Thursday, 31 October 2024
Government House, Sydney
Her Excellency the Honourable Margaret Beazley AC KC, Governor of New South Wales

Bujari gamarruwa

Diyn Babana Gamarada Gadigal Ngura

In greeting you in the language of the Gadigal, Traditional Owners of these lands and waterways, I pay my respects to their Elders past, present, and future. I extend that respect to the Elders of all parts of our State from which you have travelled.

Members of the Royal Society of NSW, distinguished guests all, whether here or online,

Tonight marks the 10^th iteration of Ideas@theHouse a collaboration between Government House and the Royal Society and I thank them for the role they have taken in the organisation and implementation of what has become an important and interesting series of lectures providing a vibrant platform to explore significant and influential ideas.

Since that first iteration in May of 2020, which was online due to COVID, we have had presentations on the arts, sciences, technology and philosophy. This evening, we add law to those topics as we dip our toes into the icy waters of the Antarctic, to consider The Big Thaw: Who Governs Antarctica’s Ice?

Antarctica, as we know, is not a sovereign entity. 

Not being a sovereign state, Antarctica has no laws of its own, nothing in which to embed the rule of law to provide the stability we identify as central to State based governance. Rather, governance is embedded in international law and a treaty regime - the cold war Antarctic Treaty and a number of associated conventions.^[1]

A treaty-based framework of governance has a long provenance dating back to 1269 BC when the Kadesh Peace Treaty was signed by Hattusili III King of the Hittites and Ramses II Pharaoh of the Egyptians^[2], so it might be expected that nation states would well understand that there is an international rules-based system^[3] that governs their conduct and their relationships.   

In the years leading up to the drafting of the Antarctic Treaty in 1959, 7 sovereign states had laid claim to different and sometimes overlapping portions of this icy continent – Argentina Australia, Chile, France, New Zealand, Norway and the United Kingdom. You will notice there are a number of surprising absentees in that list, notably the United States, Russia and China^[4]. That is explained because of the terms of the Treaty itself.  It is certainly not indicative of a lack of interest. 

The United States has 3, year-round scientific bases in the Antarctic, several field camps and the largest number of personnel.

Russia has 10 research bases although only 5 are operational all year round and six seasonal field bases.[5]  It recently reported that it had discovered of an estimated 511 billion barrels of oil and gas in the UK’s zone of interest in the Antarctic. Sergey Suykhankin in his article in the Interpreter last month^[6], describes this discovery as “the world’s largest, dwarfing Venezuela’s reserves of 300 billion barrels and equating to around ten times the North Sea’s output over the last 50 years.”

China is not in that list of ‘claimants’ although it has 5 Antarctic Facilities, the latest being Qinling Station located on the Inexpressible Island in the Ross Sea near the US McMurdo Station.^[7]  

During an interview broadcast in September 2023, the Commander of the Iranian Navy stated that Iran had ‘property rights’ in Antarctica with plans to raise its flag there.^[8]

We also know that Antarctica is melting, with NASA reporting a loss of ice mass at an average rate 150 billion metric tonnes per year between 2002 and 2023.^[9]

These are but a few facts and figures, but they immediately raise the question – what is to be made of these existential and potential exigencies, particularly in a world where international players have varied attitudes about the constraints of current treaties or their interpretation, as quickly happened with the Moon Treaty, also signed during the Cold War.[10]

If there are answers to any of these questions, then there could no-one better to expound upon them than this evening’s presenter, Dr Tim Stephens.

Professor of International Law at the University of Sydney Law School, Tim teaches and researches in public international law, with his published work focussing on the international law of the sea, international environmental law and international dispute settlement. He has been appointed, on the nomination of the Australian Government, to the List of Arbitrators under the Protocol on Environmental Protection to the Antarctic Treaty, and it was my pleasure earlier this year to launch the book he co-authored with Donald R Rothwell, their third edition of The International Law of the Sea.

[1] https://www.nti.org/education-center/treaties-and-regimes/antarctic-treaty/#

[2] https://www.un.org/ungifts/replica-peace-treaty-between-hattusilis-and-ramses-ii

[3] https://www.foreignminister.gov.au/minister/penny-wong/speech/national-statement-united-nations-general-assembly-0   In September, in delivering Australia’s National Statement to the UN General Assembly, our Foreign Minister emphasised the importance of international agreement to “uphold standards and rules” in order to “protect all of the world’s peoples and the sovereignty of all nations”

[4] Other countries do not recognize any claims. The US and Russia maintain a “basis of claim”. https://www.ats.aq/e/antarctictreaty.html

[5] https://seapower.navy.gov.au/media-room/publications/russia-and-china-antarctica-and-southern-ocean-implications-five-eyes

[6] https://www.lowyinstitute.org/the-interpreter/will-russia-violate-antarctic-treaty

[7] https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-08-18/antarctica-china-qinling-station-australia-is-concerned/104220114

[8] https://www.memri.org/tv/iran-navy-commander-admiral-shahram-irani-we-have-right-south-pole-build-base

[9] https://science.nasa.gov/resource/video-antarctic-ice-mass-loss-2002-2023/

[10] https://www.unoosa.org/oosa/en/ourwork/spacelaw/treaties/moon-agreement.html