Antarctica: geopolitical challenges and institutional resilience

The success of the Antarctic Treaty regime over more than 60 years provides the opportunity to assess the relationship between the maintenance of national interests and cooperation between Antarctic states. Over these six decades challenges to the Antarctic Treaty and the evolving Antarctic Treaty System have emerged. These challenges have arisen from within the system itself, most notably in the overturing of the proposed convention to regulate mining and its replacement with a comprehensive environmental protection regime. The system has also faced external challenges; a good example being through the “Question of Antarctica” debate within the United Nations General Assembly. Internal and external challenges have been addressed and, in many ways contributed to revitalising the regime, through adroit diplomacy and enduring commitment to sustaining the Treaty’s principles. This provides the key to the paper’s central argument that system resilience and adaptability has been undervalued in contemporary framings of Antarctic geopolitics that have in recent years tended to highlight tensions and divergent views.