 1979 when an Air New
Zealand DC-lO crashed into Mount Erebus killing all 257 people aboard. Since that tragedy,
air-based tourism has been mostly lirnited to small, high prieed flights from Chile often using
'blue ice'airstrips. Qantas has also begun over-flights from Australia again..
The first cruise ship visited Antaretiea in 1958 earrying 100 passengers. The ship-based tourist
industry has expanded very rapidly over the past few years, and in 1994-95 the total reaehed
just over 8000 tourists with over 100 trips on 15 ships. The industry forecasts an increase to
9000 tourists in 1995-96. These numbers would be rninute if they were evenly spread around
the Antarctie eoast, but in faet most of the tours visit just a few sites on the islands and eoast of
the Antarctie Peninsula, and are concentrated during the short two month summer season when
the penguins and other birds are breeding. In addition, an ever-increasing number of private
II The Environmental Protocol entered into force in January 1998 following ratifiC'lltion by all the Antaretie
Treaty Parties.
60
yachts now visit the Antarctic, especially the Peninsula area, some even over-wintering there.
So far there is almost no land-based tourism, apart from one campsite for adventure tours.
The conservation perspective
Most conservationists feel somewhat ambivalent about the growth of tourism in remote parts of
the world, of which the Antarctic is a considerably more extreme example even than the Arctic.
We welcome the idea of people being able to see for themselves what a beautiful, awe-inspiring
place it is, and to experience at first hand the variety and sheer numbers of birds and seais, the
amazing ice formations, and the clarity of the unpolluted atmosphere. We welcome tourists
retuming home as enthusiasts, and as ambassadors for continued and strengthened
environmental protection of this unique continent. Tourists can see for themselves some of the
scientific stations, both the" green" and the" not-so-green" ones. When they return home they
will tell their friends and write to newspapers or their governments about what they have seen.
Their reports often provide a useful supplement to the frequently confidential and far too
diplomatic reports of the offidal Antarctic inspections.
On the other hand, we do not welcome ship-Ioads of tourists treating Antarctka as just another
cruise destination, some of whom are not even interested in going ashore at all in spite of the
high price of the tours. In nearly all other parts of the'world, there can be considerable
advantages from eco-tourism, especially when local inhabitants of areas important for
biodiversity are given an economic incentive for conserving that biodiversity. This
consideration is irrelevant in the case of the Antarctic, there being no local inhabitants. All the
profits to be made from Antarctic tourism go back to operators based north of 600S. There will
therefore be no adverse conservation implications if Antarctic tourism is not allowed to grow
indefinitely, and there almost certainly are sound conservation reasons for putting a ceiling on
its expansion.
For WWF, and I think all environmental organisations, there are at least four main features of
the Antarctic that are of unique and supreme value, and which must be the basic principles
against which proposed activities there, including all forms of tourism, are judged. The Arctic
does indeed share in some of these values, but with'several important differences.
First, there is the Antarctic's value as the largest and least contaminated wildemess area in the
world. A whole continent that has never had permanent human inhabitants and which remains
very iittle affected by human activity gives it a priceless value on our polluted planet.
Wildemess is by definition vulnerable and easily lost. You do not feel you are in a wilderness if
you find airstrips, wharves, and buildings. Nor do you feel in a wildemess if you go ashore
and find cigarette ends, soft drink cans, or even footsteps in the moss. The implication for
tourism is that the Antarctic should have no land-based tourist facilities, and that everyone's
behaviour must be subject to firm, strictly enforced guidelines. The current fast increase in
ship-borne tourism has increased the pressure, on the small coastal ice-free areas and the inland
areas in range of the helicopters some ships carry, but has also created a competitive pressure
for diversification of tourist choices. In practice, much of Antarctica is now within reach of
small groups of rich people.
Second, there is the Antarctic's value as the largest wildlife sanctuary on earth, with its vast
coastal colonies of seais, penguins and many other seabirds, as well as its relict populations of
whales. All the wildlife is dependent on the rich marine ecosystem. In contrast to the Arctic,
there is very little evidence of any air-bome or water-bome contamination affecting the fauna or
flora of the Antarctic, so in that sense it is a true sanctuary. The question of just what impact
people, especially if they are in groups, have on penguin colonies or on hau led-out seals at
various stages in the breeding cycle is still an open one. Cumulative impact is almost certainly
much greater that the sum of individual impacts. Again, extremely cautious guidelines for
visitor behaviour are clearly needed, and ways must be found to enforce them.
61
Third, there is the immense value of Antarctica to many branches of scientific research,
resulting from its geographical position, isolation, ice accumulations dat ing back hundreds of
thousands of years, and its unique low temperature ecosysterns. The Antarctic region plays a
key role in regulating global atmospheric circulation and ocean currents, and is vital to the study
of global warming. The essential qualification for a nation to become a member of the Antarctic
Treaty is that it should be conducting scientific research there. In some ways, tourism can
benefit Antarctic science, particularly when influential people are able to see for themselves the
research at the government-funded scientific stations and there is more chance they will support
public money being spent in this way. However, it does not benefit science if too much time
has to be spent on guiding groups of tourists, conducting search and rescue, or if study sites
are contaminated in any way such as interference with wildlife or by pollution from ships. ane
of the worst examples was the wreck of the Bahia Paraiso (a mixed scientific support and
tourism ship) just off the American Palmer Station, when the resulting oil pollution may have
ruined a long-term investigation of phytoplankton and ozone depletion.
Fourth, there is the fact that Antarctica is an international de-militarised continent that has been
regulated for weU over thirty years by a growing number of nations who have managed to keep
this one part of the world clear of all the armed conflicts taking place in the rest of the world.
As explained, this legal situation makes the enforcement of tourism regulations and guidelines
very complex. For example, the nationals of countries not party to the Antarctic Treaty remain
beyond the scope of its jurisdiction.
Conclusion
Although the Antarctic does not have the relatively wide variety of habitat types found in the
Arctic, the Antarctic and Arctic clearly have some similarities as far as tourism is concemed,
such as the short summer season, the large colonies of birds and mammais, and ice sheets. On
the political level, however, the fundamental differences between the two polar regions,
especially the lack of human inhabitants in the Antarctic and the very complex legal and political
situation over the enforcement of regulations, make the lessons learned from Antarctic tourism
of only limited use for developing guidelines for Arctic tourism. l
Bibliography
IUCN 1991: A srategy for Antarctic conservation. IUCN, Gland, Switzerland and Cambridge, United Kingdom.
May J. 1988: The Greenpeace book of Antaretica. Dorling Kindersley Ltd., London, United Kingdom.
,
Stonehouse B (ed): In preparation: Proceedings ofpolar tourism conference, August 1996. Scott Polar Research
Institute, Cambridge, United Kingdom.
Enzenbacher, D. 1994: Antarctic tourism: an overview of 1992/93 season activity. Polar Record 30,(173).
62