The world faces a bleak 2009 as recession spreads and deepens, heightening the risk of protectionism and conflict. In Antarctica the fifth-largest continent after Asia, Africa, and North and South America the climate is harsh too, even in the few brief months on either side of the new year that pass as summer. But there is something hopeful taking place there, a sustained form of international cooperation that could be a model for better global governance and economic recovery in the wider world.
!Consider what is happening now on Dome A, deep in east Antarctica, not far from the South Pole. The area is covered by a giant slab of ice more than 4.5km thick in places. The east Antarctic ice sheet contains about 70 per cent of the world's fresh water, and would raise sea levels by 60m were it to melt completely. Dome A is the highest, and perhaps the coldest, place in Antarctica. Summer temperatures average minus 30 degrees. In winter they plunge to minus 60 degrees, with blizzards and winds of over 200km/h.
!In this inhospitable terrain, teams of scientists from Australia, Britain, China, Germany, Japan and the United States are starting one of the most ambitious Antarctic research projects yet. Using sensors on the surface and in aircraft, they are peering deep into the ice to discover whether it is gaining or losing mass as a result of global warming, how it is moving and whether it is contributing to a rise in sea level.
!They are also drilling deep into the ice to extract cores in the belief that the oldest ice on the planet is around Dome A. Much of what we know about climate change comes from ice cores. They are like climate libraries, capturing gases and atmospheric particles that provide information on the climate from earlier ice ages and warm periods.
!The Dome A research is part of wider cooperation that links the 46 member nations of the 1959 Antarctic Treaty and associated accords. The signatories include developed and developing economies, accounting for about 80 per cent of the world's population. They are parties to a treaty system designed to ensure that the wars which have disfigured other continents do not occur in Antarctica, that the environment is protected, and that scientific research and collaboration have priority. Signatories undertake to use Antarctica for peaceful purposes only.
Military operations, nuclear explosive tests and the disposal of radioactive waste are not permitted. All commercial mining is banned.
!Of course, many of the things that fuel human greed and armed conflict elsewhere are not present or readily exploitable in Antarctica. There are no indigenous inhabitants, arable land or forests. Only 2 per cent of Antarctica's 14 million square kilometres is ice-free and even that is ill-suited for human settlement. The onshore population of international scientists swells to over 4000 in summer, but dwindles to about 1000 in winter.
!The Antarctic Treaty is not exclusive. It allows any member of the United Nations to join. Of the 46 countries that have done so, 28 are consultative parties with the right to make collective decisions about management of the continent. Consultative status is open to any country that can show its commitment to Antarctica by conducting significant research there. In their regular meetings, consultative parties make decisions by consensus, not by voting.
!This is not, by any means, a perfect system of administration. Unregulated fishing and environmental damage still occur. But generally, human impacts are far more effectively controlled in and around Antarctica than on other continents. Perhaps the local circumstances that make this kind of multi-national governance possible are unique. However, it certainly shows what enlightened leadership can do when nation-states put their differences aside and work together for the common good.
!What could upset the Antarctic treaty system? Intrusion of the same kinds of territorial and resource rivalries that bedevil relations among people and countries on other continents. Seven of the consultative parties Australia, Argentina, Britain, Norway, France, New Zealand and Chile have made territorial claims to around 75 per cent of the continent. Some of the claims overlap. Australia alone asserts sovereignty over 42 per cent of Antarctica.
!The treaty does not recognise or dispute territorial claims and no new ones can be asserted while it is in force. Oil, gas and minerals are known to exist in Antarctica and beneath its continental shelf. If global demand for them were to become acute and technology was available to exploit them, the treaty system might be challenged. But that seems unlikely for many years.
The continent's forbidding climate is its most effective guardian.
! The writer, a former Asia Editor of The International Herald Tribune, is a visiting senior research fellow at the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies in Singapore.