Cousteau to campaign for Antarctic reserve

Press, 23 October 1989, Page 6

Cousteau to campaign for Antarctic reserve

NZPA-AAP Paris r The ocean explorer, Jacques Cousteau, said yesterday he would campaign in the United States and around the world to rally support for making Antarctica an international nature reserve.

Delegates from 39 countries at the biennial Antarctica Treaty meeting have agreed to call a meeting next year to discuss “comprehensive environmental measures” for the icy continent, including a French-Australian proposal for a nature reserve there. The United States and Britain lead opposition to the proposal, urging support instead for an international minerals treaty that would permit regulated mining in Antarctica. France and , Australia have refused to sign the New Zealandinitiated treaty, blocking it from taking effect.

Mr Tucker Scully, head of the United States delegation, said he was satisfied with the compromise outcome of the Paris meeting, which lasted two weeks.

“We were not prepared to accept any proposal that predicted the outcome of the next meeting or ran counter to our position,” Mr Scully said.

Under the compromise, two meetings have been called for next year — one to discuss environmental measures and one to consider proposals for establishing accident liability under the mining convention. When and where the meetings will take place was not decided, although Chile has offered to be host. The next general Antarctica Treaty meeting will be in West Germany in 1991. Cousteau, the 79-year-old adventurer known for his television specials and environmental activ-

ism, said his foundation would continue to seek signatures on petitions urging permanent protection for Antarctica.

Cousteau said he hoped next year’s meeting on environmental protection in Antarctica would have “a more active participation of political authorities, not just the bureaucrats."

The French Environment Minister, Brice Lalonde, at a separate news conference, said he thought public pressure could change opposition to the reserve proposal. Environmental groups called the outcome ?f the Paris meeting a success.

The Prime Minister, Mr Palmer, said he was very pleased with the outcome of the Paris meeting on Antarctica, Brendon Burns writes from Kuala Lumpur.

He said New Zealand had done a lot of preparation for the

meeting, releasing a White Paper on Antarctica for public submission and then compiling a more detailed paper with the input of interested parties. “The New Zealand position had been very well received at the Paris meeting and the decisions of the Paris meeting were fully in accord with the goals that New Zealand had set,” he said.

New Zealand had always supported the concept of a World Park in Antarctica, but was not keen to abandon the minerals convention in any interim because it included environmental safeguards, he said. The White Paper had included wide-ranging proposals to protect the Antarctic environment from the impact of all human activity. Environmental impact reports were proposed for all ventures on the continent.

Mr Palmer complimented New

Zealand officials for what they had achieved for Antarctica in negotiations. He said the Deputy Secretary of the Ministry of External Relations and Trade, Mr Chris Beeby, and the Secretary of the Environment, had played a role in ensuring “concrete measures" to protect Antarctica’s environment. Meanwhile in Wellington, the Antarctic and Southern Ocean Coalition environmental group said New Zealand’s reputation as an environmentally responsible country had been seriously jeopardised by aligning with proAntarctic mining countries at the Antarctic Treaty Nations meeting. A spokesman, Mr Colin Benson, said that Mr Beeby, the architect of the Antarctic Minerals Convention, had tried to defeat the Australian proposal to declare Antarctica a world park at the Paris meeting.