Rules feared no bar to Antarctic mining

Press, 6 October 1987, Page 6

Rules feared no bar to Antarctic mining

By

OLIVER RIDDELL,

in Wellington

A minerals regime for Antarctica will facilitate a minerals scramble rather than regulate it, according to the convener of the Antarctic and Southern Ocean Coalition, Ms Cath Wallace.

She said the decisionmaking structure, membership of the institutions and the. incentives for de-cision-makers in the proposed minerals convention would all lead to poor protection of the Antarctic environment Further, to allow the introduction of rivalry for mineral resources there was to sow the seeds of conflict which could threaten not only the Antarctic Treaty but also Antarctica’s demilitarised

status. The Antarctic Treaty said nothing about mineral or living resource exploitation — there was a gap in it, Ms Wallace said. Diplomats and environmentalists differed in their assessment of the proposed minerals convention. The diplomats looked at the relatively meagre environmental provisions of the Law of the Sea agreements and other international instruments, and were greatly impressed by the degree of environmental protection afforded by the minerals convention, she said. The environmentalists, on the other hand, assessed the convention against other mining con-

trol codes and systems. They could see at a glance that It would have serious flaws because its major function was not to protect the environment but to facilitate mining and provide political accommodations between the parties. “I do not mean to question the motives of our own diplomats, who have been genuine in their concerns,” MS Wallace said. Nevertheless, she rejected the proposed convention as simply a barrier to the scramble and a mechanism for imposing rules on unwilling scramblers for minerals.

Rather, she said, the convention — in providing a mechanism for the allocation of resource access rights — was an essential pre-condition for the de--velopment of minerals. Physical conditions, lack of technology and low oil prices were not, in themselves, the most significant barriers to commercial mining in Antarctica.

The important missing ingredient for developers

so for had been the lack of a legal and iMtttutfonal framework for seaurtng rights to work in Antarc- .* tica, Ms Wallace said. It was that framework that would enable them to retain the results oTexpensive secure from the jealousies of other operators and/or other nations.

Until a convention, she said, investment would be insecure because the explorer who was successful but lacked regulatory protection of an investment could face eviction from a site by an unhappy claimant or other state. 7 There could also be claim-jumping by another operator who took advantage of the first's work to sink a wen or otherwise exploit a field discovered by the first. Environmentalists were looking to choices other than a minerals regime, Ms Wallace said. They considered that the real treasures of Antarctica were best protected by having no mining. They preferred the creation of an Antarctic Park.