Reconsidering Antarctic Bioprospecting through Territorialities of Science, Property,
and Governance
Dissertation
Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Doctor of
Philosophy in the Graduate School of the Ohio State University
By
Jason Michael Davis, M.A.
Graduate Program in Geography
The Ohio State University
2011
Dissertation Committee:
Becky Mansfield, Advisor
Mat Coleman
Nancy Ettlinger
ABSTRACT
Antarctic formations of science, property, and governance complicate how the
commercial use of genetic and biochemical data derived from biota (bioprospecting)
might be managed there. Antarctic science should be cooperative, but patents that
arise from bioprospecting could generate competition. If Antarctica is perceived as a
global commons, exclusive rights to its resources could threaten that status. The
peaceful governance of Antarctica is based on the Antarctic Treaty of 1959, but its
authority could be threatened by other groups seeking to govern over this new activity.
This dissertation explores these issues through two territorial approaches: one focused
on the hierarchical bureaucracy of Antarctica and another focused on alternative
geographical imaginaries of the continent. While there has been a great deal of
concentration on states and the Antarctic Treaty System, this study reveals that careful
reconsideration of geographical imaginaries can present alternate solutions.
ii
Dedicated to my wife, Julia Griffin,
who just started dating me when I began this dissertation.
iii
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I wish to thank my adviser, Becky Mansfield, for her patience is seeing this
through to the end. I may not have always liked to hear what she had to say at the
moments that I received her comments, but it was always valuable advice and I
learned a lot from her.
Thanks also to my committee for their valuable input into the document as well
as the lessons that I learned from them in their classes. Mat Coleman expanded my
understanding of geopolitics considerably. Nancy Ettlinger expanded my view to
consider my work from other perspectives. Thanks also to prior committee members
Ellen Moseley-Thompson and Paul Robbins for helping to guide me to the place I am
today. Dr. Keith Warren and Dr. Donald Eckert also served admirably and came up
with provoking questions in the roles of my graduate school representatives on my
defense and candidacy exams, repectively.
Thanks also to the tireless work of the office staff of the OSU geography
department and Byrd Polar Research Center who helped me to navigate the
bureaucratic ins and outs of being a graduate student. I can’t imagine getting to where
I am without the efforts of people such as Dianne Carducci, Lynn Lay, or the countless
other people who made my work considerably easier.
iv
I am in awe of the academic peers I have met as fellow graduate students. My
academic “siblings,” April Luginbuhl Mather and Johanna Haas, let me know what it
was like to have strong and supportive older sisters that were great scholars in their
own rights. Much moral support was provided by individuals such as Eric Boschmann,
Madhuri Sharma, Nurcan Atalan-Helicke, and a number of other graduate students.
Thanks also to my encouraging family, who provided prodding or support on
an as-needed basis. I feel that David Laguardia belongs to this group, as his support
nourished me at a crucial time.
This research was funded by the National Science Foundation through a
Doctoral Dissertation Research Improvement Grant (Award # 0623497). Their
generosity allowed me to visit meetings and gather data that I would not otherwise
have done.
v
VITA
November 17, 1977 ........................... Born – Bethesda, MD, USA
2000 ................................................... A.B. Anthropology, The University of Chicago
2004 ................................................... M.A. Geography. The Ohio State University
2002 – 2008 ....................................... Graduate Teaching and Research Associate,
The Ohio State University
PUBLICATIONS
1.
J. Davis, “National Geographic’s Representations of Antarctica.” Reports of
Polar and Marine Research, 560, pp. 28-47, (2007).
FIELDS OF STUDY
Major Field: Geography
vi
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Page
Dedication ....................................................................................................................iii
Acknowledgements ......................................................................................................iv
Vita ...............................................................................................................................vi
List of Figures ............................................................................................................... x
Chapters
1.
Introduction ....................................................................................................... 1
1.1 Background on Bioprospecting and Antarctica........................................... 4
1.1.1 Bioprospecting in general............................................................. 4
1.1.2 The practice of bioprospecting in Antarctica ............................... 9
1.1.3 How Antarctic bioprospecting has been addressed .................... 11
1.2 Theory ....................................................................................................... 25
1.2.1 Modernism and Postmodernism ................................................. 25
1.2.2 Territoriality ............................................................................... 28
1.2.3 Territoriality: hierarchical bureaucracy...................................... 30
1.2.4 Territoriality: the creation of geographical imaginaries............. 35
1.2.5 Comparing the two territorial approaches .................................. 40
1.3 Empirical Approach .................................................................................. 42
1.3.1 Reflexive account of initial research approach .......................... 42
1.3.2 Data collection and analysis ....................................................... 44
1.4 Summary of the chapters to come ............................................................. 47
2.
Is bioprospecting a threat to Antarctic science? .............................................. 48
2.1 A history of Antarctic science ................................................................... 52
2.1.1 Science during the early exploration of the Antarctic ................ 53
2.1.2 The rise of Antarctic science during the IGY............................. 55
2.1.3 The environmentalist challenge to Antarctic science................. 58
2.2 Modern Science ......................................................................................... 63
2.2.1 The general articulation of Mertonian science ........................... 63
vii
2.2.2 Mertonian science in Antarctica................................................. 67
2.2.3 Mertonian science applied to Antarctic bioprospecting ............. 71
2.3 Postmodern Sciences ................................................................................. 76
2.3.1 Latour's reaction against modern science................................... 77
2.3.2 Postmodern science in Antarctica .............................................. 81
2.3.3 Postmodern scientific approaches to Antarctic bioprospecting.. 84
2.4 Conclusion: is bioprospecting a legitimate scientific activity? ................. 88
3.
Is Antarctic bioprospecting a threat to an Antarctic Commons?..................... 91
3.1 A History of Antarctic notions of ownership ............................................ 94
3.1.1 Defining property and the commons .......................................... 95
3.1.2 Early exploration of Antarctica and claims to ownership .......... 98
3.1.3 Choosing between the Antarctic Treaty or U. N. trusteeship... 101
3.1.4 The creation and implementation of Antarctica World Park.... 106
3.2 Modern standpoints on property.............................................................. 109
3.2.1 Lockean and Marxist approaches to ownership ....................... 110
3.2.2 Modern Property in Antarctica................................................. 114
3.2.3 Modernist property and Antarctic bioprospecting.................... 118
3.3 Postmodern models of property and the commons ................................. 122
3.3.1 Ostrom's critiques of modernist property ................................. 123
3.3.2 Postmodern ownership in Antarctica ....................................... 127
3.3.3 Postmodern property ideas and Antarctic bioprospecting........ 128
3.4 Conclusions ............................................................................................. 133
4.
Is bioprospecting a threat to existing Antarctic governance?........................ 135
4.1 How several activities within Antarctica have been governed................ 139
4.1.1 Governing all or part of Antarctic territory comprehensively.. 140
4.1.2 Governance of whaling in the Antarctic................................... 144
4.1.3 Governance of tourism in the Antarctic ................................... 149
4.2 Modern governance ................................................................................. 154
4.2.1 Hobbes and subsequent realist ideas of governance................. 155
4.2.2 Realist governance applied to Antarctica ................................. 159
4.2.3 Modern governance applied to Antarctic bioprospecting ........ 161
4.3 Postmodern governance .......................................................................... 168
4.3.1 Governance not centered upon states ....................................... 169
4.3.2 Postmodern governance in Antarctica...................................... 173
4.3.3 Postmodern governance and Antarctic bioprospecting ............ 175
4.4 Conclusions ............................................................................................. 178
5.
Synthesis........................................................................................................ 180
5.1 Theoretical Conclusions .......................................................................... 184
viii
5.1.1 Modern geopolitics................................................................... 185
5.1.2 Postmodern geopolitics ............................................................ 188
5.2 Empirical Conclusions ............................................................................ 191
5.2.1 Concerns addressed separately, through modernist views ....... 192
5.2.2 Alternative approaches to Antarctic bioprospecting ................ 197
5.3 Synthesis of the Theoretical and Practical............................................... 203
Bibliography.............................................................................................................. 208
ix
LIST OF FIGURES
Page
Figure
1.
An illustration of the bioprospecting process....................................................... 7
2.
A map of Antarctic state territorial claims ......................................................... 15
3.
Sack's 10 territorial tendencies ........................................................................... 29
4.
Berkman's diagrams of science's role in Antarctica ........................................... 68
5.
ATCM 2006 lobby displays ............................................................................... 70
6.
Edinburgh display next to Antarctic ship ........................................................... 71
7.
The Crary science laboratory at McMurdo station............................................. 72
8.
Property rights and rules bundled in system roles.............................................. 96
9.
Dates and area coverage of Antarctic territorial claims ................................... 140
10.
Graph showing annual number of tourists visiting Antarctica......................... 150
11.
Joyner's diagram of Antarctic governance ....................................................... 160
12.
Stratagene advertisement for Coldzyme........................................................... 202
x
CHAPTER 1
INTRODUCTION
Nearly a quarter century ago, the greatest issue confronting the Antarctic
continent was what to do about prospecting for mineral resources. Claims to mineral
rights had the potential to become severely contentious, especially given that several
states claimed overlapping sectors of the continent and other states did not recognize
the legitimacy of any claims. The Antarctic Treaty, developed in 1959, offered no
specific guidance on how to proceed other than the imperative that nothing should
denigrate or substantiate such claims. The acceding members of the Antarctic Treaty
met over the course of 12 years (1976-1988) to construct an agreement that they
would eventually call the Convention on the Regulation of Antarctic Mineral Resource
Activities (CRAMRA). CRAMRA was opened for accession in June of 1988 and was
effectively discarded within a year when both Australia and France withdrew their
support and declared that they would not ratify it. One of the great weaknesses of
CRAMRA was that all who were involved in its negotiation considered Antarctic
mineral extraction inevitable. Considerations of an outright ban on prospecting were
not taken seriously, although this is eventually what was accepted in the 1991 Protocol
on Environmental Protection to the Antarctic Treaty. One lesson to be drawn from the
1
CRAMRA experience is that consideration of diverse approaches to an issue prevents
wasted efforts in agreements built upon faulty assumptions.
And yet, as Antarctic actors now begin to address the issue of prospecting for
biological riches in the Antarctic, approaches to managing the commercial use of
Antarctic biota are still largely grounded in assumptions that do not always accord
with reality. The search for Antarctic biota with commercial uses is called
bioprospecting, and differs significantly from the threat posed by mineral prospecting
mentioned above. For example, mineral exploitation has not taken place in Antarctica,
while the derivation of patents from studying Antarctic biota has already taken place.
While bioprospecting is actively going on right now, the threats to Antarctica by
bioprospecting are regularly framed as potential threats. The first threat is framed as a
threat to the free exchange of scientific information guaranteed under Article Three of
the Antarctic Treaty. If biological knowledge derived from Antarctica is used for
commercial purposes, the possibility exists that research will not be shared freely
because of trade secrets or restrictive patents. The second threat is the possibility that
bioprospecting will change concepts of who owns Antarctic biota or the knowledge
derived from them. The idea of deriving private profits from studying Antarctic biota
challenges conceptions of Antarctica as a place of predominantly common property.
The third threat is that deciding who or what group is responsible for managing
bioprospecting in Antarctica could challenge existing governance structures. If the
Antarctic Treaty System (ATS) cannot be relied upon to manage bioprospecting, does
it weaken its legitimacy as a governing body? The responses so far to these concerns
2
have relied on a very particular set of assumptions about science, property, and
governance and how these ideas operate in Antarctic territory.
In an effort to broaden the scope of inquiry surrounding Antarctic
bioprospecting, the research presented here explores the discontinuities bioprospecting
reveals in the ways that Antarctica has been established as a place. The proposed
solutions to the problems listed above are built upon assumptions of science, property,
and governance. Scientists are assumed to be disinterested about the impacts of their
work, and would never purposely withhold valuable information for personal profit.
Property relations are assumed to be a choice between public or private forms of
ownership rights. Governance is assumed to be the sole responsibility or right of
territorial states or supra-state regimes composed of them, such as the ATS. The
persistence of these established modernistic ideas is a testament to their utility in
supporting the established governance system in the Antarctic. The poverty of social
science research in Antarctica has also allowed such conceptions to go relatively
unchallenged. Postmodern articulations of science, property, and governance reveal
that there are alternative perspectives of these three concepts that could have an impact
on how bioprospecting is dealt with in Antarctica. Through an investigation of the
issue of Antarctic bioprospecting as a case study, this dissertation aims to reveal how
these various established and new ideas operate in Antarctica.
This first chapter will introduce the issue of Antarctic bioprospecting and then
clarify how the approaches to it will be studied both theoretically and empirically. A
basic history of bioprospecting in Antarctica will first be established. This will include
3
an examination of what bioprospecting is and how it arose. The summary will focus
primarily on actions taken in regards to bioprospecting by some of the major
institutions in Antarctica, particularly the Scientific Committee for Antarctic Research
(SCAR) and the ATS. The history will end with a summary of the three main issues
that linger regarding Antarctic bioprospecting, each of which is connected to a
different discourse of science, property, or governance. Evidence that these discourses
are applied to Antarctica is evident through acts of territoriality that reflect those
views, and therefore theories of territory and territoriality must underlie this study.
The work of Robert Sack forms the foundation for much of the theory in this regard.
Finally, the methods used to collect and analyze the information will be presented.
These will include acknowledgement of the author's position as he ventured forth to
gather textual data and observations from various Antarctic conferences and workspaces. Since this is an effort to understand how certain ideas have been inscribed on
the Antarctic continent, the analysis of the data is undertaken through discourse
analysis.
1.1 Background on Bioprospecting and Antarctica
1.1.1 Bioprospecting in general
Bioprospecting, as a word, is a fairly recent invention. The term
“bioprospecting” is generally credited to Thomas Eisner, a chemical ecologist who
4
wrote an article in 1989 entitled “Prospecting for nature’s chemical riches” (Eisner
1989). This article came quickly on the heels of the invention of the term
"biodiversity," which is generally cited as appearing in first common usage in the mid1980s. The "National Forum on Biological Diversity" was one of the first arenas to
make recorded and sustained use of the term "biodiversity". The conference took place
in September 1986 under the patronage of the National Academy of Science and the
Smithsonian Institute in Washington DC. In its initial usage, there was value placed on
biodiversity. This value could be expressed in moral terms, but has also been
expressed in monetary terms. Areas "rich" in biodiversity tended to have many life
forms with differing adaptations to their surroundings. The biological value of these
organisms was high because it meant that in the event of a catastrophe or
environmental shift, some life forms might have adaptations that might allow them to
survive the transition. Eisner's vision for bioprospecting was an activity that could
benefit poorer countries that are rich in biodiversity by commodifying the value of that
biodiversity. The richer states that were better-equipped and desirous to exploit the
“biological resources” of the poorer countries were thereby obliged to compensate the
people who managed the habitats. This solidified the notion of biodiversity having
financial value.
Although bioprospecting has been seen as simply a continuation of human
beings' propensity to modify the natural world for their own purposes, in truth it is a
novel activity. Philip Reed cites examples of plant and animal genetic selection
through breeding 10,000 years ago as the first examples of bioprospecting (Reed
5
2004). His conclusion ignores the fact that the term was only developed once genetic
and chemical technology had advanced to the point of being able to exploit biota at an
explicitly molecular level. The term was specifically called forth by a chemical
ecologist with the know-how to patent chemical processes and not by a farmer
performing selective breeding. Bioprospecting is centered on biological and chemical
knowledge at the molecular level. Julia Jabour-Green and Dianne Nichol note that
bioprospecting combines four main activities: the collection of samples, the isolation
of compounds from those samples, the screening of those compounds for useful
properties, and the development of a commercial product synthesized on the basis of
that compound (Jabour-Green and Nicol 2003). The process is illustrated further in
Figure 1. It is important to note that not all of the steps involved in the process known
as bioprospecting are conducted in the same place or necessarily by the same people.
The original biota is seen as a resource from which chemical compounds may be
derived from which genetic information may be sequenced. While a biotechnology
company may wish to hold the discovery of a biota back as a proprietary secret to
study it in an exclusive manner, the real profits are derived from patenting discoveries
based upon aspects of the biota. The final step of bioprospecting involves the
formation of intellectual property rights (IPR) based upon scientific research,
generally codified in the form of a patent. Researchers cannot simply patent a life form
that has been found or an obvious scientific process that can be observed from it. A
patent-seeker must subsequently alter the organism or process from its natural state in
order to invent something based upon it (Strathern 2001). Whereas in most cases
6
property rights are designed to address scarcity, intellectual knowledge is a resource
that becomes scarcer through the creation of private property rights. Through the
process of patenting an idea, making the implementation of the knowledge contained
therein an exclusive product, intellectual property takes knowledge out of the
community and makes it unavailable except when permission has been granted to use
it.
Bioprospecting activity has generated political debate and legislation on both
national and international scales. One of the most well-known examples of
bioprospecting activity in the United States has been the Diversa Corporation's
agreement with the National Park Service over the use of microorganisms found
7
within the hot springs of Yellowstone National Park (Doremus 1999). At the
international scale, the idea of bioprospecting rapidly generated attempts at
international agreements on how to manage the activity when individuals or
organizations from one country collect biological resources from another country. One
end result of this valuing of biodiversity through bioprospecting was the negotiation of
the United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity (or CBD). This was signed by
150 countries in Rio de Janeiro at the Earth Summit which took place there in 1992.
One of the notable countries that did not adopt this agreement was the United States.
The CBD prohibits the exploitation of a country’s biological resources without a
benefit-sharing plan having been negotiated first. In the text of the CBD, the member
nations put forth their concern for the protection of biodiversity and sustainable use of
natural resources. A key policy element that came out of the CBD was the promise to
attempt fair and equitable sharing of benefits derived from the use of biological
resources, specifically calling for biotechnology companies to share the benefits
accrued by its research of a country’s biological resources with that country. The
TRIPS agreement was made in 1993 during the Uruguay round of the General
Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT). The World Trade Organization (WTO)
members present for the negotiation pledged to provide patent protection in all fields
of technology, allowing for greater internationalization of the research and
development industry.
8
1.1.2 The practice of bioprospecting in Antarctica
Antarctica presents an attractive environment for those seeking novel biotic
compounds because of its extremely harsh environment and the fact that there is a
high potential for encountering previously unknown organisms. Antarctica is an ideal
area for the first stage of bioprospecting (collection) because of the preponderance of
previously unknown organisms with adaptations to extreme environments
(extremophiles), which are highly in demand within the bioprospecting market (Hoyle
1998). Antarctica’s unique climate means that virtually every organism on the
continent has a genetic or biochemical adaptation to the extreme environment, making
it a target-rich environment for bioprospectors. The adaptations that are sought after
within Antarctica are adaptations to the cold. This includes attributes found in both
psychrophilic organisms (organisms that love/ thrive in cold environments) and
psychrotolerant organisms (organisms that have optimal growth rates at higher
temperatures, but can tolerate colder environments). For example, there is interest in
an alkali-tolerant yeast Candida antarctica found in Lake Vanda, as well as the
antifreeze glycoproteins produced by various fish in Antarctic waters (Dalton 2004;
Stix 2004; Johnston and Lohan 2005). The fact that there are areas within Antarctica
that have not been fully explored with biota as yet uncatalogued by science is another
attractive feature because it represents a frontier of biological science with potential
adaptations about which researchers may be able to make exclusive discoveries.
Antarctica may become a more valuable resource because varieties of bacteria that
9
have been located in the Antarctic ice have been found to be revivable after being
frozen for extremely long periods (Christner, Mosley-Thompson et al. 2001; 2003).
The glacial masses in Antarctica might therefore hold valuable biological resources
that have yet to be fully exploited.
Aside from the potential that Antarctica holds as a producer of psychrophilic
and psychrotolerant organisms, there is also the reality that various harvestings of
biota from Antarctica have already led to patents based upon their genetic and
chemical compositions. The first known patent based on an Antarctic biota may have
come as early as 19881. This United States patent # US4720458 was developed for a
heat sensitive bacterial alkaline phosphatase by inventors Kobori Hiromi of Japan and
Sizuya Hiroaki of the United States. It was derived from the Antarctic Bacterium HK47. Forty-two additional patents were filed between 1988 and 2003 based upon
properties of certain Antarctic biota (Johnston and Lohan 2005). There have also been
a few partnerships between industries and university scientists which went
unquestioned by Antarctic governance structures at the time. These included an
agreement between the Australian Antarctic Cooperative Research Centre (Antarctic
CRC) and the pharmaceutical company Cerylid Biosciences. The two institutions had
an agreement from 1995 to 2002 that allowed the company to screen the Antarctic
CRC's Antarctic soil samples for isolates that could prove useful (Johnston and Lohan
2005). The rest of the patents filed are mostly by individual scientists in collaboration
with other large biotechnology or pharmaceutical companies.
1
This is the earliest known patent based on an Antarctic biota that I am aware of, but there is an online
project to discover and catalogue all commercial applications of Antarctic biota which may change this
assessment: http://www.bioprospector.org/bioprospector/antarctica/home.action
10
1.1.3 How Antarctic bioprospecting has been addressed
In 1998 scientist Dr. David Walton became uneasy (Walton 2009). A number
of his colleagues at the British Antarctic Survey (BAS) were to be involved, between
1999 and 2001, in a European biotechnology initiative called the Micromat project,
which would seek to explore the microbial mats in several Antarctic lakes for biota
and test them for potential useful properties. This project was a collaboration between
several universities, biotechnology firms, and the BAS. The scientific goals of the
project were acceptable to Dr. Walton, but it was the issue of what happened to the
samples after the initial analysis that caused him concern. Those samples would
become the property of the private companies which had contributed to Micromat,
which would hold them and the data derived from them with limited access granted
only to the partners within the Micromat project. These types of agreements between
private industrial groups, universities, and governments had grown to be
commonplace around the world, and had even been applied to other research projects
in the Antarctic, but this was the first time that Dr. Walton had heard about it and he
worried that this would hamper the free exchange of information that scientists who
work in the region had come to expect. There were no standing rules or even
discussions regarding bioprospecting within the ATS.
Since 1959, the Antarctic Treaty has been the main governance document for
Antarctica. The treaty has been granted legitimacy by political institutions around the
world. The Antarctic Treaty and the ATS that has grown out of it are largely seen as a
11
supra-state organization composed of a number of states that send representatives to
vote on various resolutions to manage the continent through consensus. The fifty-yearold treaty upon which the ATS is based contains a number of articles that not only
proclaim this international status but set out particular goals regarding cooperation and
scientific knowledge. Articles Two and Three of the Antarctic Treaty declare that
scientific research is the primary activity through which humans may interact with the
continent (Treaty 1959). This primacy of science makes Antarctica one of the few
areas of the world where scientific institutions have an explicit influential standing in
the governing process (Caflisch 1992). The parties of the ATS rely on the Scientific
Committee on Antarctic Research (SCAR) for their scientific expertise, and are also
influenced by their political interests. SCAR is a non-governmental organization that
is comprised of scientists and scientific institutions that focuses its efforts on the
Antarctic.
Concerns about intellectual property rights (IPRs) eroding the free exchange of
ideas that allows for scientific advancement have been raised in a number of different
places around the world, but the codification of free data exchange within the
Antarctic Treaty presented a particular hurdle. Dr. Walton's concerns about the
potential for this occurrence happening in Antarctica were more actionable because
the text of the third article of the Antarctic Treaty declares that "scientific observations
and results from Antarctica shall be exchanged and made freely available" (Treaty
1959, Art. III, 1, c). Obstructing the free exchange of scientific information gleaned
from Antarctic research runs counter to the main document that governs the area. Dr.
12
Walton took a number of actions to investigate how this was being addressed. He
started within his own government (the United Kingdom), where his concerns were
initially dismissed. The National Science Research Office and the Foreign &
Commonwealth Office approved of becoming scientifically competitive with the
Australians, who were engaged in developing biotechnology based on Antarctic krill.
He then brought his concerns to SCAR through its Working Group on Biology and the
Group of Specialists on Environmental Affairs and Conservation (GOSEAC) meetings
in 1998. This was where he was able to get the most action taken, as he was both an
influential member of SCAR (Thiede 2006) and the chairman of GOSEAC at the time.
GOSEAC's mission was to provide advice to the ATS2. At the 1998 SCAR meeting,
the issue was discussed in the Working Group on Biology and recommendation SCAR
XXV - 2 was drafted that called for the national representatives that comprised the
Antarctic Treaty System to become aware of the commercial use of biological
information gathered from Antarctica, the possible detrimental effects on the Antarctic
environment, and the fact that there was no clear legislation in the ATS to manage
such an activity. This recommendation would stand as SCAR's primary
recommendation to states participating in the ATS for ten years.
The issue of bioprospecting was mentioned afterwards at the 1999 Antarctic
Treaty Consultative Meeting (ATCM) as a concern brought up by SCAR, but no
action was taken by the parties to the Antarctic Treaty then or at the next ATCM in
2
In 1998, the ATS had no centralized secretariat and was comprised of meetings every two years by the
countries that were signatories to the Antarctic Treaty. These meetings are called Antarctic Treaty
Consultative Meetings (ATCMs). Currently, meetings are held once a year and there exists a secretariat
to the Treaty headquartered in Argentina and a website (http://www.ats.aq/index_e.htm).
13
2001. Dr. Walton continued to push for a clearer understanding of how bioprospecting
should be managed in Antarctica, particularly within SCAR. He emphasized the utility
of using the CBD as a model for managing bioprospecting activity in the Antarctic,
but there were difficulties in its application to the region. This is referenced in the
Recommendation SCAR 25-2, which recognizes that international legislation
regarding Antarctic bioprospecting is based in turn upon sovereign rights that are not
applicable south of the Antarctic Circle. Part of what the CBD regulates is the fair
compensation of sovereign countries when biological resources are extracted from
them. Article Four of the CBD stipulates that the scope of a state's ability to regulate
its biological resources is limited to the territory over which it has jurisdiction (CBD
1992). This situation presents problems for the Antarctic region because territorial
jurisdiction is frozen. Article Four of the Antarctic Treaty states that no one "claim to
territorial sovereignty" in Antarctica is privileged above others in the region (Treaty
1959). Territory is therefore a flexible idea within this governance system, which has
preserved situations which would otherwise be untenable in the rest of the world. For
example, the United Kingdom, Chile, and Argentina all claim overlapping portions of
Antarctica, but have not undertaken any military action to enforce their claims in the
last fifty years (see figure 2). As a result of this situation, international agreements that
have already been formed in regards to bioprospecting and resulting IPR, such as the
CBD and TRIPS, are not easily transferable to the region.
Despite these difficulties, Dr. Walton still attempted to convince SCAR at its
July 2000 meeting to make a recommendation that the ATS consult with the
14
secretariat for the CBD in order to find out how that convention might apply to
Antarctica, as it is an area governed very differently than the rest of the world. His
proposed alterations to the language of the SCAR bioprospecting recommendation
were mirrored in the working group on biology's proposed recommendation, but were
passed over in favor of the more neutral recommendation of the previous meeting.
Consultation with the CBD was again suggested at the 2002 SCAR meeting and
discussed at the 2002 GOSEAC meeting. At the GOSEAC meeting the fact that the
CBD does not apply to areas beyond national sovereignty was brought up as a key
point in relation to the Antarctic Treaty's Article Four. The working group on biology
again proposed a recommendation that was more strongly-worded than its
15
predecessor, but it was again ignored in favor of the established recommendation from
1998. This proposal of cooperation between the CBD and ATS was developed into a
SCAR working paper for the 2002 ATCM, but was eventually withdrawn due to its
"political" nature which some felt strayed from their idealized role of SCAR as an
objective advisor to the ATS3. While that paper was withdrawn, another similar paper
was put forth by the United Kingdom4 and was praised by the ATS's Committee on
Environmental Protection (CEP) for its forward-thinking nature. The paper ended up
stressing three questions that bioprospecting in Antarctica raises:
1)
Is there a conflict between freedom of access to scientific
information and confidential information regarding commercial
products?
2)
Whether, and if so how, bioprospecting activity should be affected
by regulation?
3)
What regulations of revenues should be required?
The issues brought up still begin with concerns about the impact on Antarctic science,
and furthermore instill the idea of regulating the activity of bioprospecting. The text of
the working paper even suggests using the CBD as a model for regulation (United
Kingdom 2002). The paper also extols the ATS as having a long history of regulating
activities before they had matured into commercial realities, and encourages the group
3
Part of what made the proposal of adopting principles of the CBD within the ATS difficult was the
fact that the United States was a major country involved in the ATS which had not ratified the CBD. It
has also been posited that the ATS looks with disfavor on proposals which dilute its authority in
Antarctica.
4
Interestingly, this was also Dr. Walton's home government and it may be inferred that he was
influential in advancing it.
16
to do the same with the issue of bioprospecting. The ATS took no action on the subject
during the 2002 ATCM, but the subject was now public and ripe for discussion.
After 2002 and Dr. Walton's suggestion of courting the CBD for ideas on how
to manage bioprospecting within Antarctica, more groups started examining the issue.
The International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) had mentioned the
threat of the commercialization of science in the 1999 ATCM meeting5, but SCAR
was the primary group addressing the issue until 2002. In April of 2003, a
"Bioprospecting in Antarctica" workshop was convened by the Antarctica Policy Unit
of the New Zealand Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade, Antarctica New Zealand,
and Gateway Antarctica at the University of Canterbury. This workshop fleshed out
more of the issues associated with bioprospecting within Antarctica.
One previously unconsidered issue that arose in this workshop was the view of
Antarctica as a type of commons and that this commons was threatened by the
encroachment of commercial activity. The panel on environment, ethics, and equity at
the "Bioprospecting in Antarctica" workshop, chaired by Julia Jabour, in its
conclusions posed whether "wilderness or other values in Antarctica [are]
compromised by bioprospecting" and "Whether criteria such as benefit to humanity, or
priority for medical research etc., could be established" (New Zealand 2003). Alistair
Graham, in his contribution to the conference proceedings, wondered aloud if these
biological resources were even capable of being owned (Graham 2005). The idea of
Antarctica as a common space is not one commonly articulated within the ATS, but it
5
Presumably, the IUCN was able to speak knowledgably about the subject because they were party to
the discussions at the GOSEAC meeting.
17
is an impression that exists very palpably outside of it. Environmental groups had
particularly grasped onto the concept, giving it expression as "World Park Antarctica."
One of the features of Antarctica that reinforces this idea is that there is no privately
held land across the entire continent. Article Seven of the Antarctic Treaty states that
all stations are subject to the inspection of other contracting parties of the treaty
(Treaty 1959). The right for an owner to exclude or deny access associated with
private ownership is absent here. Certain activities are encouraged (scientific) and
discouraged (military, nuclear) within Antarctica through the treaty, but there are no
restrictions as to who may access the continent. The implication of all of these features
combined is that rules and regulations that may work to regulate activities elsewhere
in the world will not likely succeed within Antarctica without modifications that take
into account how its sparse population and the relationship between humans and that
extreme environment are managed.
As Antarctic bioprospecting was already taking place within Antarctica,
questions of how it worked without legislation and how much of it was going on
started to be asked. Investigations into how bioprospecting was functioning within
Antarctica started to be commissioned. Norway and the United Kingdom co-sponsored
a United Nations Environmental Programme (UNEP) report on bioprospecting. Their
first results were presented at the June 2003 ATCM in the information paper "The
International Regime for Bioprospecting: Existing Policies and Emerging Issues for
Antarctica" (Lohan and Johnston 2003). The research team at the UNEP subsequently
continued to produce further reports on bioprospecting in Antarctica which have
18
served as a basis of knowledge for most of the bioprospecting activities taking place
there (UNEP 2004; Lohan and Johnston 2005; Johnston, Laird et al. 2006). These
reports started to catalogue patents based on Antarctic biota and investigate
partnerships between states, industry, and academia that allowed for all four steps of
bioprospecting to occur. Popular news articles also began to pick up the topic (Kirby
2004; Sample 2004). These articles focus on the potential for conflict over the profits
or benefit-sharing schemes.
Issues of bioprospecting were debated by CEP members at the June 2003
ATCM in Madrid. In addition to the formal submissions of the information papers that
represented the efforts of the earlier "Bioprospecting in Antarctica" Workshop and the
commissioned report from the UNEP, there was an unofficial paper from Chile that
called for the application of the precautionary principle in regards to Antarctic
bioprospecting. The general agreement of the CEP was that the environmental impact
of bioprospecting activities had been negligible so far and that the Environmental
Impact Assessment procedures that were required by the Environmental Protocol in
Annex I could be used to assess and manage any further impacts to the environment
by Antarctic bioprospectors harvesting samples. During the discussion, representatives
from SCAR reiterated the potential conflict between the freedom of scientific
information and the requirements of confidentiality imposed by commercial
developments. The CEP discussion on bioprospecting concluded by admitting that the
activity raised additional political and legal issues that should probably be raised at a
19
future ATCM outside of the confines of the CEP. This was too broad an issue for the
CEP to handle on its own.
The question of how to handle bioprospecting in Antarctica was not just being
asked by those within SCAR and the ATS or by academic observers who stood
outside of it, but also by another sizable international treaty system, the CBD. During
the Seventh meeting of the CBD treaty countries in February of 2004, the issue of
Antarctic bioprospecting was brought up in the context of access and benefit-sharing.
The CBD invited the ATS to share with the CBD some of its own ideas of how to
manage access and benefit-sharing to its biological resources (CBD 2004). While this
may have been a fairly innocuous act, it may also be interpreted as a kind of pressure
for the ATS parties to define what it meant to conduct bioprospecting activities within
Antarctica or to have those terms dictated to them by the outside. The following June,
the ATCM not only discussed bioprospecting in the CEP, but made it a major agenda
item for the legal and institutional working group that exists within it6. Antarctic
bioprospecting has remained an agenda item at every subsequent ATCM.
While it has been a consistent agenda item for the ATCMs since 2004, there
have been few definitive actions taken on the issue. This is not to say that the ATS
parties have been completely inactive on the subject, just that most of the work has
been to fill in gaps in their knowledge of Antarctic bioprospecting, reifying that the
ATS is the appropriate forum to address bioprospecting issues in the region. The 2004
6
This may have been the result of the external pressure applied by the CBD or by the natural
progression of internal events as the CEP had planned to refer the legal and political issues to the rest of
the ATCM at their previous meeting. It may have been one, the other, or both of these factors which
led to the expanded discussion of bioprospecting by the ATS. The end result is the same and which
action provoked more discussion of bioprospecting doesn't really matter here.
20
ATCM saw little debate on the issue, just the reading of one paper and a call for more.
The 2005 ATCM contained three papers and a resolution emerged from the Working
Paper from New Zealand. Resolution 7 of that ATCM was adopted and declared that
ATS member states should call attention to their bioprospecting activities (New
Zealand 2005). In the intervening years, only a few countries attempted to comply
with this call for transparency. One development that did arise during this time was
that SCAR started to surreptitiously address bioprospecting at its July 2006 SCAR
Delegates meeting in Hobart, Australia though two actions (SCAR 2006). One was in
the form of SCAR recommendation 29-4 concerning the recording of confidential data
from commercial activities, which urged national committees to centralize information
about all commercial activities such as bioprospecting. The second was SCAR action
14, which circulated a draft of the SCAR "Code of Conduct for the Use of Animals for
Scientific Purposes in Antarctica." The code had not been updated since 1988 and was
revised to clarify what constituted "animals" as well as what constituted their ethical
use. While the main purpose of such a code is ostensibly to ensure that all fauna is
treated responsibly for its own welfare, it also stipulates that all research on fauna
must be reviewed by an ethical review committee for appropriate analysis. This would
effectively allow such a committee to be able to review all biological research projects
that involve experimentation, a procedure essential to the bioprospecting process. Dr.
Walton again appears here as a consultant to the SCAR Secretariat for the purposes of
circulating this new code7. During the 2007 ATCM, it was recognized that more work
7
A recent revised draft of this code has been posted as a document for consideration at the 2010 31st
SCAR Delegate meeting as a contribution from the Life sciences specialty group (Biology Working
21
was needed to be undertaken on this topic and an intercessional contact group was
formed to help keep Antarctic bioprospecting an issue that was exclusively managed
by the ATS parties as opposed to "other international forums." SCAR was tasked in
2008 with surveying the scientific community to discover how widespread the
phenomenon was, but they had very few responses to their inquiries. At the 2009
ATCM, a resolution was passed declaring that existing ATS bodies were the
appropriate framework within which the issues posed by bioprospecting could be dealt
with. No new legislation or rules were actually created, but it did clarify that the
environmental issues posed by bioprospecting fell under the purview of the 1991
Environmental Protocol or the Convention on the Conservation of Antarctic Marine
Living Resources (CCAMLR).
The lack of clear regulations within the ATS regarding intellectual property
rights in the region has made a number of biotechnology firms nervous about the
legitimacy of their claims to research conducted in Antarctica. This uncertainty has led
some firms to call for a regime which could establish such legitimacy (Johnston and
Lohan 2005). Because the effects of such exploitation on the Antarctic are unknown
and because bioprospecting has the potential to be an unregulated industry, the pursuit
of these extremophiles worries some Antarctic actors. For example, the Antarctic and
Southern Ocean Coalition (ASOC) (an environmental organization) started listing
bioprospecting as a concern after the first United Nations University report came out
in 2004. The 2005 United Nations University report on bioprospecting in Antarctica
Group successor): http://www.scar.org/researchgroups/lifescience/meetings/2010meeting/LSSSG10_Doc02_CodeAnimal2.pdf
22
cited the absence of clear property rules in the region as a restriction to further use
(Johnston and Lohan 2005). Future Antarctic bioprospecting regimes or legislation
could invalidate exclusive use rights or confidential information could cost a
biotechnology firm their significant investment in a quest to harvest new materials
from Antarctica. This potential scenario has disinclined most firms from participating
in arrangements such as Micromat. The current risks of paying for Antarctic research
outstrip the potential rewards, especially when new Antarctic biodiversity databases
can provide the same information without the expenses.
The summary of Antarctic bioprospecting history elucidated here can be said
to center around three central issues. The idea that this is a threat to biotic populations
has been discounted by both the CEP and the 2009 Resolution declaring that such
issues are addressed through pre-existing rules found in CCAMLR and the 1991
Environmental Protocol. Therefore, it will not be included as one of the three central
issues8. The first issue is that bioprospecting may pose a threat to Antarctic science.
This is usually expressed through a concern that the open and transparent scientific
process required by Article Three of the Antarctic Treaty may be compromised if a
scientist is contracted to work for a biotech company that requires confidentiality
about the research undertaken. This has also led to calls for scientists to police
themselves or distinguish corporate science from a more aloof and objective science.
The second central issue is a concern that bioprospecting represents an infringement
8
Environmental degradation still has the potential to become an issue. The IUCN warned the ATS
through a presentation to the ATCM in 2005 that bio-products based on marine living resources may
require significant biomass to process out the amount of desired product. Companies may elect to
gather large amounts of naturally-occurring samples from the Antarctic because this may result in a
lower cost than synthesizing samples.
23
on an Antarctic commons. If the continent is held as a common property for all
humankind, then any exploitation of that commons is either a violation of humanity's
resources or something that must be compensated for in a way that benefits Antarctica/
humanity. Finally, there is the potential that if bioprospecting is not regulated by the
ATS, then its very legitimacy and ability to govern the continent are called into
question. This can be seen in the actions taken by the ATS to define itself as the sole
governance body capable of making decisions about bioprospecting in Antarctica.
These ideas of science, property, and governance may seem quite independent
from each other as concerns about Antarctic bioprospecting, but they are all grounded
by their practitioners needs to engrave these ideas onto the continent through acts of
territoriality. Territory is the universal alembic that these ideas must pass through if
they are to become "real" instead of just virtual possibilities about Antarctica.
Antarctica is the place upon which these ideas are enacted. The next section will
explain some of the theory behind the ideas of territory and territoriality that will form
the basis of how these issues of Antarctic bioprospecting are dealt with throughout the
rest of this dissertation.
24
1.2 Theory
1.2.1 Modernism and Postmodernism
The two world-views that are present throughout this dissertation are
modernism and postmodernism. People and groups adhere to the core principles
contained within each philosophy whenever they frame ideas such as science,
property, and governance. As a result, it becomes important to understand what each
philosophy stands for before undertaking an investigation of these ideas.
Modernity is about ordering things into categories, frequently differentiating
parts of a whole from each other. In describing modernity, David Clarke states that
"The basic idea is that modernity witnessed the separation of life into distinct spheres
that had previously been inseparable (i.e. unified), allowing for their rational
organization, monitoring, and surveillance" (Clarke 2006, p.108). More than just
separation, though, there is the attachment of value and justice to this process. The
project of modernity is one of purification, according to Bruno Latour (Latour 1993).
Distilling objects and ideas down to their essence provides a better way to understand
them through modern approaches. Through the purification process, the purified
element is kept and the rest of the material that comprised the original is discarded as
either irrelevant or undesirable. Modernity is often simplified into a separation of two
elements, with one being more valued than the other. Modernity in the natural sciences
generally separates the humans conducting the observations from the rest of the
25
environment. Modernity applied to politics involves the separation of us (insiders)
from them (outsiders). There is an inherent positive value to being us (or human)
rather than them (or nonhuman)9. The political distinction is typically centered on
issues of European colonial control of other regions of the world and the justification
for such action. Even after the era of European colonialism, ideas of development
through "modernization theory" were based upon taking apart the historical
components that defined European state development and projecting them onto other
countries as the definitive way to become better states.
Postmodern interpretations of the world largely spring from these critiques of
the modernist model. These critiques largely came to the forefront during the 1980s in
response to ill-fitting applications of modernist thought to a world that was rapidly
expanding and becoming more accessible for a greater number of people. An
expansion of the awareness of how interconnected the world had become through the
process known as globalization prompted scholars to engage with perspectives that
they had not yet encountered in their specialization. Latour describes a "proliferation
of hybrids" to illustrate the situation of how the neat categories that have been created
to contain and explain phenomena encountered (and codify into newspaper sections)
can be challenged by something as small as a virus:
"Headings like Economy, Politics, Science, Books, Culture, Religion, and
Local Events remain in place as if there were nothing odd going on. The
smallest AIDS virus takes you from sex to the unconscious, then to Africa,
9
Although this system can also be argued the other way, one is still working within the system to value
the one over the other.
26
tissue cultures, DNA and San Francisco, but the analysts, thinkers, journalists
and decision-makers will slice the delicate network traced by the virus for you
into tidy compartments where you will find only science, only economy, only
social phenomena, only local news, only sentiment, only sex." (Latour 1993,
p.2)
Given the number of aspects of life that are touched upon by the subjects of research,
the amount of study and explanation needed to explore each subject is daunting.
Clarke admits that postmodernity is inherently confusing because of this hybridization
(Clarke 2006). Above all else, postmodernity rejects the modernist narrative of
progress derived from the enlightenment that an unending process of purification
makes human society better (Luke 2007). Postmodernists seek instead to amplify the
voices of those people and perspectives that have been under-represented or
marginalized within modernity. While postmodern researchers recognize the need to
categorize and simplify, acknowledgement of the process of doing so is important to
them. Categories are not depicted as real but rather as social constructions erected in a
particular case to explain a phenomena.
Modernism and postmodernism are regularly expressed through discourse, but
they are also inscribed upon the world that we live in through practices of territoriality.
Any analysis of how modern or postmodern thought specifically affect the
development of methods to control the act of bioprospecting within Antarctica must
necessarily study how those ideas are both expressed and given form in the Antarctic
27
territory. Understanding how territory and territoriality function is therefore important
before proceeding any further.
1.2.2 Territoriality
Territory is one of the most basic concepts within the field of political
geography. Recent debates about what constitutes political geography confirms
territory to be a central concept (Agnew 2003; Cox 2003; Cox and Low 2003) and
Robert Sack's views on territoriality are recognized as seminal by political
geographers (Agnew, Paasi et al. 2000; Delaney 2005). Human territoriality is
separate from the biological notion of inherent territorial behavior in animals because
it is socially constructed. Sack defines territoriality as "a human strategy to affect,
influence, and control" (Sack 1986, p.2). Territoriality is a way to affect the political
relations that create territory. As a strategy to control/influence human behavior, this is
a concept that is a close cousin to Michel Foucault's idea of "governmentality." Both
of these concepts understand that there is a close connection between knowledge and
power, with a particular acknowledgement of geographic knowledge's influence on
power. Territoriality differs from governmentality in that governmentality is generally
focused on a specific population to be controlled and its main technical instruments of
control are through apparatuses of security (Foucault 2007) whereas the tendencies of
territoriality are focused on defining a geographic area and are addressed to the
broader population which seeks to engage with that area. Sack provides a list of ten
28
elemental tendencies of human territoriality based on social relationships and actions
(see figure 3). The tendencies are reflections of the territorial strategies employed
through territoriality to affect human relations in a given territorial area. These
tendencies may take place concurrently and form a "combination." Sack provides 14
examples of these combinations (Sack 1986, pp.34-40), of which this dissertation will
focus on two types: hierarchical bureaucracies and territorial definitions of social
relations.
29
1.2.3 Territoriality: hierarchical bureaucracy
Hierarchical bureaucracies employ all ten tendencies, to one degree or another,
to form institutions organized around the control of space, such as the territoriallybased state. The state is defined generally as an area with well-defined boundaries
governed by institutions given legitimacy by the people who live within it (Dear
2000). For a number of political geographers, the state remains the focus of research in
the field or the underlying geopolitical backdrop upon which other political actions
can play out (Cox 2003; Flint 2003; Low 2003). This combination of territoriality
tendencies includes not only the 192 world states that have been officially sanctioned
through the United Nations, but also institutional hierarchies that are constructed
through the cooperation of multiple states such as the United Nations itself or the
Antarctic Treaty System.
Even though the state (as a hierarchical bureaucracy) is the most popularly
used combination of territoriality tendencies for analysis, there are some problems
associated with its application. As stable as some of these institutions seem, Sack also
warns that the control applied by hierarchical bureaucracies can backfire if the social
relations are oppressive or seemingly without meaning or relevance. This can lead to
the territoriality combination of secession in which resistance to the dominating
aspects of the state leads to the creation of an alternative territorial form that is set up
in opposition to the original hierarchical bureaucracy (Sack 1986, p.40). The other
danger posed by the hierarchical bureaucracy combination is that it may be perceived
30
as the exclusive mode that can exert territoriality, even though Sack himself posits
over a dozen different ways to see territoriality exerted. John Agnew has warned
against falling into the “territorial trap”, part of which is thinking of the state as the
exclusive container of territorial power (Agnew 1994). Finally, there is the privileging
of dominating forms of power within this model. John Allen problematizes the unitary
conception of power in his book Lost Geographies of Power by splitting power into
two general categories ("power over" versus "power to") and naming several different
types of power that can operate in a social-spatial context (authority, coercion,
manipulation, seduction, and domination) (Allen 2003). The power relations expressed
through hierarchical systems such as states are usually expressed in terms of "power
over" and domination, which does not leave much room to account for agency or
creativity that does not emanate from the leadership at the top of the hierarchy.
The Antarctic Treaty and the subsequent ATS are often viewed as the primary
arbiters and legitimate enactors of territoriality in the framings of ideas of Antarctic
science, property, and governance. Through this territorial perspective, the role of
Antarctic science is to be advisors to the central governing body (the ATS) through
bureaucratic organizations like SCAR. SCAR is supposed to be apolitical from this
perspective, offering suggestions gleaned from a purely scientific engagement with
Antarctica and the observations and insights gained from that relationship. Property
rights are often perceived as absent because the Antarctic Treaty and ATS do not
explicitly state anything about them, giving rise to the notion that they govern a global
commons space that must either be protected from the encroachment of private
31
property or permit it through explicit regulation. Finally, the ATS is regularly regarded
as the only form of governance that the Antarctic has. Member states participate
through a consensus voting procedure during ATCM, but organizations such as SCAR
or environmental groups are relegated to advisory positions in this governance
framework.
In addition to the supra-state ATS territorial identity, other state-centered
territorial conceptions are still applied to Antarctica. Although Article Four prevents
Antarctica from being claimed as sovereign space, states are still able to practice
territoriality within the region. Most states practice territoriality by supporting
scientific activities on the continent, and a few others supplement this strategy with
other displays such as dispatching families of their citizens to the Antarctic in
“colonies” (Child 1988). In taking action against “Toothfish Pirates,” Australia sent an
armed ship to patrol “its” Antarctic waters in 2004 (Ellison, Macdonald et al. 2004)
and has utilized cartographic information on the underwater Antarctic continental
shelf to emphasize its dominance in the region (Dodds 2010). Territoriality is used to
promote the relative significance of groups within Antarctica, such as the United
States maintaining a station at the South Pole, the symbolic “center” of the continent.
Most social scientists have used modernist approaches that incorporate
hierarchical bureaucratic territorial engagement when engaging Antarctica, and
subsequently with the issue of bioprospecting on and around the continent. The only
article in Political Geography to focus on Antarctica is a comment by M. Manzoni and
P. Pagnini from 1996, which deems Antarctica "a symbolic territory" with little to
32
offer political geographers (Manzoni and Pagnini 1996). The lion’s share of political
geographic writing on Antarctica since Manzoni and Pagnini has come from Klaus
Dodds, who has approached Antarctica from the perspective of critical geopolitics
(1997a; Dodds 1997b; 1998; 2000). While his work, following in the tradition of
critical geopolitics, has shed light upon the representations of Antarctica from a
number of political perspectives, Dodds does have a tendency to frame analyses of
Antarctica in terms of state perspectives. For example, Dodds presents several
different geographical conceptions of Antarctica10 in chapter 2 of his book Geopolitics
in Antarctica, but then proceeds to periodize them and centers each of the subsequent
chapters around different state engagements with the continent11 (Dodds 1997b).
Dodds has also started to develop the idea of a brand of sovereignty based around the
Antarctic Treaty or "treaty sovereignty"12. This concentration on the impact of
geographical knowledge on state and supra-state policies towards Antarctica has
allowed great insights into how Antarctica functions, but has been limited in
interpreting how alternative conceptions of politics itself might be applied to
Antarctica.
This tendency to rely on hierarchical bureaucracies to impose territorial
tendencies extends to the literature on Antarctic bioprospecting. Most articles on the
subject, no matter which aforementioned issue of bioprospecting they take up, result in
10
These conceptions are (along with their periodizations): Antarctica as a partially filled space (190040), Antarctica and the Cold War (1945-60), Antarctica as a place for science (1960s), Antarctica as a
place of resource potential (1970s-80s), and Antarctica and the global environmental challenge (1990s).
11
Dodds focuses on "Southern Oceanic Rim States" because of their physical proximity to the
continent. These states (with their respective chapters in the book) are: Argentina (Ch. 3), Australia (Ch.
4), Chile (Ch. 5), India (Ch. 6), New Zealand (Ch. 7), and South Africa (Ch. 8).
12
Klaus Dodds articulated the idea of "treaty sovereignty" during his 2010 Association of American
Geographers meeting presentation and intimated that he might further articulate it in further articles.
33
policy suggestions for the Antarctic Treaty or its member states. In regards to the issue
of bioprospecting threatening the freedom of scientific information, Alan Hemmings
suggests that moral hazard is risked without a clear institutional separation of
scientists as actors from scientists as advisors (Hemmings 2010). Julia Jabour and
Diane Nicol suggest that Antarctica is a commons that needs to have bioprospecting
regulated within it (Jabour-Green and Nicol 2003). The stability of Antarctic
governance can similarly be assured, according to Melissa Weber, if the ATS would
adopt accreditation as a bioprospecting regulatory option (Weber 2006). The collective
conclusions of the 2003 Workshop on Antarctic Bioprospecting were submitted to the
ATCM with the hopes of engendering discussion there. All of these approaches seek
to influence the course of events by appealing to the bureaucracy of the ATS in the
hopes that their suggestions will be adopted and then imposed by the ATS. Changes to
the power structure are implemented from the top-down of a perceived Antarctic
hierarchy in this model.
While this dissertation does not aim to denigrate the efforts of these scholars to
resolve issues of bioprospecting through this approach to Antarctic territoriality, there
do exist weaknesses to an over-commitment to this approach. The first is that this
approach may be based on assumptions of how these ideas are configured. In
approaching the issue through techniques of hierarchical bureaucracy, a scholar may
not question the fundamental efficiencies of the bureaucracy itself and take the
institution for granted. As time moves forward, institutions must adapt to new
conditions and new configurations through adopting new values and perspectives. The
34
hierarchical bureaucracy territoriality combination in many ways relies on the state (as
well as supra-state organizations that are comprised of states) as a container of power,
an assumption that has been challenged (Agnew 1994). Secondly, an over-reliance on
this approach may overlook solutions or perspectives that are engendered outside of
state regulations or hierarchical bureaucracies. As Abraham Maslow has said, "It is
tempting, if the only tool you have is a hammer, to treat everything as if it were a nail"
(Maslow 1966, p.15). It may be more effective to expand the toolbox of territoriality
in regards to Antarctica to include combinations of territoriality conceptions that do
not center upon state or supra-state hierarchical bureaucracies in order to finesse a
solution to the issues that have arisen from bioprospecting in Antarctica.
1.2.4 Territoriality: the creation of geographical imaginaries
Sack provides thirteen other combinations of territorial tendencies beyond
hierarchy and bureaucracy, but it is his "territorial definition of social relations"
combination of territorial tendencies that is most closely tied to what postmodern
scholars have elsewhere have examined as the creation of "geographical imaginaries."
In the "territorial definition of social relations," territories are used to define, enforce,
and mold groups in a way that is removed from people or populations. The way that
the space is socially articulated dictates the application of particular rules or
expectations rather than the standing of an individual within a social group. The
territorial tendencies of classification, enforcement, impersonal relations, and molding
35
are used to form an underlying geographic reality which shapes social interactions
within the territory. Various authors have used this same concept, but done so with
different terms such as "geographical imaginaries," "territorial imaginaries,"
"geopolitical imaginaries," "geopolitical traditions," and "imagined geographies." The
term "geographical imaginary" is the most commonly used phrase to describe this
application of territoriality. An acknowledged geographical imaginary shapes the
social groups within the given territory by setting the terms and categories allowable
within the scope of the territory. The social construction of territorial identities
through geographical imaginaries has been a growing topic in the social sciences. A
geographical imaginary is an active expression of a geopolitical culture. It is a way of
thinking and defining a given area. Importantly, geographical imaginaries exist in the
plural because there can be many different points of view from which a place may be
constructed. This differs somewhat from Sack's original conception of territorial
definitions of social relations as an exclusive tool of the "upper echelons of a
hierarchy" (Sack 1986, p.36), but later scholars such as Klaus Dodds and Joanne
Sharpe have shown that this type of territoriality can also be performed by nonofficial/non-government-sanctioned sources (Sharp 2000; Dodds 2003; Dittmer and
Dodds 2008). This allows for all sorts of groups to invent and enforce their own
territorialities. In Allen's conception of power, geographical imaginaries can allow for
empowerment or a "power to" create territory from the bottom-up as well as the topdown (Allen 2003). Geographical imaginaries can frame knowledge of a particular
36
area in ways that empower or disempower certain groups, particularly through
considering what to include, exclude, or rank within their discourse.
The idea for geographical imaginaries came about with post-structural and
critical analyses of power dynamics. Edward Said critiqued "western" understandings
and portrayals of the Arabic world and Palestinians in particular in his book
Orientalism (Said 1978). Benedict Anderson was concerned with the construction of
nationalities in a number of post-colonial states, showing that an invented national
consciousness is too big to be considered anything but an imagined community
(Anderson 1991). Peter von Ham has even expressed that current states must make
efforts to actively build their images in order to attain various goals (Ham 2001).
These ideas are crystallized, expressed, and etched onto the physical landscape by
various forms of discourse. Artistic expression is one way that ideas can be given form
in the world, as are subtle acts of spatial inclusion/exclusion that can be enacted
through hierarchical social relations imposed in specific areas.
Critical geopolitics can be employed to critique traditional understandings of
world politics put forward by international relations scholars, particularly the idea that
sovereign state governments should be the central focus of political and geographical
study. Critical geopolitics shifts from a singular focus on states to investigation of how
the world has been inscribed with particular dominant territorialities through the use of
power (Ó Tuathail 1996). In so doing, critical geopolitics incorporates the study of
governance, which recognizes that institutions outside the purview of formal
government may be involved with governing (Young 1997). Governance also
37
acknowledges that these groups are coordinated through networks and partnerships as
opposed to a top-down hierarchy (Painter 2000). Critical geopolitics includes
governance in its study of territoriality by recognizing that non-state people and
groups also strategize over, establish, and enforce claims over political space.
Attention to ways that critical geopolitics de-centers the state as the primary political
actor and broadens notions of political territoriality thus raises questions about how
multiple political actors’ perceptions of Antarctica as a geopolitical territory might
affect the outcomes of bioprospecting negotiations. Critical geopolitics recognizes the
potential for struggle between the various “geographical imaginings” of territories.
A wide variety of territorial conceptions of Antarctica are recognized when
considering the multiplicity of groups asserting themselves. Major geographical
representations include Antarctica considered as a place of common heritage, a world
park, or a natural laboratory (Dodds 1997b). The colloquial reference to Antarctica as
a natural laboratory was used by various scientific groups to reinforce the continent as
existing within the domain of scientists (Crary 1962). From this perspective, the ATS
only serves to manage activities on the continent to allow researchers to conduct
science there. These various identifiers have been used by different interest groups to
promote their agendas. Non-members of the Antarctic Treaty in the 1980s, such as
Malaysia, called for Antarctic to be considered a place of common heritage of the
world so that members would not exclusively benefit from any minerals regime
(Tepper and Haward 2005). The world park identity was pressed by non-governmental
organizations, such as Greenpeace and ASOC, interested in the conservation of
38
Antarctica’s environment (Dalziell and Goldsworthy 1994). Greenpeace even
established a scientific research station on the continent (Clark 1994). Both of these
conceptions regard Antarctica as a commons, either as filled with resources to be
equitably exploited for the world or to be held apart from exploitation altogether.
Common heritage narratives have even been used to challenge the idea of states as the
only eligible voting members of the ATS, as Greenpeace once applied for consultative
status within the organization. This status was denied, but Greenpeace had made its
presence felt through the boldness of its suggestion. Each of these narratives illustrates
a geographical imaginary that is not based on a form of state territoriality, but is rather
based on its own legitimacy. One of the other points to be made about these
territorialities is that they co-exist and overlap within Antarctica.
Scholars have recently started to open up to the idea of multiple geographical
imaginaries of Antarctica, particularly through feminist and post-colonial studies of
the continent. Earlier work has suggested many perceptions of Antarctica (Kirby,
Stewart et al. 2001), but has done little to explore how they impact the conduct of
activities on the continent. Other works that have been critical of Antarctica have been
previously downplayed and isolated (Azraai 1987; Johnson 2005). Dodds has written a
tentative piece suggesting areas that might be further explored by post-colonial
scholars in Antarctica (Dodds 2006), but the real leaders in this field have been
Christy Collis and Dodd's student Kathryn Yusoff. Collis (with some help from
Quentin Stevens) has focused on Australia's continuing colonial ties to Antarctica
(Collis 2004; Collis and Stevens 2004; Collis and Stevens 2007). Yusoff has brought
39
scholarship to bear on the use of imagery to portray Antarctica in a number of
different ways (Yusoff 2005; Yusoff 2007). One recent issue of Signs: Journal of
Women in Culture & Society provided discussion of the gendered perspectives on the
continent (Collis 2009; Dodds 2009; Leane 2009; Rosner 2009) as did an issue of S&F
Online which also served to kick off a 2008 Barnard College conference called
"Gender on Ice" (Bloom 2008; Bloom, Glasberg et al. 2008; Glasberg 2008). The
masculine-feminine binary of Antarctica and its explorers is a rich vein of scholarship
to mine, but is not as useful when considering the alternative ideas of science,
property, and governance in the context of bioprospecting. This study might still be
classified as feminist, however, in its efforts to empower ways of seeing geographical
imaginaries from different perspectives with attention to their standpoints.
1.2.5 Comparing the two territorial approaches
The three standpoints from which bioprospecting in Antarctica are considered
in this dissertation should not be considered unitary or settled perspectives. The model
of disinterested scientists serving as advisors to policy rather than empowered
participants in creating territories and engaging in activities has been challenged by
scholarship in the field of science-policy studies. Scientists are therefore empowered
to effect how bioprospecting is addressed in Antarctica. Recent studies of property
reveal that models based on the inexorable slide of common property to private
property do not apply to all resources that property relations manage. Bioprospecting
40
in Antarctica becomes a more complex story when the different types of property
involved (biological resources and intellectual resources) are considered. Governance
in Antarctica may not lie entirely with the ATS when one considers the influence of
various other groups in affecting behavior on the continent. The outcome of how
bioprospecting is managed on the continent may have less to do with what regulations
are put in place by the ATS and more to do with what the configuration of interested
parties can agree upon. It is important to consider this second perspective of
geographical imaginaries of science, property, and governance in addition to the
territorialities employed by hierarchical bureaucracies if the most efficient solution to
this issue is to be determined.
These two framings of territoriality are essential to the rest of the dissertation.
Each of the following three chapters will explore how one idea (science, property, or
governance) has been expressed on the continent of Antarctica either through the
territorial configuration of hierarchical bureaucracies (states and the Antarctic Treaty)
or the territorial definitions of social relations (various geographical imaginaries). The
dominant narratives in the literature surrounding Antarctica, and Antarctic
bioprospecting in particular, derive most of their ideas of power and legitimacy
through hierarchical bureaucracies. Scientists are seen as outside advisors to statebased policy-making; the management of an Antarctic commons is left to the ATS, as
is the governance of the continent. But in examining the literature and discourse
surrounding each idea, possibilities for expansion and empowerment are also revealed
through alternative readings of science, property, and governance and connected to the
41
Antarctic through reconsidering the issues posed there by bioprospecting. This is not
to suggest that the dominant narratives are invalid, but rather through an imbricated
approach (Ettlinger 2009) suggest that understanding the different layers of the issues
can provide a richer understanding of how to approach the problem in practical terms.
1.3 Empirical Approach
1.3.1 Reflexive account of initial research approach
At the start of this research, I entered very much from the established
perspective that Antarctic bioprospecting was a problem to be solved, by regulation if
at all possible. The study was initially armed with a set of questions regarding the
interests of the various actors and regime analysis at the ready to try and understand
why the ATS, SCAR, and the other interested parties had made the choices that they
had. As the research progressed, these questions proved to be less and less useful.
Antarctic actors were very cautious when discussing bioprospecting, as the very terms
that they were using were burdened with many layers of meaning and interpretation.
The author was excluded from the central sites of ATS and SCAR governance where
ostensible discussion on bioprospecting was taking place as these were too high up in
the hierarchy for a graduate student researcher to stand in as a witness. As some of the
information that was originally thought to be solid fact (such as the idea that
bioprospecting could be considered a discrete activity taking place wholly in
42
Antarctica) melted away into vague ambiguities, the study reformed itself to adapt to
this world of shifting terms and laden meanings. To build a post-structuralist study on
a foundation that involves many socially constructed terms is to invite an unstable
world of multiple discourses.
The collapse of the ordered world that had been expected provided much
turmoil, but there were several personal aspects that kept me grounded. The first was
having experienced Antarctica as a non-scientific laborer. This allowed for nonscientist perspectives to be considered valid and empowered, even if they were not the
conventional approach to the continent that had been publicly touted. The second was
having a unique perspective into the motivation of scientists as patent-seekers through
the vicarious experience of having a family member with several biomedical patents to
her name. The conventional narratives of scientists as being either leading purely
academic and monastic lives or being opportunistic money-seekers were complicated
by personally knowing someone who was both a well-respected scientist and involved
in biotechnology. Holding on to these critical and complex portraits of place and
people, the task of collecting and organizing observations of Antarctic bioprospecting
discussions was undertaken with care and an appreciation for complexity.
The choice of data collection and methods of analysis was also shaped by the
contemporary nature of the issues involved in the study. As is evidenced by the
preceding history of Antarctic bioprospecting, this research has been taking place
while negotiations and ideas have been in flux. The contemporary and ever-changing
nature of the activity of bioprospecting as an issue not settled by the Antarctic Treaty
43
System made this a challenge to study. The research therefore adopted a number of
strategies associated with Grounded Theory: the simultaneous collection and analysis
of data, sampling to refine emerging theoretical ideas, and the integration of a
theoretical framework into the study (Charmaz 2000). Although the issue is very
contemporary, the history of bioprospecting and the terms involved were considered to
be very important and to serve as evidence of the various ideas and narratives that
developed around the ideas of science, property, and governance within Antarctica.
History provides an important context, as does the geography of Antarctica. Data was
therefore gathered about how ideas developed in general and particularly within the
region.
1.3.2 Data collection and analysis
The main methods of data collection were archival research and participant
observation. Archival resources such as bioprospecting publications, presentations,
and fliers were a critical data source because these are often the most public face of
the ideas on bioprospecting, in that the creators of them emit for mass consumption.
These textual sources identified some of the formal positions of the actors involved
and their goals, as well as the construction of discourses and story-lines for each line
of reasoning. These include papers submitted for SCAR meetings and ATCMs,
summary reports of those meetings, academic articles on the subject of Antarctic
bioprospecting, advertisements, and public displays. Participant observation at a
44
number of meetings provided a glimpse of how Antarctic issues such as
bioprospecting were framed in both formal and informal ways, particularly by
scientists and policy-makers. Since the object was to study how Antarctic
bioprospecting is negotiated, it was important to examine how arguments and terms
are constructed in the locations of Antarctic discussion and debate, particularly at
meetings that involved Antarctic scientists and policy-makers. The National Science
Foundation's Doctoral Dissertation Research Improvement Grant allowed for travel to
the 39th Antarctic Treaty Consultative Meeting in Edinburgh (June 12-23, 2006), the
29th SCAR meeting in Hobart, Australia (July 8-20, 2006), the first meeting of the
Association of Polar Early Career Scientists in Stockholm, Sweden (September 26-29,
2007), and the 30th SCAR meeting in St. Petersburg, Russia (July 8-11, 2008). In
addition to these funded trips, the Antarctic Treaty Summit in Washington, DC
(November 30 through December 3, 2009) was also attended to hear additional
individuals involved in the debate surrounding bioprospecting and to process their
rhetoric regarding the Antarctic Treaty as it is currently articulated by a number of
interested non-state parties.
At these meetings, presentations, press conferences, and other public events
that were attended, the researcher was allowed to interact with individuals involved in
Antarctic science and policy on several different levels. The formal level involved
listening to prepared speeches and lectures that subjects gave to attendees. More
informal encounters involved catching individuals in between engagements or for a
meal. The casual perspectives and off-hand remarks led to defining moments in this
45
research. Not having a set of pre-made questions made for greater flexibility than
structured interviews and allowed participants to explore the topics in their own ways
(Bigman 2001). This was important, since the choice of words and discourse was
essential to understanding how bioprospecting was framed by the actors involved.
Participants were also able to correct any perceived misperceptions upon the part of
the researcher, which afforded them their rights to representation (Gergen and Gergen
2000). While this led to frustration at not fulfilling initial preordained hypotheses, it
did allow this dissertation to grow into a fuller understanding of the subject matter.
Combined, these primary data collection methods provided access to the
information on an immediate basis in order to perform iterative data analyses upon
them as research progressed. Data were analyzed using discourse analysis to examine
how ideas of science, property, and governance are created, negotiated, and managed
by the various actors involved in their production for Antarctica. Discourse is a
particular group of ideas that give meaning to social and physical realities and are
produced through specific practices, narratives, and symbols (Hajer 1995). Practices,
narratives, and symbols are practices which help to produce the realities that belong to
a particular discourse. This study investigates the various realities constructed through
stories, symbols, and debate analyzing the data collected by looking for the
commonalities and differences between metaphors and interpretations of events that
the various actors provide. In order to accomplish this, the context and content of the
archival and first-hand sources were taken into account. The context of the statements
can show how their source relates to their surroundings, and can also provide a sense
46
of how territoriality has been deployed. Statements regarding how bioprospecting
should be undertaken in Antarctica reflected the source’s relationship to the continent.
Signs and markers could provide hints of how a particular space was territorialized as
well.
1.4 Summary of the chapters to come
This dissertation is structured such that the three concerns about
bioprospecting in Antarctica are each addressed individually before synthesizing them
together in the final chapter. The central three chapters explore the central questions
brought up about bioprospecting in Antarctica through the respective alembics of
science, property, and governance. The general format followed in these chapters is to
first present several historical events that illustrate how the central concept is
embodied within Antarctica. Then a modernist interpretation of the concept is shown
to be territorialized in Antarctica, along with a focus on how modernists approach the
central concern posed about bioprospecting in the chapter. The section that follows
considers a postmodern interpretation of the same central concept, and then seeks to
reveal how that concept has also been territorialized within Antarctica. The chapter
will assert how postmodernists could approach the issue. After considering Antarctic
bioprospecting from all of these diverse perspectives, the fifth and final chapter
synthesizes the lessons learned from its predecessors. A comprehensive approach to
bioprospecting should consider all of these ideas together if it is to be successful.
47
CHAPTER 2
IS BIOPROSPECTING A THREAT TO ANTARCTIC SCIENCE?
An encounter at the 2006 meeting of the Scientific Committee on Antarctic
Research (SCAR) in Hobart, Australia provides an example of the discomfort that
Antarctic scientists had with bioprospecting, even for those who were conducting it.
Dr. Rachel Codd, a biochemical researcher presented her findings on cold adaptations
in metallobiomolecules from Antarctic bacteria that allowed the organisms to attract
iron molecules in iron-deficient environments. Her presentation made it clear that
there were a number of possible commercial applications that could arise from
research into these metallobiomolecules. When I asked her about the degree to which
she was involved in bioprospecting, she became uncomfortable. She said that she
preferred the term "biodiscovery" to bioprospecting, and stressed that she was more
interested in how this research could benefit iron-deficient people through
bioremediation rather than the industrial applications. She further disowned any
interest in the applied aspects of her research by stating that she mostly wrote about
applications to attract funding. The idea that the "biodiscovery" that she was involved
in could compromise her scientific integrity or standing was clearly a concern for Dr.
Codd.
48
As mentioned in the first chapter, bioprospecting was introduced into the ATS
by a scientist who was worried what the activity might mean for the exchange of
science under Article Three of the Antarctic Treaty. This concern was articulated in
the first working paper presented to the Antarctic Treaty System (ATS) on the subject.
In that document the United Kingdom noted that the first issue of Antarctic
bioprospecting that warranted particular attention was:
"The potential conflict between the freedom of access to scientific information
provided for in Article III of the Antarctic Treaty, and the confidentiality that
inevitably surrounds the commercial exploitation of bioactive material (i.e.
patenting)." (United Kingdom 2002, p.2)
While the statement expresses that bioprospecting poses conflicts for the scientists that
conduct it, the emphasis here is on the legal conundrum posed by this perceived
binary. On the one hand, there is the obligation clearly stated in the Antarctic Treaty
that "scientific observations and results from Antarctica shall be exchanged and made
freely available" (Treaty 1959, Art. 3.1.c) and, on the other, there is the desire of
biotechnology patent holders to retain a monopoly on potentially profitable
information. The possibility that bioprospecting restricts scientists from doing science
in a "proper" or "pure" Antarctic way is treated as an important issue by scientists
because it helps to support a modern territorialization of Antarctica that privileges
science as an elevated activity.
The effect of bioprospecting on the scientific territorialization of Antarctica
has been framed as a legal and ethical issue of how to reconcile the two sides of the
49
conflict. In that vein, lawyers such as Kim Connolly-Stone have sought to negate
scientific information-sharing concerns by arguing that since patents must be
published or made public, no contradiction of Article Three is established (ConnollyStone 2005). While this might be keeping to the letter of the Treaty, it does not
address the ethical issue of what is good and bad science in Antarctica. The ethics of
this particular concern has been pursued by such scholars as Alan Hemmings, Julia
Jabour, Dianne Nicol, and others (Jabour-Green and Nicol 2003; Hemmings 2010;
Hughes and Bridge 2010). Hemmings recognizes the contingencies of the privileged
position of science within Antarctica, but situates that power in an implicit assumption
that scientists are objective and disinterested at the geopolitical level (Hemmings
2010). The privileged stability of Antarctica as a scientific realm of discovery and
exploration would therefore be threatened by complicating the image of Antarctic
scientists and what activities they are involved in within Antarctica. The scholars
noted above tend to call for formal regulatory mechanisms to be employed to avoid
perceived conflicts of interest.
While a formal declaration of what is or is not appropriate Antarctic science
moving forward is one solution to this dilemma, another approach recognizing the
dynamic agency of scientists and their ability to geopolitically engage might also be
called for. These two ideas are not mutually exclusive, but modernist approaches have
placed more emphasis on the former. A geographical imaginary of a scientific
Antarctica that views scientists as participant citizens rather than simply drones
conducting the work of science would recognize the more active roles that scientists
50
have been playing in society, both around the world and in Antarctic affairs.
Knowledge-creation is a hallmark of science and is now recognized as a central
component to power-creation through the works of Michel Foucault. Drawing upon
Foucault's train of thought, scholars have proposed models of scientists actively
engaging with social issues and other social groups through techniques of hybrid
management (Miller 2001). Scientists are already actively engaged in hybrid
management techniques within Antarctica in order to deal with bioprospecting on the
continent and so these proposals acknowledge a reality that exists rather than an ideal
to aspire to. Scientists have been finding their own ways of addressing bioprospecting
in the face of inaction by the ATS.
This chapter investigates the territoriality exerted by scientists upon Antarctica,
and asserts that a model of geopolitical scientists might be more appropriate to address
the issue of bioprospecting than a more traditional model of scientific territoriality.
Now that this section has pointed out how bioprospecting is perceived as a challenge
to scientific regional identity and power, it is important to overview the history behind
the rise of an Antarctic scientific terrioriality. The chapter's second section provides a
short history of science in the region and illustrates how science ascended to the
position that it holds now as a privileged activity on the continent. The third section
illustrates the traditional model of science as objective and separate from other
activities, and shows how this model has been exerted through territorial strategies.
The fourth section provides an alternative reading of scientific territoriality within
Antarctica which views scientists there as geopolitical actors capable of hybrid
51
engagements. The fifth and final section of this chapter argues that while the
traditional model of science seems to privilege scientists within Antarctica, a
geopolitical model is both more reflective of the way that science actually functions
and more helpful in addressing the concerns posed by bioprospecting within
Antarctica.
2.1 A history of Antarctic science
The history of science in Antarctica is rather a broad topic, and therefore this
section will focus on three particular periods of time: science as employed during the
'heroic era' of Antarctic exploration, the rise of science during the International
Geophysical Year (IGY) of 1957-58 with the subsequent establishment of the
Scientific Committee on Antarctic Research (SCAR), and the challenge of the
environmental movement to Antarctic science. In general, this history reflects a
neglect of science at first, then a steep rise in its influence, followed by a challenge to
its authority. Since this discussion does not wish to portray this history uncritically,
the perspective of a number of historians are employed in order to gain an enriched
understanding of not only what was ostensibly going on but also how events have
been interpreted. The discourses that the histories of the past are situated within can
therefore be recognized and utilized as another tool to understand the construction of
the scientific territorialities of Antarctica later on in the chapter.
52
2.1.1 Science during the early exploration of the Antarctic
Although scientists had ostensibly been attached to expeditions to the Antarctic
from the turn of the 20th Century onwards, it is generally agreed upon that science was
not a great priority before the IGY (Briggs 1970). Before the IGY, most expeditions
were explicitly focused on national territorial claims, personal aggrandizement, and/or
economic exploitation. Early 19th Century sealers and whalers were in a good position
to add to the biological and geographic information about the Antarctic, but generally
did not in order to protect knowledge of their hunting grounds and other trade secrets
(Walton and Bonner 1985). The adoption of effective technology during this period
was spotty, Sir Robert Scott in particular demonstrating how cultural and nationalistic
prejudices could take precedence over proven survival techniques by favoring manhauling above dog sleds for the purpose of crafting a particular heroic narrative13
(Pegg 1993). This period of time in Antarctic history is therefore labeled the "heroic
era" as a reflection of the success of these narratives catching the popular imaginations
of many people across national borders. Polar explorers at the start of the century
utilized primarily private funding provided to promote the creation of national heroes
(Riffenburgh 1993; Dodds 1997). Potential Antarctic explorers would also seek money
from the scientific societies and organizations of the day, and therefore include or
promote the inclusion of scientific goals to their expeditions to curry favor and
13
While there is much criticism regarding Scott's adoption of the best technology for cold weather,
there is no doubt that he also held scientific investigation in high esteem. Samples of coal gathered from
the trans-Antarctic mountains were found among the remains of his South Polar expedition when the
bodies were recovered, the additional burden to the man-haulers declared worthy of the additional effort
used to drag the samples.
53
funding. Primary funding sources for expeditions shifted gradually to originate from
national governments with the increasing involvement of the airplane in the late 1920s
onwards as more and more states started claiming parts of Antarctica (Dodds 1997).
Of the sciences that were promoted during this time, geography sat at the forefront.
Geography was used during this period as a discipline to help colonial powers
establish their dominance over regions of the earth through knowledge. Other sciences
were relegated to a more minor role in these expeditions.
This is not to say that there was no scientific curiosity regarding Antarctica
during this period nor were that explorers insincere when they included scientific
enlightenment as one of the goals of their expeditions, only to point out that funding of
expeditions did not focus singularly on scientific aspects. Cornelia Lüdecke has
illustrated a number of examples of international scientific cooperation during this
time (particularly encouraged through several international scientific meetings and
International Polar Years), yet the expeditions were publicized largely as being
competitive with one another (Lüdecke 2003). The competition served to further
national pride in each country’s scientific achievements. Beyond the exploration of the
unknown aspects of the region, science conducted in Antarctica had the potential to
reveal a great deal about global systems of climate patterns, plate tectonics, and
particularly the field of geophysics (Walton 1987). The geophysical information that
Antarctica was in a unique position to reveal would be a primary factor in the largescale involvement of the region in the IGY.
54
2.1.2 The rise of Antarctic science during the IGY
The IGY has become ensconced as a pivotal part of Antarctic history that
stresses the preeminence of science on the continent. The IGY has been described as a
“scientific Olympics,” in which scientists from all over the world participated (Collis
and Dodds 2008). This vision of scientists as valorous athletes is also supplemented by
war-like rhetoric with scientists as hearty soldiers. Some accounts within National
Geographic characterized the event as a scientific assault on Antarctica (Byrd 1947;
Byrd 1956; Boyer 1957; Byrd 1957; Dufek 1959; McDonald 1962; Tyree 1963;
Matthews 1971). Scientists are also held as ingenious and independent organizers. As
popular accounts tell it, the origins of the IGY can be traced back to a dinner-party
held by James Van Allen for a number of fellow scientists (Shapely 1985; Walton
1987; Collis and Dodds 2008). The importance of the story is that it emphasizes the
non-governmental origin of the IGY, and particularly how a group of scientists
relaxing together can initiate one of the largest international scientific efforts that there
has ever been. Lasting from 1 July 1957 to 31 December 1958, participating scientists
from twelve nations tackled large-scale experiments synchronized across the globe
studying the terrestrial environment in its entirety with the support of their respective
governments as part of the IGY. Sixty scientific stations were set up in Antarctica
during that time because many large-scale questions could not be answered without
concrete data from Antarctica.
55
Many accounts of the IGY credit it with both leading directly to the creation of
the Antarctic Treaty and being a strictly apolitical event. Depicting the IGY as the
source of the Antarctic Treaty helps to ensconce scientists as necessary for the wellbeing and existence of Antarctic governance. Chronologically, the Antarctic Treaty
did follow the IGY, in 1959, as the twelve nations who had participated in the IGY
were invited by Dwight Eisenhower to participate in the negotiation of an Antarctic
Treaty. Peter Briggs and Paul Berkman draw fairly direct causal relationship between
the IGY and the Antarctic Treaty (Briggs 1970; Berkman 2002). Former President
Richard Nixon would later allude to the Antarctic in a speech to the United Nations
when he remarked that “science has provided a successful basis for international
accord” (Pennisi 1991). Positing that the IGY resulted in the Antarctic Treaty also has
the effect of concealing or erasing the years of diplomatic work that went into creating
the document, as detailed extensively by John Hanessian (Hanessian 1960). Hanessian
notes that there were some connections between the IGY and the Antarctic Treaty, but
they are more correlative than causative. In recent years, other critiques of this
valorization of the IGY have arisen. Adrian Howkins has described the IGY as having
“a Jekyll and Hyde personality” (Howkins 2008, p.596). In one regard, the idealism
and international cooperation of scientists was very real, but the IGY also provided a
venue for competition and political rivalry. Some of the scientific work that took
place, for example seismic traverses across the ice sheet, could be interpreted as
another venue for Cold War geopolitics (Naylor, Dean et al. 2008). In fact, Howkins
points out that the possibility that scientific knowledge gained from the IGY might be
56
used for non-academic or intellectual purposes is in part what motivated the countries
of Chile and Argentina to participate (Howkins 2008). State political interests were
clearly a factor during the IGY14.
Whether or not the IGY directly resulted in the production of the Antarctic
Treaty, the tangible result was that science became the dominant activity in the
Antarctic from that point onwards. The conduct of Antarctic science may have been
prioritized to give a veneer of credibility to Antarctic occupation for some states, but it
was still both ensconced in territorial enactments on the continent and responsible for
the initial formation of a strong Antarctic-focused scientific non-governmental
organization (NGO). Logistic work undertaken originally for the IGY established
facilities and infrastructure for scientific activities in the Antarctic. There was also a
resulting boom in scientific output in terms of discoveries and publications. In order to
manage scientific projects during the IGY, a permanent organization dedicated to
Antarctic science known as SCAR15 was created (Summerhayes 2008). SCAR was
formed and had its first meeting in the Hague from February 3 - 5, 1958 in order to
continue international coordination of the scientific projects that had been started
during the IGY. SCAR sends representatives to Antarctic Treaty meetings and has
largely acted as the de facto secretariat of the treaty. Most ideas which find their way
into the Antarctic Treaty Consultative Meetings have their origins in SCAR. Although
14
State interests during the IGY were particularly expressed outside of Antarctica in the "space race"
between the United States and Soviet Union. It was during the IGY that the first space satellite was
successfully launched by the Soviet Union, prompting fears that this technology could be used to launch
nuclear weapons. The United States increased its support for scientific endeavors in the wake of that
launch
15
SCAR existed in a different form leading up to and during the IGY as the Special Committee on
Antarctic Research. It was expected to be a temporary group, but the end of the IGY saw its
calcification into a more stable organization.
57
national delegations make up some of the membership of SCAR, there are also
representatives from international scientific organizations. SCAR is funded through
the International Council for Science (ICSU), which makes it independent from state
funding. These factors ostensibly show SCAR to be an organization beyond the
control of a single state or set of states. The projects that SCAR encourages emerge
from ideas within the scientific community and generally take the form of temporary
groups that are formed to address these problems. For a long time, SCAR existed as
the primary non-governmental organization (NGO) that interacted with the Antarctic
and ATS.
2.1.3 The environmentalist challenge to Antarctic science
This status as the sole NGO interest in Antarctica would later be challenged as
Antarctic scientists faced a crisis in the early 1990s. With the close of the Cold War,
many national scientific groups were scrambling to justify their existence to their
governments (Horgan 1996). During the Cold War, large scientific budgets for
Antarctic activities could be nationally justified by comparing their own science and
facilities to those of their rivals. Without such an incentive, the need for substantial
scientific stations at the expense of the state was questioned. At the same time, the
expiration of the first thirty years of the Antarctic Treaty being in force came in 1991
with the demise of the Convention on the Regulation of Antarctic Minerals
58
(CRAMRA) and the hasty replacement of it by the Environmental Protocol to the
Antarctic Treaty (often called the Madrid Protocol).
During this time, environmental groups were seeking to promote themselves
and gain legitimacy in a number of ways around the continent. Greenpeace took its
brand of activism to the region with a series of ship-borne expeditions (May 1989) and
evocative literature (Clark 1994). They even tried to gain voting status at the ATCM
through efforts to conform to the Treaty’s Article 9 [2] by establishing a scientific
station at Cape Evans, Ross Island from 1987 to 1993 (Clark 1994). The Antarctic and
Southern Ocean Coalition (ASOC) managed to obtain observer status at the ATCMS
and published ECO there, a newsletter for the meetings to promote alternative
environmentally-friendly proposals. In terms of discourse and environmental
territoriality, environmentalists promoted the ideal of Antarctica as “a world park”
(Barnes 1982). This concept could be found in direct literature produced by Antarctic
environmentalists (Davis 1990; Hempel 1994), and as a general sentiment popularly
disseminated through popular media such as the National Geographic Magazine. The
metaphor of Antarctica as a world park evoked the values of conservation, natural
aesthetics, and respect for nature.
There was some trepidation about the rise of an Antarctic environmental
identity among scientists. Some scientists feared that increasing environmental
priorities would mean a reduction in the budget for Antarctic science that many were
already worried about (Pennisi 1991), but it turned out that most state government
enlarged their budgets to accommodate environmental interests. Some scientists also
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feared a displacement of authority; that their scientific work could be misunderstood
and shut down by non-scientists. G. E. Fogg tried to summarize the sentiments of
Antarctic scientists towards the Antarctic environmental lobby in the following way:
"However, although its [Greenpeace's] aims have the sympathy of many
Antarctic scientists its oversimplification of the issues and confrontational
tactics are looked on with less enthusiasm." (Fogg 1992, p.191)
The trepidation expressed here arises partly from the environmentalists' lack of nuance
in addressing uncertainties that scientists had been used to addressing. The other fear
arises from the confrontational style of the environmental organizations, which is seen
as running counter to the Antarctic scientific ideal of cooperation. This is not to say
that scientists were not sometimes confrontational when it came to dealing with what
was perceived as their environmentalist opponents at the time. Scientists such as
William Bonner, a one-time head of the Life Sciences Division at the British Antarctic
Survey (BAS), reacted haughtily to environmentalists' territorialization of Antarctica
as a "world park" by calling them ignorant:
"From the conservation lobby at large comes a clamour to declare Antarctica a
World Park, to hand over control of the area from the Treaty to the United
Nations, and to recognize Antarctica as part of the 'global commons' or the
'common heritage of mankind'. It is not easy to say why this has come about.
Possibly a very important factor was ignorance. Some of the principle bodies
involved in the debate had no, or very little, practical experience of the
Antarctic. The scale of the Antarctic - the fact that it constitutes a tenth of the
60
world's surface, both land and sea - was quite unappreciated and it was
generally believed that human activities there were imminently threatening the
whole region." (Bonner 1987, pp.145-146)
This quote hints at the fact that scientists may have felt more comfortable with their
position within the ATS than any prospective relationship that they could attain to
Antarctica through another body such as the United Nations. Bonner even lords the
expertise that scientists have gained through decades of closeness with the continent
over those environmentalists who have no such advantage.
In some instances, this tension between the two groups would boil over. A
number of confrontations during the 1988-89 voyage of the Greenpeace vessel
Gondwana were documented by Paul Brown, a reporter on board for The Guardian
newspaper (Brown 1991). Most of these were confrontations between Greenpeace
volunteers and national or commercial representatives, but a few involved scientists.
The Environmental Defense Fund (EDF) submitted a report16 to the NSF in 1988
concluding that research activities posed a significant threat to the Antarctic
environment (Tangley 1988). The EDF later sued the NSF in 1991 over its plan to
install an incinerator at McMurdo station (Wirth 1993). The NSF had thought that it
was undertaking environmentally responsible action in switching its methods of
dealing with waste after the discovery of asbestos in its McMurdo landfill, and was
frustrated by the protests of the environmentalists.
16
The report was entitled Securing Environmental Protection in Antarctica: Recommendations to the
National Science Foundation for increased protection from Scientific Research Activities.
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The fears of science being subsumed under an ill-informed environmental
lobby were eventually quelled when scientists and environmentalists generally
reconciled. One turning point in the relationship has been cited as arising from a 1985
Workshop on the Antarctic Treaty System sponsored by the United States Polar
Research Board that took place on the Beardmore glacier in Antarctica between
various Antarctic governance representatives and representatives from some
concerned environmental groups (Fogg 1992). Efforts were made to introduce
environmentalists directly to the continent and educate them about the operation of the
ATS, which began to resolve the perceived issue of ignorance. In return,
environmentalists became less confrontational once they felt that they were being
heard and included in the governance process, allaying another scientific complaint.
As a result of the rules that emerged from the 1991 Environmental Protocol, scientists
were largely put in charge of regulating their own environmental impacts on the
continent. While budgets for geological exploration shrank due to a ban on mineral
exploration for profit, budgets increased for understanding ecological systems and
biology. Once these minor fears of budget and oversight were allayed, Antarctic
scientists found that the ideals of Antarctic environmentalists were not contradictory to
their own values. In fact, many ecological studies that took place in Antarctica highly
valued it for its “pristine” qualities of being a region relatively undisturbed by humans.
The goals of Antarctic science were not about disrupting the world, but understanding
how it functions. As such, many Antarctic scientists were able to internalize the
messages that they received from environmental groups. In turn, the environmental
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groups were usually conscientious about privileging scientific activities and
distinguishing them from commercial ones.
2.2 Modern Science
With some of the important background for science within Antarctica
established, this chapter will now explore the first of two scientific territorialities.
Traditional modernist scientific territoriality is an outgrowth of ideas of science that
were in vogue during the time of the IGY and the writing of the Antarctic Treaty. This
mode of thought, usually referred to as "Mertonian," will first be described before
illustrating how the territorial actions were established both in the popular cultures of
the Antarctic Treaty countries as well as on the continent itself. This section will then
illustrate how the "threat" of bioprospecting to science has mainly been addressed
through this territorial mindset. The end of this section will address some of the
critiques of the dominant model.
2.2.1 The general articulation of Mertonian science
Science both describes a technical way of undertaking the activity of acquiring
knowledge as well as an appropriate way of conducting oneself during that process.
Science at its most basic is defined as a system of acquiring knowledge, typically
through a set of techniques known as the scientific method. The scientific method
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involves specific steps: observation/research; forming a hypothesis; prediction;
experimentation; and coming to a resulting conclusion. While anyone can theoretically
engage in this process of knowledge-gathering, a privileged set of individuals are
labeled scientists and rely on the knowledge generated by the scientists that came
before them. This reliance on knowledge generated by others in order to gain further
knowledge requires a certain degree of trust in previous generations of scientists and
their work. Although many hold that “the scientific ideal is one of unconstrained
investigative enquiry conducted by dedicated professionals” (Davis 1990, p.40), this
still leaves open the question of what defines a dedicated professional of science.
Beyond the technical and procedural details of how science is conducted, Robert
Merton posited the existence of an ethos of science which had the moral qualities of
“universalism, communism, disinterestedness, and organized skepticism” (Merton
1968, p.607). Universalism refers to the idea that claims to truth are evaluated on
universal criteria. Claims are thought to be more truthful and scientific if they are
more "universal" as opposed to being specific to certain conditions or perspectives.
The communism of science is expressed through the renunciation of profits generated
from the intellectual property generated by the scientific researcher in exchange for
recognition, esteem, and trust. The disinterestedness of science is similar to the
universalism value, but emphasizes that the scientist is rewarded for being unbiased
and impartial. Organized skepticism entails scientists not accepting claims to truth
unless they are able to be reproduced or tested in a way that ensures that the claims are
reliable.
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With the introduction of these moral principles, science has become more than
just a set of methods one can conduct, but a way of conducting one’s life. The main
purpose of creating this ethos for scientists to live by is to establish a shorthand code
that empowers scientists to be trusted when they make claims to truth (Sztompka
2007). The argument of a scientist to another person regarding their claims to truth
within this framework might go something like this: "I have a claim to truth that I have
discovered through my research, and you can reasonably conclude that I am telling the
truth about this because I follow an ethos of science that includes universalism,
communism, disinterestedness, and organized skepticism." This creates a high ideal
for scientists to live by, and as a result scientists are afforded a privileged position of
trustworthy arbiters on describing how the world works. This is not to say that
scientists the world over are unified in declaring what science is: in fact considerable
heterogeneity exists in how science is practiced across the globe (Jasanoff 2005). Yet
the Mertonian model captures how science is largely abstracted by most people. The
most popular portrayals of science within the United States include its placement
above other social forces and subsequently being in a position to describe reality
objectively (Tourney 1996; Lahsen 2005). While there have been many critiques and
challenges to this portrayal, this understanding of science is accepted by most nonscientists and perpetrated by scientists seeking to secure their influence.
The Mertonian ideal of science can be found reflected in a social contract
model of science-society relations put forth by Vannevar Bush, one of the earliest
proponents of the United States NSF. Bush's report calling for the establishment of the
65
NSF was called “Science: the Endless Frontier” (Bush 1945). Like the Mertonian
ethos of science, Bush calls in that report for a freedom of scientific enquiry without
being chained to practical outcomes. The expectation is that unfettered scientific
research will generate useful applications of its own eventually, and that scientists
work best when unconcerned and unbiased by political or practical matters. Robert
Byerly and Roger Pielke summarize three main assumptions generated by the “social
contract” that Bush constructed: scientific progress is needed for social welfare,
science provides a reservoir of knowledge which can be tapped for applications, and
science works best when it is unbiased (Byerly Jr. and Pielke Jr. 1995). According to
this model, scientists therefore are ultimately working for the public good and not for
any biased or selfish reasons. The model clearly separates political life from scientific
life, ensuring that it may be directed by political funding, but stipulates that the
research itself should remain unbiased by political need or expediency. In this model,
science became both an objective collector of knowledge about the earth and an
altruistic force for society. Although Bush originally intended this for the national
welfare, in the case of Antarctica scientific activity came to be seen as benefiting all
countries because of the international nature of the research that was going on within
the region during the IGY. Although this is an intangible ideal that was set in motion,
its adoption was etched into popular culture and Antarctic governance.
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2.2.2 Mertonian science in Antarctica
Antarctic science must be considered somewhat differently than the science
conducted within states found elsewhere in the world. In most territorial states,
literature on science policy is dedicated to critiquing funding levels or appreciating
science within the government, which indicates that the government is privileged
above science in terms of political power and impact (Gillmor 1986; Solingen 1994;
Department of Commerce 1997). The relationships between states and the scientists
that help to empower them exist on an implicit level. Antarctica is set apart from the
rest of the world in this regard, though. This separation is embodied both in the
scientific organization that has developed in the region as well as in the popular and
formal inscriptions of science into the Antarctic Treaty. Science is formally inscribed
into the Antarctic Treaty in no less than three of its fourteen articles, a privilege not
bestowed to science in the founding documents of other established states. These
articles stress the cooperative aspects of the science conducted upon the continent
(Caflisch 1992). SCAR is an interdisciplinary and international organization that helps
to establish research priorities for the region, establish connections between scholars
from different countries, and collectively represent their interests and findings at
meetings of the policy-makers for the Antarctic. Since science is empowered by the
Antarctic Treaty, it is therefore seen as dependent on the Treaty for legitimacy.
In this model of Antarctic scientific territoriality, science is imagined as a
dominant force on the continent. In other words, there is a bureaucratic hierarchy and
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scientists occupy a privileged position within it. Science is, after all, the main activity
legitimated through the Antarctic Treaty. Paul Berkman extols in his book, “Science
into Policy: Global Lessons from Antarctica,” that science is the keystone that holds
all other aspects of the Antarctic Treaty together (see figure 4) (Berkman 2002, p.221).
Colin Summerhayes provides a table of 17 influences that SCAR has had upon
Antarctic Treaty political instruments (Summerhayes 2008, p.331). As scientific
bodies determine and hold together Antarctic governance, they would seem to be a
dominant force on the continent. Proponents of this view generally support the
existing structure/ status quo of Antarctic governance. Reasons for this support range
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from a genuine enthusiasm for the system to a more cynical calculation of how to
establish and maintain influence and control of the continent. The ideal of Antarctica
as a place exclusively for scientists is captured dramatically by such book titles as “A
Continent for Science” (Lewis 1965) and “Laboratory at the Bottom of the World”
(Briggs 1970). These titles reflect the strength with which the notion of Antarctica as a
scientific space has been encoded. Laboratories are sites of scientific power. Although
the actual practice of science within laboratories has been famously critiqued (Latour
and Woolgar 1979), in their ideal form laboratories are controlled settings in which the
scientist may experiment without interference from the world outside. Within the
confines of the laboratory, the scientist is in control of things.
The clearest indication that this regional identity has clout within the ATS was
on display at the 2006 Antarctic Treaty Consultative Meeting (ATCM) in Edinburgh,
Scotland. This was one of the ATCMs where activities for the public ran in concert
with the state meetings taking place. Walking into the main exhibit hall of the
conference centre where the meeting was being held, the public was greeted by the
bold statement embossed on the official displays: "Antarctica: A Continent for
Science" (see figure 5). The public was also invited to tour the two British Antarctic
Survey vessels RSS James Clark Ross and HMS Endurance on select days to witness
scientific displays and various aerial and sea maneuvers. A number of information
placards were set up next to the vessels for people to read while waiting in line to
board, the last of which (before the ramp onto the ship) echoed the idea of Antarctica
as a continent for peace and science (see figure 6). Concurrent public scientific talks
69
centered on Antarctica were held during the meeting and special exhibits were set up
at the local museums and zoo. During a press conference to promote the ATCM,
officials warmly extolled the close connections between science and policy within the
ATS.
The hierarchical social structure can also be experienced directly at Antarctic bases
such as McMurdo where requests by scientists can dictate who works where, what
buildings may be accessed, and even who may be excluded from the continent. Some
of these encounters with scientific authority have been captured by the people who
work there, but are generally kept quiet. The Crary science lab at McMurdo who
station is the only building that requires keypad access and generally excludes non70
scientists from entering except for guided tours (see figure 7). The exclusive nature of
access to the Crary lab is hierarchical territory writ large on the composition of the
station. Cooks who serve specific outposts of scientists have been switched out at the
request of those scientists.
2.2.3 Mertonian science applied to Antarctic bioprospecting
The Mertonian territorialization of science through the use of hierarchical
bureaucracies can be witnessed through several examples of how the idea of
bioprospecting has been addressed by scientists. At the June 2008 Antarctic Treaty
71
Consultative Meeting (ATCM) in Kyiv, Ukraine the legal and institutional working
group tasked with addressing the issue of bioprospecting called upon SCAR in its role
as a source of trusted technical experts to conduct a survey of what bioprospecting
activities were going on and report back to the ATS about them. Part of SCAR's
authority emerges from its position as a mediator between scientists who can collect
information such as what the working group requested. Consideration was not given to
tasking this out to other organizations, although the United Nations University (UNU)
had not only already established a website and database to collect information on
Antarctic bioprospecting17, but also presented an Information Paper (# 67) to the 2007
17
http://www.bioprospector.org/bioprospector/antarctica/home.action
72
ATCM regarding their function and purpose. This UNU website was later adopted by
several ATS member countries, but not officially sanctioned by the ATS. Working
Paper (# 1) was jointly submitted by Belgium, Brazil, Bulgaria, Finland, France,
Germany, The Netherlands, and Sweden at the 2009 ATCM in Baltimore which
provided details about the database and encouraged ATS parties to voluntarily
contribute information to it. The UNU does not have the established presence of
SCAR when it comes to Antarctic science, though, and such matters were handled
internally by the bureaucracy, perhaps in an effort to consolidate territorial power,
since the United Nations has already been established as a territorial threat by Bonner
in his diatribe against environmentalists quoted earlier.
Bioprospecting first emerged as an articulated issue by coming up through the
hierarchical bureaucracy that surrounds Antarctic governance. The manner in which
Dr. Walton raised bioprospecting as an issue was extremely bureaucractic and ran
through a number of filters to make its way up through the hierarchy of Antarctic
governance (first in a Working Group on Biology session, which then took the issue to
the greater SCAR delegates group, which then passed a recommendation that was
presented to the ATS at an ATCM). In this way, a scientist was able to influence the
agenda of the ATS and place his concerns before them. Along the way, however,
suggestions that were passed along had to be edited and refined so as to be sufficiently
scrubbed neutral of "political" influence. Part of the reason that the issue of
bioprospecting advanced as much as it did might be credited to the influential position
that Dr. Walton held within SCAR's bureaucracy at the time (Thiede 2006), but rank
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will only permit so much within a hierarchical bureaucracy. In the one instance where
a 2002 SCAR Working Paper was either deemed too political or that it had not
undergone significant internal SCAR review, it was withdrawn (Hemmings 2005).
This example shows the dominative capability of the hierarchical bureaucratic system
to quash certain ideas or debates in addition to the previous example of allowing new
issues to be officially introduced.
Although these popular and official accounts do confirm that there is a large
degree of power and influence that scientists have within Antarctica, they also
demonstrate that it is a constrained power expressed through a hierarchical
territoriality of Antarctic science. The history of Antarctic science detailed earlier in
this chapter set up not only how science had grown as an influential territorial activity
within Antarctica, but also how the position that has been determined for science
within the Antarctic hierarchical system is historically contingent and exorable.
Hierarchical scientific territorial power in Antarctica has been historically tied to an
identity of science that is unbiased, altruistic, and cooperative. As long as Antarctic
science holds true to that ideal, the legitimacy of such statements as “Antarctica: A
continent for science” and "Don't bother the scientists in their labs - they are working
for the good of us all" will hold sway in geographic imaginations. It establishes a
shorthand of territorial power that justifies the priority of scientific activity and the
elevated status of scientists above other station personnel just through the invocation
of their status as science and scientists respectively. This does significantly inflate the
desirability to use science to gain power within Antarctica and therefore groups
74
seeking to increase their political influence in Antarctica tend to establish, seek, or
gain it through the territorial conduct of scientific activities there.
The loss of scientific apolitical and non-profit-seeking "purity" degrades the
position and leads critics to question the legitimacy of science's trusted and objective
position as the core activity that gives all else meaning within Antarctica. Science can
be seen to act as a “currency of credibility” for states and other groups interested in
operating in the region (Quilty 1990). If every group that interacts with the continent
must do so through approaching it scientifically, then the stretched definitions of
science may begin to wear thin and indeed lead to the moral hazard that Hemmings
warned of at the start of this chapter. The fragility of the power granted scientists
through an Antarctic hierarchical bureaucractic territoriality is complimented by
critiques that this model reflects and perpetuates a reality of territorial power within
Antarctica that can be domineering and oppressive. While recognizing that science is
the primary physical activity conducted on the continent, the critics of this perception
of Antarctica see it as a mask for less "pure" motives. For Zain Azraai, this apparent
credibility creates a set of claims to Antarctica that base their legitimacy in scientific
expertise rather than explicit interests, thus masking a continuation of colonial
activities by more affluent nations who are able to maintain expensive scientific
stations there (Azraai 1987). According to Nicholas Johnson, a resulting issue is that
this fiction masks a bureaucracy that stifles the curious and creative impulses of those
who operate there (Johnson 2005). Therefore, scientific groups may think themselves
dominant, but they are in fact guided by the state programs which fund and logistically
75
supply their existence on the continent. The negative effects of Antarctic bureaucracy
on support workers and the exclusion of interested but scientifically poor countries
from participation in the Antarctic governance process are two criticisms leveled by
these individuals at the ATS and the scientists who enable its dominance.
Bioprospecting provides these critics with ammunition because of its overlap between
science and both political and commercial interests.
2.3 Postmodern Sciences
If scientists may be stifled by modernist conceptions of science enacted
through the hierarchical bureaucractic territorial strategies within Antarctica, it makes
sense to consider alternatives that might allow for other considerations of the issue of
bioprospecting within Antarctica. The Mertonian territoriality established above
presents itself as a static portrait of Antarctic actors that have been holding their poses
since the IGY with borders policed between them. Scientists are supposed to conduct
science and member states of the ATS are supposed to vote and govern. This modern
model of science claims its legitimacy through ideals of the Antarctic Treaty such as
scientific cooperation, but comes across as ironically confrontational through its layers
of bureaucracy. Only official governmental and institutional representatives are
permitted to attend the meetings of the ATCM or SCAR delegates, and all others are
physically excluded from attending these meetings. These aspects seem to run counter
to the stated ideal of active cooperation among groups that the Antarctic Treaty is
76
supposed to hold above petty rivalries and "politics." Fortunately, one does not have to
look far to find a model of Antarctic scientific territoriality that embodies cooperation
in a more dynamic fashion. A more nuanced characterization of science has found
expression through recent scholarship, and is particularly helpful in considering the
issue of Antarctic bioprospecting's threat to science through the techniques of hybrid
management discussed below.
2.3.1 Latour's reaction against modern science
While techniques of science remain generally the same under a new nonhierarchical model of science, the ethos of Mertonian science must be altered
somewhat to adjust. A Mertonian ethos of science can be said to be a modernist
project that seeks to distinguish the ethos of science from that of other forms of life,
but the evidence suggests that this project fails to connect with reality. Latour
reinforces the failure of the conception of modernism overall through his book, We
Have Never Been Modern (Latour 1993). Science itself may be a form of life distinct
from other vocations, but the illusion that it remains disinterested from worldly
concerns serves neither science nor society. Unfettered science pursuing lines of
interest without regard for their impact on society is regularly warned against time and
again within parables put forth by modern science fiction. Such a blind pursuit of
knowledge at all costs regularly turns out to have potentially disastrous effects.
Universalism is also a problematic value. The pursuit of universal truth can devalue
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the search for alternative perspectives or ways of doing things, leading to an
acceptance of existing hierarchies and the status quo. Paul Robbins has illustrated how
the reliance on certain scientific tools such as remote sensing has reinforced
assumptions about how to interpret the landscape and silenced other, more local,
interpretations and observations (Robbins 2001). This recognition and even valuation
of interest and alternative perspectives can subsequently cast a shadow on the
expectation of communism within science. It seems unreasonable to expect scientists
to work without compensation for generating their intellectual property if there is not
an expectation that scientists will be trusted and given privilege in return. The context
of science has become increasingly commercial, and it would be wise to acknowledge
that fact in any formulation of a new ethos of science (Goven 2006). Clearly the
disinterestedness, universalism, and communism that compose three-fourths of the
Mertonian ethos of science have received significant challenges since their formation.
The Mertonian value of organized skepticism remains somewhat untouched
through the years subsequent to its establishment. Myanna Lahsen has pointed out that
although techniques of organized skepticism (such as peer review) can be fallible, the
valuation of critical thinking is one of the ways that scientific experts are seen as more
reliable than other knowledge-producers (Lahsen 2005). Stephen Turner stresses that
this acceptance of criticism may be a more reliable bedrock of expertise than assumed
professionalism, and can allow scientific expertise to be compatible with ideals of
liberal democracies (Turner 2001). Organized skepticism allows scientists to openly
demonstrate that their claims to truth are reproducible by anyone. The trust that is a
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necessary bedrock component of conducting advanced modern science must not come
from an established position that has been carved out of a bureaucratic hierarchy
through adherence to values of disinterestedness, universalism, and communism, but
rather through organized skepticism and a renewed commitment to transparency. In
this model trust is earned through the researcher's honest disclosure of approach,
methods, and interests rather than trust being assumed based on a researcher's position
in a hierarchical bureaucracy. Not only are hierarchical positions unstable in a world
of active power relations, but there is also a declining tendency for individuals to trust
people in positions of power and authority. The transparent approach to gaining trust
allows observers to build their trust in scientists through their own experiences and
engagements with those scientists.
In place of a modern, Mertonian, science that does not align well with the
reality of how science is practiced or perceived, Latour suggests that scientists should
engage hybrids which straddle categorical divides rather than try to "purify" them into
one category or another. Hybrids blend together elements from two or more forms of
life. Latour's illustration of hybrids was quoted earlier in the first chapter's section on
postmodernity, using the idea of the AIDS virus to connect many different categories
of thought (Latour 1993). Hybrids may be conceptual or material artifacts, techniques
and practices, or organizations which straddle two or more ways of life and engender
interaction between them. David Guston and Clark Miller have analyzed how
scientific boundary organizations such as the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate
Change (IPCC) contributed to the management of the hybrid “climate regime,” and in
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doing so played an active role in negotiating power relations with policy-makers
(Guston 2000; Guston 2001; Miller 2001). Boundary organizations are described as
institutions that sit on the boundary between politics and science and mediate between
the two. Although Miller and Guston use institutional boundary organizations as the
actors who conduct these actions, Tim Forsyth points out that social movements also
have agency in this process and may take action (Forsyth 2003). One of the ways that
scientists can engage with hybrids is through attempts to actively manage them. Miller
elucidates four methods of managing hybrids: hybridization, cross-domain
orchestration, deconstruction, and boundary management. The first two techniques
involve the creation and maintenance of hybrids, while the latter two involve the
dissection of the hybrid into component parts. By hybridizating two or more interests,
information from one field may be synthesized by another, blending them together.
Cross-domain orchestration involves constructing a hybrid in coordination with groups
in each of the different realms involved. Through deconstruction, a hybrid is taken
apart into its constitutive components in order to understand (and perhaps change) the
underlying assumptions. Finally, people can actively seek to demarcate and maintain
the boundaries between the realms of life transgressed by the hybrid regulation taking
place through boundary work. Addressing hybrids therefore involves both an embrace
of the complexity that they represent as well as recognition that the "purity" to be
gained through isolation of components is of limited use. Modernist models of science
prefer to focus solely on the delineation and policing of borders through adherence to
Mertonian values.
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2.3.2 Postmodern science in Antarctica
As the values of universalism, disinterestedness, and communalism prove to be
difficult to apply across all of the postmodern landscape of science, there comes
recognition that there are many different types of science being conducted within
Antarctica. While some distinctions between categories of what is "applied" and
"basic" have become recognized as fuzzy (Calvert 2006), there have been efforts to
tease out different scientific tropes. Jabour and Nicol provide a diverse typology of
Antarctic science through five different categories of scientific activity taking place
within Antarctica (Jabour-Green and Nicol 2003, p.101):
1. Inquisitive/ knowledge-driven (knowledge for knowledge's sake)
2. Exploitation-driven (searching for new fish stocks, geological surveys)
3. Management-driven (setting limits on commercial development)
4. Global science (weather forecasting, climate change, ocean circulation)
5. Technological research (developing biotechnology patents)
The presence of Mertonian scientific motivations still exist within this typology, but it
is now recognized to be one of many different types of science conducted. Motivations
for the conduct of science are broadened out. Science itself is a hybrid of mixed
motivations being deconstructed into component impetuses. While in a modernist
interpretation of the sciences, the motivations should be policed such that the "impure"
are separated out and expelled from science so that the "pure" remain unsullied, this is
a difficult task. It should be up to scientists to define which activities are scientific and
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which are not as long as they can justify their reasoning. Such debate might be a return
to the idea of some activities being pure science and others being impure, but this is
also an opportunity to recognize and call out the shades of grey that exist and to
recognize the complexity and diversity that exists within Antarctic science.
Attendance at events for young and early-career polar scientists has revealed their
appetite for engagement, whether it is engagement with the public through outreach
and the media, or engagement with policy-makers (particularly in regard to legislating
climate change policies). The current momentum is for scientists to work together with
others to improve the quality of life for humans and sustain life on the planet. A blind
disinterestedness for knowledge's sake is hard to find among these early career
scientists.
Antarctic scientists have a history of involvement in hybridization and
boundary organizations. Scientists participate in cross-domain orchestration through
their participation in SCAR and the advisory committees of the ATS. Scientists
participate on the Committee on Environmental Protection (CEP), as dictated by the
Antarctic Treaty Environmental Protocol. Blending together the interests of different
groups is not simply the purview of formal institutions, but hybridization is also open
to popular depictions of geographic imaginaries. As mentioned earlier in this chapter,
Antarctica has been popularly territorialized as a kind of laboratory for scientists
through a number of books and National Geographic. Other National Geographic
articles would qualify the term laboratory in different ways to stress certain
combinations between Antarctic interests, each of which could be considered an
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attempt to hybridize science with something else. In a 1968 article, Antarctica was
described as both an “International Laboratory,” linking it to the theme of international
cooperation mentioned in the previous section, and a “Laboratory of Peaceful
Exploration” which may have heavily contrasted with the news of the Vietnam War
that the United States was engaged in at the time (Matthews 1968). The laboratory
metaphor would be expanded to encompass the world in one article (Matthews 1973),
and so the classification of Antarctica as a “unique laboratory” became necessary
(Curtsinger 1986). As environmental identities of Antarctica arose, they were also
incorporated into this metaphor as Antarctica became a “vast natural laboratory for the
study of our planet” (Scott 1987, p.541). By studying the planet, the hope became to
prevent environmental catastrophes: "The fifth largest continent is a giant outdoor
laboratory where scientists strive to decipher clues to our planet's history and detect
early warning signs of global pollution" (Hodgson 1990, p.3). This reference indicates
that while the metaphor for a scientifically controlled area has grown to be a powerful
icon for representing Antarctica, it has the capability of incorporating additional ideas
into it. The scientific imagining is pervasive and has become a metaphor still tossed
around in many descriptions of Antarctica. The concept of a laboratory has been
eagerly adopted while at the same time questioned at times by scientists, particularly
biologists who seek to avoid the "artificial" association that laboratory work has
(Siegel-Causey 1998). The propagation of such ideas about Antarctica has established
an Antarctic scientific territoriality that has generated the mythos of an Antarctica
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dominated by science that has been cited before in this chapter. What it also reinforces
is the ideal that science is an unbiased ruler in this environment.
Participation in blending together different ideas through hybridization has
actually contributed to the continuing relevancy and stature of scientists in Antarctica.
As mentioned earlier in the historical section of this chapter, scientists were able to
weather and prosper from the intensification of an environmental sensibility on the
continent by joining forces with environmental interests and utilizing environmental
concerns about the state of the world to justify some of the large-scale and expensive
scientific projects that were taking place in Antarctica. This hybridization of scientific
and environmental concerns yielded much better returns to both groups than the
confrontational encounters that had preceded it. But could a hybridization of scientific
and commercial interests yield similar dividends in the case of Antarctic
bioprospecting?
2.3.3 Postmodern scientific approaches to Antarctic bioprospecting
Although bioprospecting is sometimes represented as a completely scientific
activity, bioprospecting should be considered a hybrid activity that involves other
groups as well. As an activity, bioprospecting falls into the category of techniques and
practices18. Bioprospecting blends distinct ways of life conducted by scientists,
18
The activity of bioprospecting is a hybrid practice, but one might also consider the end patent as a
hybrid material artifact between non-human biological processes and human artifice. There are
currently no hybrid organizations within Antarctica that are exclusively dedicated to bioprospecting, but
outside of Antarctica the CBD might be considered such an organization.
84
business people, and politicians. Scientific expertise is needed to understand the biota
being used and explored and to add to the realm of knowledge as to what effects their
genes or what biochemical processes produce. People within industry use this
information to produce and sell the useful properties produced by those processes.
Policy-makers serve to legitimate the process and regulate it through legislation of
intellectual property rights (IPRs) within and across their borders. The role of
scientists in managing this hybrid activity is non-existent within a hierarchical
bureaucratic model of territoriality, but could be approached through more critical
means provided by science studies scholars.
The process of deconstruction can be very helpful in terms of teasing apart the
complexity of the bioprospecting process. Jabour and Nicol's division of
bioprospecting into four stages of activity that together comprise the process known as
bioprospecting is an example of this deconstruction (Jabour-Green and Nicol 2003).
The breakdown of the bioprospecting into the components of collection, isolation,
screening, and development helps to show how complicated a process it is. Different
stages can involve different people in completely different locations. Therefore a
scientist who collects biotic samples from Antarctica might have nothing to do with
the process of developing a product based upon some biochemical process generated
by that biota. Given that the isolation, screening, and development of synthetic
products based on Antarctic biota can take place outside of Antarctica, naming the IPR
developed as a scientific observation or result from Antarctica that must be shared
according to Article Three of the Antarctic Treaty is a bit of a stretch. Applying the
85
same logic, the movie March of the Penguins could be considered a set of Antarctic
scientific observations that must be freely shared because the initial footage was
gathered within Antarctica.
None of the scholars debating Antarctic bioprospecting seem to be calling for
an out-and-out ban on all bioprospecting activities out of an allegiance to scientific
"purity," but there is a call to make bioprospecting there more transparent and
comprehensive. The discussion of bioprospecting among scientists is complicated by
the perceived shame or disempowerment of scientists involved in bioprospecting
admitting that their research does not conform to Mertonian ideals. As referenced in
the introduction to this chapter, there is a strong stigma within the Antarctic scientific
community associated with expressing an interest in practical outcomes or, even
worse, personal gain. This has resulted in public silence from scientists who would
otherwise support bioprospecting endeavors. In the list of participants in the SCAR
open science meeting in Hobart and the list of patent inventors involved with Antarctic
biota, there is little overlap. The scientists who were filing the patents were not the
scientists working to develop bioprospecting policy for Antarctica or principles for
SCAR to follow. Critiques of bioprospecting similarly seem to draw a line between
scientists who do applied research for industry and scientists who do basic research for
the good of humanity (Graham 2005). The research scientists helping to form the
policies seemed disconnected and even slightly hostile to the scientists who sought
industry funding. Collaborations with university lawyers to determine the potential of
patentability is depicted as either scientists just going along with university policy or
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as having been instigated by the lawyers with scientists hesitant to leave the lab.
Bioprospecting currently has the feel of a marginally acceptable activity that is just not
spoken of in Antarctica by reputable scientists.
Decisions made through internal scientific boundary work about what the
appropriate conduct of science is within Antarctica could also serve to resolve some of
the issues that arise from bioprospecting. Efforts have already begun within SCAR to
address the nuances of this issue in various ways. At SCAR's 29th Delegate meeting in
Hobart, Australia in 2006, the delegates adopted Recommendation 29-4 "Concerning
the Recording of Confidential Data from Commercial Activities." This
recommendation urged national committees to request metadata be gathered in an
Antarctic Master Data Directory whenever possible. This is a weak first step towards
an assertion of freedom of Antarctic information19. At the same meeting, Dr. Walton
sought to amend the "SCAR Code of Conduct on the Use of Animals for Scientific
Purposes." While this was undertaken with primarily the threat of invasive species in
mind, the principles in addressing biological resources examined for bioprospecting
activities would also be covered under this code. A determination that the
development of technology from Antarctic biota constitutes biotechnology and not
science might instantly declassify bioprospecting as a scientific activity. In order for a
viable patent to be issued on an idea, it must be novel and artificial. Scientific
observations in and of themselves are not patentable. If scientists simply seek to derive
knowledge of the truth of the environment that surrounds them, then invention is not a
19
This is noted as a weak step towards information-sharing because so few states have actively
complied with the resolution and sought to share accounts of Antarctic bioprospecting undertaken by
their own citizens.
87
part of that process. Invention is not a pursuit of knowledge, but an act of creation and
creativity. Mario Biagioli colorfully declares that a "creative scientist … is a
fraudulent one" (Biagioli 2003, p.257), because his definition of science is about
observing natural phenomena rather than trying to invent something that has never
been seen before. Depending on what types of science are allowable on the continent,
bioprospecting may be embraced or banned. The distinction between science and
technology is often blurry and the Antarctic Treaty does little to provide any
distinction.
2.4 Conclusion: is bioprospecting a legitimate scientific activity?
The question of whether or not bioprospecting activities in Antarctica violate
the principles behind the third article of the Antarctic Treaty is not a simple one to
answer. In deconstructing the question, it seems to assume that bioprospecting is an
inherently scientific activity, which has not yet been established solidly. If
bioprospecting is to be considered a scientific activity, then scientists should take
responsibility for explaining and/or defending it as such. Scientists seem unable to
fully commit to this project, however, because bioprospecting is a hybrid activity that
involves science, commerce, and politics. Bioprospecting may be considered either
exploitation-driven or technology-driven science in the Jabour and Nicol typology
mentioned earlier. As such, Antarctic scientists are seemingly faced with a choice to
either call for this form of science to be accepted, as part of the diverse postmodern
88
typology of sciences is accepted, or reformed to match more Mertonian expectations
of science in Antarctica. These two choices need not be considered mutually
exclusive, however. Scientists could both accept bioprospecting activities as a type of
Antarctic science while at the same time engaging in efforts to tweak it to make it
more acceptable.
Beyond the consideration of whether or not bioprospecting is science, there is
the complication that arises from the territorial focus that arises from Article Three's
declaration that observations and results from Antarctica should be shared. If
bioprospecting research is conducted on data derived from a sample library which
includes Antarctic biota (such as the Census of Antarctic Marine Life), but not
conducted by scientists who have ever been to Antarctica, are the observations and
results of their research still considered to be from Antarctica? The ability for the ATS
or SCAR to control scientific research that is conducted outside of the territorial
confines of Antarctica is questionable. Whereas such organizations might find success
excluding scientists from returning to Antarctica if they violate expectations of
scientific exchange, imposing penalties on parties that might not even be under the
jurisdiction of ATS member states presents a seemingly insurmountable challenge.
Even if expectations are specifically set out to address the questions above, the
third article of the Antarctic Treaty also makes it clear that the observations and results
of Antarctic research should be made freely available. Yet this aspect is also fraught
with complications. The article does not designate the speed at which scientific
information is expected to be exchanged. Antarctic scientists regularly note that there
89
are different expectations for different disciplines. Meteorological observations are
exchanged nearly instantaneously between stations of different nationalities to
facilitate logistic planning on the continent. Geologists collecting rock samples from
the Transantarctic Mountains might take years to publish results or share their
collected samples with other scientists. The question of how fast biological
information should be exchanged is open to debate under these circumstances, leaving
open the possibility mentioned by Connolly-Stone at the beginning of this chapter that
since patents derived from Antarctic bioprospecting are freely available to be seen and
exclusive use lasts for limited amounts of time, then article three is being observed.
No one has ever held a scientist or government responsible for violations of
Article Three of the Antarctic Treaty. This may be due to high rates of scientific
cooperation in Antarctica, but it may also be a product of the difficulty in proving how
this rule has been violated. Acceptance of bioprospecting as part of a legitimate (if
hybrid) form of science raises a number of additional complex questions. Disowning
bioprospecting as not "pure" enough science for Antarctica seems nearly impossible at
this point given the preponderance of sample collection and work that has already
taken place under the rubric of bioprospecting. Even if the question of how
bioprospecting fits into Antarctic science can be addressed, there still exists the
problem of exclusive access to biological samples and exclusive profits to be derived
from them. The next chapter will address those concerns through an exploration of
property and the idea of the commons within Antarctica.
90
CHAPTER 3
IS ANTARCTIC BIOPROSPECTING A THREAT TO AN ANTARCTIC
COMMONS?
Many people, companies, and governments have been excited about the
exclusive economic returns that investments in biotechnology could generate for
themselves and their localities. Australia held meetings in 2001 to pinpoint
opportunities for their biotechnology companies and to recognize any impediments to
the growth of this profitable industry that might exist. These hearings were conducted
by the Commonweath of Australia's House of Representatives, through their standing
committee on primary industries and regional services, and extended to the question of
how biological research within Antarctica should be conducted. Dr. Thomas
McMeekin, a member of the Australian Society for Microbiology, testified that he
faced a quandary in negotiating the use of samples that he had taken from Antarctica
by the company Cerylid Biosciences:
"The major difficulty was the notion of exclusivity and the fact that Antarctica,
under the Madrid protocol, is a world resource and no-one is supposed to have
exclusivity of the resources from Antarctica." (SCPIRS 2001, p.30)
The use and consumption of certain resources usually implies an exclusive use. Dr.
McMeekin related that an international lawyer that he had consulted, Henry
91
Burnmeister, decided that soil or water samples taken from Antarctica could not be
given exclusively to the company, but that isolates that scientists had labored to
withdraw from the samples could be. This decision both recognized that there was an
implication of common use of resources provided in the Antarctic Treaty System
(ATS) through the Environmental Protocol to the Antarctic Treaty, but that the extent
of this common use need not extend beyond the samples directly collected by
scientists in Antarctica.
Bioprospecting is often framed as a hunt for exclusive biotechnological profits
using naturally-occurring biological resource material as inspiration. To this end,
bioprospectors have been cast as villains stealing knowledge or natural resources from
the people that they rightly belong to, occasionally acquiring the label of "biopirates"
(Shiva 1997). From this standpoint, any motivation to share biological resources
collected from the common area or intellectual resources invented as a result of
subsequent research would be obliterated by the desire to derive as much exclusive
benefit from the resource as possible. The concern over the exclusive research of
Antarctic biological material and the knowledge derived from such research has its
roots in questions of ownership, a concept encompassed by property rights. Private
property rights (based on exclusive ownership) derived from Antarctic bioprospecting
would impinge upon any common property rights (based on communal ownership)
existing there.
Modernist interpretations of property relations tend to either valorize private
ownership or communal ownership. Scholars following the philosophies of John
92
Locke promote the ideal of private property, while followers of Karl Marx tend to
value common property above private. Both of these ideals are diametrically opposed,
but are rooted in a modernist system that seeks to reduce property relationships to
binary categories in which one choice clearly outweighs the other. One of the
problems associated with this popular approach is that it tends to adopt an absolutist
narrative in which resources can either be "pure" common property or make an
irrevocable slide into the "impure" status of private property. Both sides in this
modernist debate adopt a hierarchical bureaucratic territorial approach to Antarctica
and bioprospecting within it, generally favoring the creation of further international
regimes to enforce their ideals.
Postmodern theorists have developed theory that critiques the hierarchical
model of property relations, and this leads to a new territorial model of the Antarctic
commons. The alternative territorial model proposed is non-hierarchical and takes into
account the complexity that property relations present. Property relations come in a
number of different forms of social interactions and interact with the resources that
they are supposed to regulate in ways that are specific to the characteristics of those
resources. Alternative non-hierarchical territorial strategies that empower Antarctic
program participants to create viable common property forms on the continent based
on their own interactions can now be acknowledged through this approach to property.
This chapter will explore how ideas of ownership have been territorialized
within Antarctica and the threat that bioprospecting poses to them. The first section
will further define the bedrock ideas of property and the commons. It will then cover
93
some points in the history of Antarctica related to the development of an Antarctic
commons imaginary or when considerations of common property have arisen. This
history centers on early ideas of Antarctic property, the incorporation of commons
ideas into the ATS and proposals for United Nations (UN) control of Antarctica, and
the construction of Antarctica as a world park. Following that brief summary of
Antarctic history, the two modernist approaches to Antarctic common property will be
expanded upon, followed by another section that details the alternate Antarctic
common property territoriality based on postmodern thought. Integrating these
accounts together, the final section will summarize the arguments for more strategies
to include a less hierarchical territorial approach to common property when
considering Antarctic bioprospecting.
3.1 A History of Antarctic notions of ownership
Before proceeding any further, it is necessary to provide concise definitions of
the terms "property" and particularly "common property." Once these concepts are
clear, this section will investigate three overlapping and interconnected periods of
Antarctic history. The first period encompasses legal property concepts and claims to
resources that were applied to Antarctica during its initial days of exploration. The
second period covers the rise of the Antarctic Treaty and alternate proposals of United
Nations (UN) to control Antarctic resources, resulting in the rise of a concept of
94
Antarctic resources as "the common heritage of mankind20." The third and final period
of Antarctic history related to property rights is the campaign started during the 1980s
to reclassify Antarctica as a wilderness commons through "World Park Antarctica."
Once a backdrop of property relations within Antarctica has been established, it will
be easier to examine the territorialities of property and the commons in the two
sections that follow.
3.1.1 Defining property and the commons
While the word "property" is often strongly associated with the concept of
private property in the English language, property, in fact, has a broader meaning.
Property is referred to as a system of rules that regulates access to and control of
resources, particularly through enforcement of claims (Macpherson 1978; Waldron
1988). One important aspect of property is that the concept is an exceedingly social
one. Most property rights are considered in terms of three broad categories of
ownership - private, state, and community - but there also exist ways of engaging with
property beyond ownership. Beyond ownership, Edella Schlager and Ostrom point out
that there are those who engage with property through being a proprietor, claimant, or
authorized user (Schlager and Ostrom 1992). All of these types are illustrated in
Figure 8. Ownership tends to be stressed most often because owners are generally
accorded the most rights of any resource-users, although additional rules may govern
20
While I would just as soon de-gender this idea and make it the "common heritage of humankind," I
will continue to refer to it in the form of constant reference in order to be consistent with the previous
literature on the concept.
95
where those rights begin and end. The private ownership model assumes a unitary
owner of an object of property (whether that is an individual, the state, or a
community). This owner is separated from others by boundaries which delineate at
which point non-owners may be excluded (Blomley 2004). Both state and community
ownership models assume a collective interest to be met, and are often grouped
together as public property. Within the model of state ownership, the property item is
held in trust for all citizens by the state. The state may grant or deny access to the
property item based upon its own rules and regulations (Demsetz 1967). Disputes over
property use within this model are usually settled according to what benefits the
collective interest most (Waldron 1988). References to commons have become so
96
ubiquitous in the general literature that this has led to problems associating the term
with a specific definition, but most scholars can agree that a commons is a social pact
that allows equitable rights of access to and withdrawal of certain resources of an area
in exchange for operating under collectively decided-upon rules (Schlager and Ostrom
1992). Local community ownership allows public access to a resource predicated upon
continued and active use of the item by an individual in the local community. In
principle, the resource is available to all members of the community equally (Waldron
1988). A broader scale of community has also been considered at the global scale, and
embodied in the concept of the common heritage of mankind.
The common heritage of mankind principle implies that the resource accorded
this title should be held in trust for future generations of humans and not overexploited by state or corporate interests. The distinction adds the component of time to
the already broadened sense of a global community. Not only must the resources in the
common heritage of mankind area be managed with the interests of the whole world in
mind, but also with a consciousness of the future generations of the world. Ideas such
as this had been circulating for a while, with aspects similar to the common heritage of
mankind being articulated in the 1982 United Nations Convention on the Law of the
Sea (UNCLOS)21 and the Outer Space Treaty of 1967. Jennifer Frakes presents the
criticism that a unified definition of the "common heritage of mankind" concept is
difficult to find, but proposes that the idea centers around five principles (Frakes
21
The genesis of the idea in its legal form is generally credited to Arvid Pardo during the intial
negotiations for UNCLOS in 1967. Pardo was also a proponent of closing the gap between rich and
poor states, so part of his proposal involved a responsible level of exploitation of marine resources that
could produce wealth for a fund that would work to close that gap.
97
2003). The first principle is that the physical land or territory within a common
heritage region cannot be appropriated. The status of communal property is therefore
granted to the area not on the basis of physical inaccessibility, but through legal ban.
The second principle is common management, which means that management must be
undertaken by representative from all and not just some states. The third principle is
that benefits derived from resources in a common heritage region should be equitably
shared among all of humankind. Fourth, the activities which occur within common
heritage areas should be peaceful. The fifth and final principle regards the preservation
of the common heritage area and resources for future generations. This principle
incorporates principles of sustainability and conservation, but does not specify how far
into the future long-term planning should extend or what level of equitable resource
use is acceptable to preserve enough for future generations.
3.1.2 Early exploration of Antarctica and claims to ownership
Antarctica was first sighted during an era of colonial expansion when (mostly)
European empires and enterprising individuals sought to exploit the resources of
whatever they could find. Before its discovery, any prospective land in the Southern
hemisphere was legally considered terra incognita (undiscovered land). Even as the
initial explorers mapped out Antarctica, the labeling of the continent as terra incognita
on maps persisted through the early part of the 20th Century because of the
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incompleteness of the exploration22. Claims were initially considered allowable within
Antarctica based upon the widely held perception of the continent as terra nullius
(land owned by no one, or no-man's-land) or res nullius (thing owned by no one). The
idea of Antarctica as terra nullius was easier to enforce than just about anywhere else
in the world because the continent lacked an indigenous population that might
otherwise have protested23. The most popular basis for claims to land and resources
has been effective occupation, uti possidetis juris (as you legally possess), which
usually implies a physical link between the possessor/ claimant and the possession/
claim.
The claim to effective occupation has been interpreted to mean that if one
settles on a piece of land and develops its resources without any prior claims from
others conflicting with the one established by the act, the land and resources are
clearly the possession of that developer. Definitions of use and settlement become
problematic in the Antarctic when it is not clear what resources are being utilized and
settlements are impermanent. Still, the construction of Antarctic bases (however
fleeting) and the conduct of scientific research based on observations of Antarctic
resources have been used to establish a veneer of effective occupation on the
continent. Some scholars can be quite critical of these attempts to establish an
occupational force within Antarctica. Building on arguments put forth by Hugo
Grotius, Deepak Chopra cites the difficultly of controlling, regulating, or occupying
22
Antarctica was only deemed fully mapped out in the 1960s with the comprehensive photos and radar
data gleaned from satellites.
23
The concept of terra nullius was used to devastating effect for Europeans to settle Australia by
removing aboriginal groups from their previously-established territories. The application in Australia
was thus less a statement of fact and more of a colonial land-grab.
99
broad swaths of Antarctica, while negating the idea that Antarctica could be terra
nullius because of the impossibility of subsequently transforming it into uti possidetis
juris (Chopra 1988). According to Chopra, these factors combine to result in the
consideration of Antarctica and its resources as res communis (a communal thing)
because it is nearly impossible to prevent access and because of the elimination of the
possibility that it could be formally claimed under principles of effective occupation.
M. Manzoni and P. Pagnini follow a similar line of logic when they claim that
Antarctica is solely a symbolic territory incapable of effective occupation (Manzoni
and Pagnini 1996). Despite the reasoning of Chopra, Manzoni, and Pagnini, claims to
the continent continued to crop up during the beginning of the 20th Century.
During this early period of exploration and claims, there were few explicit
articulations of Antarctica as a place of common property resources. When initial
expeditions were talked about or valorized, it was usually in nationalist heroic terms,
including the property claims that came with them. One exception to this was
expressed by President Herbert Hoover in reference to a recent expedition by Richard
Byrd:
"I do not minimize the scientific gains of such expeditions, but the human
values are so immediate and so universal in their effect that it may well be that
they transcend the scientific service. Every hidden spot of the earth's surface
remains a challenge to man's will and ingenuity until it has been conquered.
Every conquest of such a difficult goal adds permanently to mankind's sense of
power and security. Great explorers, therefore, do not merely add to the sum of
100
human knowledge, but also they add immensely to the sum of human
inspiration." (Grosvenor and Hoover 1930, p.238)
Speaking in such broad human terms about the accomplishments of one of the United
State's biggest polar heroes might have been a ploy to aggrandize the United States
through making its explorer's accomplishments the pinnacle of human
accomplishments, but there seems to be a note of sincerity in the statement. There is a
connection to a greater humanity through Antarctic exploration, an assumption that the
activity is part of a larger human history. Hoover describes an uncommon experience
that exemplifies a common human endeavor and goal. Sharing in the exploits of Byrd
can be a common experience for all humans and provides a common resource of
human inspiration.
3.1.3 Choosing between the Antarctic Treaty or United Nations trusteeship
As discussions for a possible Treaty to address the Antarctic region moved
forward, the negotiations came down to a choice between a path to internationalization
that would take the parties through the UN or another path that would restrict the
initial agreement to interested parties. J.S. Reeves in 1934 made the argument
articulated by Chopra, proposing the Antarctic be considered as a res communis rather
than terra nullius because of the lack of effective occupation (Reeves 1934). In
February of 1948, the United States proposed two suggestions for Antarctic
internationalization (Hanessian 1960). The first suggestion was that a UN trusteeship
101
be put in place for Antarctica. This notion was largely rejected for the reasons that
there was no ostensible reason for the UN to be involved beyond token
acknowledgement, that the UN was a security organization and, with no apparent
strategic value, the Antarctic was useless; furthermore, a trusteeship was an
arrangement set up to advance the needs of a local population - something that was
lacking in the Antarctic. The second proposal was for a "multiple condominium"
arrangement wherein authority and control would belong to states with a stake in
Antarctica already. While the scope of which states had a substantial stake in
Antarctica was questioned, in general this idea gained more traction. As time
progressed, the empowerment of condominium thinking largely silenced the idea of
common global interests being met by an Antarctic Treaty. The idea of Antarctic
resources being managed by the UN for the good of humankind is one that would arise
again and again, usually from states and groups not members of the Antarctic Treaty.
It was the "condominium" proposal which was eventually developed into what is
today the Antarctic Treaty.
Nowhere in the texts of the Antarctic Treaty or its related documents is the
word “property” ever explicitly used, and yet it is implicitly incorporated into the
fabric of governance. Given the definitions of property above, Antarctic governance
clearly regulates access to and use of a number of Antarctic resources. This implies
that a limited set of property rights exist for certain objects on the continent, as
legislated through the ATS. One observation that pervades is that freedom of access
trumps any right to exclude within Antarctica. Other laws that might be applicable to
102
individuals in Antarctica are derived, according to Article Eight, from the states of
which they are citizens: "[Personnel] shall be subject only to the jurisdiction of the
Contracting Party of which they are nationals" (Treaty 1959). This encapsulates
national laws about property, allowing the ATS to rely on its member states to worry
about the bulk of property law that has developed around individuals and their
property rights.
The idea of a commons is another concept never explicitly advanced within
Antarctic Treaty documents, although there were a number of references to a greater
"mankind" being served through such international legislation. Within the preamble of
the Antarctic Treaty, "mankind" is mentioned twice. The first time it is mentioned, it is
in the context of the "interest of mankind" being served through the exclusively
peaceful use of Antarctica. The second reference articulates the idea that the
continuation of scientific freedom established during the International Geophysical
Year (IGY) would serve both the interests of science and the "progress of all
mankind." The preamble also acknowledges the UN by saying that the member
countries of the ATS are convinced that the treaty will further the goals of the UN
Charter. What UN involvement offers is the promise that nearly the entirety of
humanity is represented by one government or another within its governance structure.
Such total inclusion is also joined by declarations of universal human values which all
participant states have agreed to in the form of the UN Declaration of Human Rights.
Proposals that the "question of Antarctica" be directly managed by the UN have also
been ignored or met with hostility.
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The idea of UN control over Antarctic has been repeatedly raised by
individuals and some non-ATS member states before the creation of the Antarctic
Treaty. In September of 1948, Julian Huxley proposed that the UN should establish its
own internationalization of Antarctica. In January of 1956, New Zealand Prime
Minister Walter Nash suggested that Antarctica could be classified as some sort of
"world territory" controlled by the UN. While these ideas were popular with polar
personalities such as Admiral Richard Byrd and Sir Edward Shackleton24, they gained
little traction in official circles. The first formal proposal by a state to place Antarctica
under the control of the UN was put forward by India. India first proposed that the
"Question of Antarctica" be considered an agenda item for the UN at the 11th UN
General Assembly in February of 1956. This proposal was in large part based upon the
statement made by Nash. Klaus Dodds speculates that one important Indian
motivation in bringing up the issue to the UN might be to prevent Indian exclusion
from the pattern of resource exploitation in the Southern Ocean that was shaping up at
the time (Dodds 1997b). India withdrew this proposal in November of 1956 at the
behest of its British Commonwealth partners, who objected to the implication that
their claims to the continent might be stripped away by any UN management. India
brought forth a revised proposal for UN involvement in Antarctica in July of 1958
with language softened from its original 1957 proposal to accommodate the countries
that had claims to Antarctica. The proposal was placed on the agenda of the 13th UN
General Assembly. Once again, the proposal failed to gain wide support and the Nash
24
Ernest Shackleton (15 July 1911 – 22 September 1994) was the son of the Antarctic explorer Ernest
Shackleton as well as a British Labour party politician and geographer. In 1971, he would become the
president of the Royal Geographical Society.
104
government of New Zealand played a key role in reassuring the Indian government of
the peaceful intentions of the selected states involved in exclusive discussion of
Antarctic internationalization (Dodds 1997b). India considered raising the same issue
again in 1959, but decided not to because the formal negotiations of the Antarctic
Treaty were already underway.
After India acceded to the Antarctic Treaty and became one of its consultative
parties25, politicians from Malaysia resurrected the idea that the resources of the
Antarctic would be better-managed under UN control. Rohan Tepper and Marcus
Haward provide a good summary of the political positions of Malaysia regarding
Antarctica in their article, "The Development of Malaysia's position on Antarctica:
1982 to 2004" (Tepper and Haward 2005). The Prime Minister of Malaysia, Mahathir
bin Mohamad26, expressed concerns about the ATS similar to those posed by India
earlier. Historically contingent factors leading to the Malaysian pursuit of this issue
were remarkably akin to those listed above by Dodds as important for India, excepting
the first concern about nuclear testing and militarization. The resource exploitation
that concerned Mahahthir the most was the discussion of mineral exploitation going
on within the ATS, which he considered a colonial agreement to be opposed.
Mahahthir, in his addresses to the UN General Assembly, drew strongly on the
rhetoric of Antarctic resources being the common heritage of mankind and therefore
25
India acceded to the Antarctic Treaty on August 19, 1983 and was immediately granted consultative
status on September 12, 1983.
26
Mahathir bin Mohamad (July 10, 1925 - present) served as Prime Minister of Malaysia from 1981 to
2003. During that time, he brought up the issue of Antarctica at the UN numerous times both personally
and through official statements of his government.
105
their legitimate overseers were the countries of the entire world represented by the UN
and not by the limited number of states represented by the ATS.
3.1.4 The creation and implementation of Antarctica World Park
The idea of declaring areas as the common heritage of mankind has been a
bedrock foundation not only of states challenging the authority of the ATS, but of the
environmental movement in Antarctica. The idea of a common heritage of mankind
has been expressed within Antarctic environmentalism through the advocacy of a
"World Park Antarctica." This concept has often been credited with first emerging at
the Second World Conference on National Parks in 1972, cosponsored by the
International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) and UNESCO. Within the
text of the discussion of that conference, participant Dr. Ricardo Luti refers to the fact
that a proposal to classify Antarctica as a World Park had previously been raised by
Argentina at an Antarctic Treaty Consultative Meeting (ATCM)27 (IUCN 1972).
Despite this account, in many popular versions of the origin of the World Park
Antarctica idea, the Second World Conference on National Parks is credited as the
origin (Barnes 1982; Peterson 1988; May 1989; Berkman 2002). The five components
of the common heritage of mankind concept appear to be well-represented in the
27
Luti is vague about at which ATCM this proposal was introduced, and early final reports regarding
ATCMs generally omit details about proposals discussed and not adopted. Early ATCM Final Reports
focused instead on the recommendations that were adopted. At the first ATCM meeting at Canberra,
Australia in 1961, however, it is clear that conservation of natural resources was a priority and a
recommendation regarding "General Rules of Conduct for Preservation and Conservation of Living
Resources in Antarctica" was adopted (Recommendation I -VIII).
106
World Park Antarctica recommendation that emerged from this conference. This idea
was adopted by environmental groups with interests in Antarctica.
Using calls for a World Park Antarctica as a rallying cry, Greenpeace
cautiously proceeded to both legitimate the ATS while at the same time deliver a harsh
critique of its record on environmental issues. Greenpeace challenged the
complacency of states involved in the Antarctic by sending their own inspectors to
national stations in order to evaluate compliance with existing environmental
standards, protesting several ATCMs, and establishing (from 1987 to 1992) a World
Park Antarctica base at Cape Evan on Ross Island, Antarctica. Greenpeace served as
an oppositional force to the ATS by taking these independent actions without
consulting the states involved, often disrupting planned activities by those countries on
and around the continent. Greenpeace's actions might also be interpreted as attempting
to conform to ATS standards by attempting to gain legitimacy within the ATS through
the establishment of their own scientific base and enacting the Antarctic Treaty
inspections allowed (and some say, encouraged) by Articles Seven and Eight of the
Treaty. Greenpeace clarified its contradictory positions and goals regarding the
continent within John May's The Greenpeace Book of Antarctica: A New View of the
Seventh Continent (May 1989). May is quick to state that Greenpeace's position is that
there is no need to go outside of the Antarctic Treaty to accomplish this goal.
Greenpeace's cautionary statement above seems to recognize that ATS parties would
not even consider any proposals that force them to share authority with the UN. But
May does suggest that one UN body could provide an approach to creating a World
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Park designation for Antarctica. The Convention Concerning the Protection of World
Cultural and Natural Heritage, held at Paris, France in 1972 and sponsored by
UNESCO is specifically mentioned. Greenpeace campaign assistant Maj de Poorter
articulated her criticism of the ATS states in the following way during a log of the
January 1987 voyage of the MV Greenpeace to establish the World Park Antarctica
base in Antarctica:
"The ultimate aim [of the establishment of the World Park Antarctica base]: to
urge forward the declaration of Antarctica as a World Park, where the use of
natural resources to commercial ends will be prohibited. Seems logical? For
most people, yes, but not for the heads of the Treaty states, who 'manage'
Antarctica. They are at this moment busily negotiating the mineral exploitation
of Antarctica - behind closed doors, of course. We must put a stop to this
before we lose the last paradise on Earth." (May 1989, p.160)
The use of resources for commercial ends (i.e private property) is considered
anathema to the ideal of a World Park. Since the representatives to the ATS were
considering this they were seen as acting against both the will of "most people" and
logic. One important loophole that this statement does extend is to allow for noncommercial use of Antarctic resources to be implicitly considered as potentially
worthy.
108
3.2 Modern standpoints on property
This section will explore the modern approaches to property and their
engagements with Antarctica and the debate about bioprospecting there through the
use of hierarchical bureaucratic territorialization. The section will begin by
investigating some principle philosophies that underlie bureaucratic management of
the commons, primarily those first articulated by Locke and Marx, and the subsequent
scholarship that extends from (or has accreted on top of) these thinkers. The values of
best use and equity are seen as best regulated through a bureaucratic structure that can
prioritize the good of the many over the good of the few. The balance of these ideas is
particularly tested through bioprospecting. The bureaucratic model of territoriality will
then be shown to be reflected in the ways that the commons has attempted to be
inscribed onto the Antarctic continent in general, particularly through the actions of
environmental groups. Finally, this section will demonstrate how ideas of the
Antarctic commons have been regularly applied to the case of bioprospecting on the
continent. Bioprospecting is regularly depicted as a one-way process of privatization
within Antarctic discourses. In the course of this transformation of resources from
common to private property, it is the responsibility of those who value an ATS
commons to siphon off whatever equitable benefits they can for the common good.
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3.2.1 Lockean and Marxist approaches to ownership
Within modernist thought, there has been a conflict between the forces that
favor a more limited form of property ownership through private property and the
forces that favor common property ownership. There are accounts of property
ownership throughout history, but two particular contributions have been crucial to
form the sides of this debate. The first side of the debate requires a bureaucracy to step
in and set the rules for a private property system. This approach is largely based in the
writings of John Locke. The other side suggests that systems of private property have
been built up to be exploitative and help certain groups dominate. The solution is to
create a hierarchical bureaucracy that abolishes this private property and instead
valorizes common or state property managed by organizations for the good of all of
the people. Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels advanced this perspective. While the two
sides might be diametrically opposed, both assume that hierarchical bureaucracies will
establish their values in a territory through forms of property law.
The writings of John Locke gave private property its current moral
underpinning. Locke's 1698 musings on property turned to the bible for reasoning
about how property relations should ideally work. Locke found a divine command to
use resources dictating a policy of "best use" (Locke 1960). According to Locke,
everything is made by God and is not meant to be spoiled or destroyed by humans. All
things start out as having been given in common by God, but it is through
appropriating an item from those commons that it truly becomes property. Avoiding
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"spoilage" leads humans to use the objects from their environment in a very immediate
way. Through labor and the use of resources, human beings and social groups are able
to establish rights to private ownership out of what was originally a world without
such order. Locke postulated that this was not only what happened, but that it was a
good model to follow:
"To which let me add, that he who appropriates land to himself by his labour,
does not lessen but increase the common stock of mankind. For the provisions
serving to the support of humane life, produced by one acre of inclosed and
cultivated land are (to speak much within compasse) ten times more, than
those, which are yielded by an acre of land, of an equal richnesse, lyeing wast
in common." (Locke 1960, p.294)28
Locke's line of reasoning endorses the granting of private property rights to those who
can make the best use of whatever resource is in question. Central to Locke's
narratives of privatization is the virtue of the resource in being privatized. This
sentiment would later be valorized again through Garrett Hardin's argument in "The
Tragedy of the Commons," where he argued that when resources are managed in a
commons they tend to become over-exploited and when private property rights are
applied to those same resources better management arises (Hardin 1968). Human
beings are assumed to always act in their own immediate self-interest when it comes
to resource usage, and so this will inevitably lead to cheating in what Hardin perceived
as an unregulated commons. The proposed solution to the perceived problem of the
commons has been legislation. The main regulator and manager of private property
28
Original spelling preserved here from John Locke.
111
rights for both Locke (Locke 1960, p.299) and Hardin (Hardin 1968, pp.1245-1246) is
the state. John Commons has pointed out that property precedes sovereignty in
Locke's view (Commons 1934, p.26), with God bequeathing resources to humans to
use, but the proper way to accord property rights is usually translated through social
institutions such as the state. While labor is supposed to be a basis of ownership, there
need to be laws in place to protect resources from being acquired by the strong.
Property rights benefit strongly from a stable hierarchical bureaucracy in order to
ensure fairness and work against the impulses of humans to accumulate for themselves
at the collective expense.
The second, and opposite, prominent philosophy of property and its
privatization from the commons comes from Karl Marx. In Marx's model of property
relations, common property is valued above private property. Marx avoids the
religious edicts that Locke used to underlie his system and instead interprets the
concept of private property as originating from theft and dispossession. Marx provides
examples of the expansion of private property at the expense of state and common
property in the expropriation of land from serfs in the 14th Century, the taking of land
from the Catholic church during the 16th Century reformation, as well as in actions
taken during his lifetime in the 19th Century:
"The parliamentary form of robbery is that of 'Bills for Inclosure of Commons',
in other words decrees by landowners grant themselves the people's land as
private property, decrees of expropriation of the people." (Marx 1976, p.885)
112
The creation of private property is therefore a negative act that leads to scarcity that is
perpetuated by the capitalist system that developed afterward. The ideal should
therefore be to correct this imbalance of ownership of resources and return to common
property. While both Locke and Marx seem to acknowledge a historical shift away
from common property rights for most resources to increasingly more private property
rights of those resources, they disagree on whether or not this is to be desired. The
central difference comes from each philosopher's goals with Marx desiring more of a
return to common property and Locke encouraging the process of privatization. Marx
and Engels would articulate this goal in their "Communist Manifesto" by calling for
the abolition of private property and a return of property to a kind of commons (Marx
and Engels 1978). In the manifesto, they address the question of whether they are
seeking to destroy countries and nationalities by stating that the proletariat worker
class that they seek to empower has no country that adequately represents them. It is
therefore the communist goal to see that countries stop exploiting both their workers
and whole other countries through colonialism and unfair trade practices. Marx and
Engels do not therefore seek to do away with states, but just their exploitative
practices. In reference to the reformation of property laws, they even provide a laundry
list of measures that may be implemented in "the most advanced countries" (Marx and
Engels 1978, p.490). Common (or state) property is therefore best implemented by
hierarchical bureaucracies that control territories in Marx's model valorizing common
property.
113
3.2.2 Modern Property in Antarctica
The attitude that Antarctica contains no legal property rights and therefore
requires the construction of such rights through international agreement is articulated
at crisis points in Antarctic history. One such crisis point was the rejection of
CRAMRA and the promotion of a World Park Antarctica in the late 1980s, illustrated
earlier in the historical section of this chapter. Phillip Law, the former director of the
Australian Antarctic Division (AAD)29, spoke in exasperation about environmentalist
efforts to block CRAMRA in this vein:
"There is, at present no way of preventing a nation or a company from carrying
out prospecting or actual mining in Antarctica. There is a kind of 'gentlemen's
agreement' between the Antarctic treaty nations for a temporary moratorium on
mining, but this does not provide any legally enforceable measures and, in any
case, does not cover the non-treaty nations. Surely international agreement for
a minerals convention would be preferable to the present vacuum." (Law 1990,
p.79)
Law's articulation of a property rights "vacuum" is quite vivid and serves to empty the
space of any property rights at all. It is a void to be filled. The argument for accepting
the legislation of CRAMRA is therefore that something is better than nothing and that,
as of 1990, nothing was in place to address mineral rights in the ATS. In Law's
statement about Antarctica, he assumes that the condition of Antarctic resources revert
to res nullius without legislation in place to declare otherwise. In such a state, all may
29
Phillip Law was the AAD director from 1949 to 1966.
114
access and claim the resources of Antarctica without fear of reprisal. This is an echo of
the tragedy of the commons argument given by Hardin. The pristine and untouched
nature of Antarctic space is used to conceptually empty it of any other social meaning
or relationships that might actually exist within that space, a technique of territoriality
pointed out by Robert Sack earlier (Sack 1986). This is one of the many techniques of
territoriality that may be employed by bureaucratic institutions.
Another approach to this issue that involves Antarctic hierarchical bureaucracy
as a territorial approach is the idea that Antarctica and its resources already exist as res
communis. Christopher Joyner spends most of one book, Governing the Frozen
Commons, justifying why Antarctica should be considered the common heritage of
mankind according to a number of different criteria. One of the main points given is
the idea that since Antarctica is not under the sovereign control of a state or ownership
of anyone, it must therefore operate as a commons:
"Since sovereignty claims are rendered nonoperative [sic] under Article IV of
the Antarctic Treaty, the condition that ownership rights not be actively
exercised is satisfied in part. Put another way, under the Antarctic Treaty
System neither the continent nor its circumpolar waters are owned by anyone
but are effectively managed by all treaty parties. While neither sovereignty nor
ownership rights are actively evidenced by state practice under the Antarctic
Treaty System, the rights and duties for such resource use and exploitation are
separately set out in appendage resource regimes. As a consequence, the
Antarctic Treaty System has evolved more as a free access regime than as a
115
regime predicated on ownership rights. This situation made it easier to
appropriate resources in the Antarctic area without appropriating the entire
commons space." (Joyner 1998, p.253)
Joyner's perspective is that while ownership rights are not evident in the ATS, rights
and responsibilities still exist in order to manage the commons space that he frames
Antarctica as. There is a lack of ownership rights, but that does not create an empty
void in the social structure of the continent as it does for Law. Instead, the space is
regulated by the ATS and its subsequent appendages as a free access regime. In
envisioning a communal space, environmentalists have used the framework of a
World Park Antarctica to evoke what the management of such a space would look
like. It evokes visions of a pristine area that is available for humans to visit, but
withheld from commercial interests. This vision was physically enacted on the
continent by Greenpeace volunteers establishing the World Park Antarctica base and
conducting their own expeditions to the continent. The vision of an articulated world
park stands in stark comparison to Law's vacuum that aches to be filled.
Lack of private ownership rights alone is not the only basis of a claim to an
Antarctic commons. There are arguments that build upon the nature of the resources
under threat of privatization. Herber provides a body of work that has built a case for
the consideration of Antarctica, as well as for the specific resources derived from it, as
a general commons (Herber 1991; Herber 1992; Herber 2006; Herber 2007). Herber's
case for the consideration of Antarctica as a "world park" commons territory is
theoretically underpinned by two notions: the presence of common property resources
116
and the production of public goods (Herber 1992). The idea of common property
resources generally refer to natural resources which are not restrained by any formal
property rights and are therefore open to unrestricted access. Elements of the natural
environment of Antarctica are considered common property resources by Herber
because the ATS lacks explicit property rights. From Herber's perspective, a world
park designation would produce or support a number of public goods: resources that
are both non-rivalrous (consumption of the resource by one person does not denigrate
or reduce the amount of the resource for use by others) and non-excludable (it is
difficult to prevent individuals from accessing the resource). These public goods
include political stability, the environment, and science.
The two impulses described above, one valorizing private property and the
other valorizing communal property, are often counterposed to each other in Antarctic
contexts. Keith Suter, at the behest of Australian Friends of the Earth, articulated the
debate over mineral exploitation in stark contrast in the title of his book Antarctica:
Private Property or Public Heritage? (Suter 1991). The title provides only a mutually
exclusive choice between a privatized Antarctica and one dedicated to public heritage.
As with visions of science in Antarctica articulated in chapter 2, the idea of Antarctica
as a communal property space is often presented as a choice between purity and
impurity. The advance of any commercial interest in Antarctica is therefore seen as a
threat to the overall status of the continent as a purely communal area with resources
managed by all30. Privatization of any resource derived from Antarctica is therefore
30
The perspective of Law in his quote presented earlier articulates the opposite view that private
property is the pure good and common property is the impurity that creates problems.
117
perceived as a threat to the integrity of the communal nature of the place, and must be
addressed as such. This protective attitude towards Antarctic resources has been
evident in the rhetoric surrounding Antarctic bioprospecting, particularly in regards to
IPR.
3.2.3 Modernist property and Antarctic bioprospecting
Bernard Herber addresses both knowledge and biota as common property
within Antarctica. Herber valorizes common property ownership and seeks to justify
its status by building on Joseph Stiglitz's conception of knowledge as a global public
good which cannot exclude others and can be consumed without taking away from
others (Stiglitz 1999). Herber posits that a knowledge commons does exist in
Antarctica:
"[S]cientific research in Antarctica exhibits important global public good
characteristics since its benefits fall under the classification of the global public
good, knowledge." (Herber 2006, p. 143)
Herber cites the exchange of scientific personnel and trading of scientific observations
as evidence that this commons exists31. Article Three of the Antarctic Treaty certainly
frames the results of scientific labor as existing in the public domain, which is part of
31
There are a number of other examples of this that Herber does not mention. Meteorological stations
work together to produce forecasts of weather on the continent that anyone can use. The exchange of
data also exists in the biological sciences, with the Census of Antarctic Marine Life (CAML) not only
creating a database of known Antarctic marine organisms, but placing that catalog online for open
access to all through its companion organization the Scientific Committee for Antarctic Research's
Marine Biodiversity Information Network (SCAR-MarBIN, accessible through
http://www.scarmarbin.be/). All of this supports the notion of an Antarctic knowledge commons where
information is freely exchanged.
118
the ethical quandary that Antarctic scientists are shown to be wrestling with in the
second chapter. Any impingement on the qualities that make science a public good are
interpreted as a form of corruption. Herber adopts this argument when he argues that
patents derived from bioprospecting are a problem for the ATS:
"[P]atents take some knowledge out of the public domain and place it in the
private domain by assigning property rights to the inventor and, in doing so,
create the possibility of private sector profits. When such intellectual property
rights are created, the public good becomes 'mixed' with private good
characteristics and, hence, the resulting economic good may be more
appropriately termed an 'impure' or 'quasi' public good rather than a pure
public good." (Herber 2006, p.141)
The focus on the purity of public goods stresses an all-or-nothing approach to the
argument about bioprospecting in Antarctica. If patents are allowed to be derived from
biological research conducted on the continent, then the public status of knowledge is
made 'impure' by attaching a property of excludability to it. Herber does not desire
this.
Herber's argument is further extended to the common status of biota studied.
There is no claim here to a depletion of biological resources from Antarctica, just a
corruption of their spirit. Herber cites ASOC for the following passage:
"In effect, bioprospecting amounts to another 'commodification' of Antarctic
nature, that is, the creation of tradable commodities from resources, in this
instance genetic or chemical compounds." (Herber 2006, p.143)
119
Biological organisms are therefore re-"created" as tradable commodities. At the same
time, Herber seems to acknowledge that there is no getting rid of bioprospecting from
Antarctica. Its commercial pollution of the Antarctic commons is irreversible, and now
something that needs to be managed. Herber ends his article on Antarctic
bioprospecting with a call to establish a comprehensive Antarctic bioprospecting
regime (Herber 2006). He does note that the ATS has the option of doing nothing, but
refers to this as a "reckless" path when compared to the options of allowing resources
to be considered national public goods under a CBD-related regime or as global public
goods under a common heritage principle.
While Jabour supports the idea of regulation of bioprospecting through the
ATS, she adopts the alternative discourse to Herber and views the continent as an
unowned space where the commons is not the highest value. Jabour is quick to point
out that there exists a perception of Antarctica as a sort of commons, but does not
seem to fully support this interpretation (Jabour-Green and Nicol 2003, p.107).
Jabour's Lockean interpretation of the situation is that bioprospecting is an ideal
industry for Antarctica (as well as the high seas) because it provides additional
funding for science and is unlikely to have negative environmental impacts. The only
question that remains is how to equitably divide the benefits of bioprospecting. In
regards to the status of Antarctica as a commons, Jabour prefers to describe the area as
unowned (Jabour 2010, p.27), reflecting a sentiment that the area and its resources are
res nullius. Jabour goes further and characterizes the current situation of Antarctic
bioprospecting as being akin to Hardin's tragedy of the commons (Jabour-Green and
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Nicol 2003, p.106), with resources under threat because they have not yet been
regulated by a system of private property. This is more in line with Locke's reasoning
on property. Jabour concludes that the few states and organizations that support a
perception of Antarctica as a commons are not in a position to influence the ATS, the
true bureaucratic authority in the area:
"The prospect of a challenge by developing countries based on commons
arguments is remote, to say the least, and the supremacy of the ATCPs32 goes
unchallenged today, 50 yr into their governance. It is plain from their
behaviour that they do not embrace commons arguments except insofar as the
individual legal instruments promote peace, cooperation and science, and
environmental safeguards to help retain environmental integrity. Developing
countries are naturally limited in their ability to access Antarctic resources, due
in part to a lack of capacity, and the argument the ATCPs would run—if
challenged on how Antarctic activities benefit all mankind—is to offer peace,
scientific results and a pristine environment as alternatives, thereby satisfying
any possible contradiction over ethics." (Jabour 2010, p.28)
As long as the continent produces peace, scientific results, and a pristine environment
as end results of bioprospecting, the activity is not only allowable but could be
perceived as contributing to a greater good. It is an impressive claim that after any
activity has taken place in the Antarctic it may still be considered pristine, but this is
an example of delving back into the rhetoric of purity/ impurity to promote Jabour's
position. There have been challenges to the ATS through territorializations of an
32
ATCPs = Antarctic Treaty Consultative Parties.
121
Antarctic commons in the past, as illustrated in the historical section of this chapter,
but the present day situation has no evidence of organizations that are willing to
confront the ATS with a similar commons territorialization regarding bioprospecting.
3.3 Postmodern models of property and the commons
This section will explore a more complex territorialization of the commons at
work in the Antarctic. The section will begin with a brief summary of the work that
Elinor Ostrom has conducted on the reformation of the commons as a complex entity,
reinforced by some voices from geography. The complexity shown by empirical
studies illustrates that the values displayed by Marx and Locke can sometimes be seen
in the same actions taken to alter property relations, that resources can have properties
that make them more or less viable as common property, and that ownership types are
social creations that can be altered through human action. Next, the chapter will dispel
the oft-stated contention that Antarctica lacks property rights through a demonstration
of private, state, and community ownership at one Antarctic base. The point that
ownership types can be flexible is important and will be illustrated in that Antarctic
context as well. Finally, the transformation of ownership types will be revealed to be a
reality that does not threaten a geographical imagining of an Antarctic commons as
long as it is not held up to purist standards. Acknowledgement of the legitimacy of
other types of property ownership may be the first step to showing how the
maintenance of an effective commons can hold them all together.
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3.3.1 Ostrom's critiques of modernist property
Ostrom challenged both Lockean and Marxist depictions of the commons,
suggesting that alternative and more empirical studies of common property could yield
more insight into how commons actually functioned. Ostrom observes that the
universalization of the property theories advanced by either Locke and Marx has both
1) not always met with success enough to justify one over the other and 2) ignored
realities that did not conform to its narrative. Ostrom then proceeds to cite and
examine cases of self-organized and self-governing common property resources that
avoid formal hierarchical bureaucracies. She does frame her study in terms of
institutional organization and change, but Ostrom's concern is centered on how
individuals can engage with these systems. One of the central questions that runs
through Ostrom's teaching and research is "how can individuals influence the rules
that govern their lives" (Ostrom 2002, p.191). This focus on ground-up social
constructions of commons led to the exploration of a wide diversity of different types
of locally-produced commons. This multiplicity of different geographical imaginaries
of commons around the world is valued by Ostrom for its diversity rather than its
uniformity (Ostrom, Burger et al. 1999). The take-away lesson is local conceptions of
property and their interactions with unique cultures and resources must be
acknowledged and valued by any common property resource system that is to be put
into place. This is a precept not typically followed by the application of Locke and
123
Marx, which both rely on the imposition of property hierarchies and values from
above.
Ostrom's emphasis on studying the geographically particular imaginings of
common property rather than examining them strictly through Lockean or Marxist
assumptions has been recently echoed by a number of geographers. Nicholas Blomley
echoes Ostrom's sentiment when he points out that the dominant view that private
property is to be valued over common property "…obscures the varied and inventive
ways in which property actually gets put to work in the world" (Blomley 2005, p.127).
An entire issue of Antipode in 2007 was dedicated to the exploration of the broad issue
of privatization, and drew primarily on a number of different local examples of
property relations from around the world33. In her introduction to the issue, Becky
Mansfield observes that privatization "…mystifies property relations by erasing
complexity" (Mansfield 2007a, p.399). Mansfield goes on to say that one of the
findings of the articles in the issue is that if one frames their approach to property
relations in an essentialized way, the actual empirical results of property analysis seem
unintuitive. Reality becomes problematic for strict believers in the universality of
Marx or Locke's theories.
The solution seems to be to acknowledge the complexity in the various
activities surrounding property without ignoring the evidence that might contradict
one theory or the other. The complex reality of property does not always conform
neatly to the expectations articulated by theory. Charles Macpherson has been
33
This was Antipode 39(2) and was later turned into a book: Mansfield, Becky (ed.) (2008).
Privatization: Property and the Remaking of Nature-Society Relations. Malden, MA: Blackwell.
124
particularly cited as trying to reform property definitions as including a right not to be
excluded (Blomley 2010). This right not be excluded is part of a reformulation of
property that blends the personal liberties extolled by Locke with the Marxist
recognition that exclusivity has the potential to negate those liberties. In addition to
Macpherson, other property-related ideas have developed in order to strike a balance
between the raw opportunity and exploitation offered by the private property valued
by Locke and the needs of the human community as expressed by Marx. In
Mansfield's contribution to the Antipode issue mentioned above, she points out that the
development of the community development quota for fisheries in Alaska has
components of both a logic of neoliberal privatization and a logic involving the
redistribution of wealth (Mansfield 2007b). The original concept of bioprospecting
also represents a negotiated compromise between the ideals of Locke and Marx.
Recalling the origins of the term established in the first chapter, Thomas Eisner's
original intent was to correct for the rampant exploitation of biota from poorer
countries by putting a system in place that compensated such countries for the use of
their biota (Eisner 1989). Without the concept of benefit-sharing derived from
bioprospecting, there is no system set in place to compensate local people for the
utilization of their biota for the purposes of refining their biochemical or genetic
aspects for biotechnological purposes. Bioprospecting therefore encourages a system
in which a state and/or local community is compensated with private money and/or a
share of potential patent profits in exchange for the access that they grant companies/
scientists to publicly-owned biota.
125
Similarly, the distinctions between user types of engagement with resources
given property rights is also made complex by the fact that property relations can
change. The most obvious changes are illustrated through the process of privatization,
in which public (state or community) resources are transformed into privately-owned
resources. The previously mentioned philosophical approaches of Locke and Marx
seem to both assume that the commons exists as a natural state before human labor
alters it. This is not entirely accurate. Since all property rights are social constructions,
no property existed before human property invented the social relation. Res nullius is a
perhaps more fitting term to describe a pre-social state of world resources. The
communal aspects of resources are constructed by society and in no way natural. Marx
elucidates on the need to use revolutionary class struggle to overthrow current
property systems and install a commons in their place (Marx and Engels 1978).
Accounts of the early history of Antarctic exploration mentioned earlier in this chapter
elucidate some of the ways in which state property has been created through effective
occupation (uti possidetis juris). These three claims to ownership can be enacted
through a number of different techniques, though, and not just the sweeping social
constructions mentioned above. The imposition of each different form of property
ownership is evidenced within Antarctica.
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3.3.2 Postmodern ownership in Antarctica
All three ownership forms of property can be said to co-exist in Antarctica on a
practical level, and items may shift from existing in one category to another.
Antarctica does not simply exist as a global commons or as a pile of as-yet unclaimed
private resources, but rather is comprised of a number of complicated property types.
Generally, transformations of property take place in converting from either state or
private property into communal property. Certain huts and other structures left by
early explorers are regularly regarded as common property, even if their origins were
from private or state-funded expeditions. After the United States had decided to
abandon Wilkes Station (which it had constructed in 1957 for the International
Geophysical Year), Australia took over the facility and renamed it Casey Station in
February of 1959 (Rubin 1996). One A-frame hut that New Zealand possesses was a
discard from the United States Antarctic Program. As more and more states become
interested in conducting scientific research in Antarctica, communally shared stations
are also becoming more commonplace. It is therefore hard to neatly classify a single
system of property within Antarctica as being solely state-owned, communally-owned,
or privately-owned. What is needed is an understanding that incorporates the messy
blending of all forms of property. The line between private and public interests can
become blurred.
The implications of this reality on a geographical imaginary of Antarctica as a
commons is that the area and resources within it should not strive to attain the status of
127
a "pure" commons or "pure" system of private property with no other property rights
acknowledged, but rather strive to promote and encourage the adoption of common
property as one of many different approaches to property. The insistence on a single,
dominant ownership type of property would usurp the daily lives of the individuals
working at bases such as McMurdo. Any policy regarding Antarctic bioprospecting
would do well to be constructed along the system of logic of the people that actually
work and live in Antarctica.
3.3.3 Postmodern property ideas applied to Antarctic bioprospecting
Bioprospecting in Antarctica may not be a threat to a geographical imagining
of Antarctica as a commons if resource commons are regarded as essential
components of Antarctic life rather than the sole dominating force of social relations
on the continent. A complex territorialization of the commons in Antarctica
acknowledges that common property rights are useful in facilitating social interactions
on the continent, but are able to do so in concert with other ownership types.
According to postmodern understandings of property, the ownership characteristics of
property can change in ways other than privatization. As mentioned earlier, patents
provide a temporary monopoly on the use of IPRs. The owner of the patent may sell
access to the intellectual property that is owned, but only for a limited amount of
time34. The IPRs are private for a limited amount of time before becoming common
34
A typical patent in the United States is a 20-year monopoly on use, starting from when the patent
application was filed. This is referred to as the term of the patent.
128
knowledge. The maintenance of a knowledge commons that is ready to receive the
information coming from an expired patent is an important element of ensuring its
continued utility. Patent law is seen as the only law that serves to regulate
bioprospecting in any form in Antarctica at the moment (Tvedt forthcoming). While
Antarctic bioprospecting has been depicted as a form of privatization, Kim ConnollyStone has pointed out that it is only a temporary one (Connolly-Stone 2005). As such,
the knowledge will rejoin the knowledge commons eventually. The question then
becomes how long a period of exclusivity is too long for knowledge derived from
Antarctica? It is difficult to negotiate the solution to such a problem if the only stance
that Antarctic commons promoters can take is that no exclusivity can be permitted at
all. A switch from a confrontational to a cooperative style has benefited commons
promoters before, as shown through the example of environmental commons efforts
given in the historical section of this chapter.
The complexity involved in the consideration of bioprospecting concerns not
only the criss-cross of theoretical ideals, but also in the two types of resources
involved Every resource claimed to be owned has elements that distinguish it from
others. This means that the study of how property rights work differs given the
resource under consideration. Water is something that is necessary for human health
and well-being, and therefore the privatization of access to water resources can be
seen as a harsh act. That being said, the privatization of water supplies has been
attempted in a number of localities (Bakker 2003; Swyngedouw 2004). The
effectiveness of privatization of water is also limited by the complex modern delivery
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systems that exist (plumbing), which are so extensive that they require public funding
and oversight. Seeds have also become a commodity, but a difficult one to control
because they are biological entities that reproduce (Kloppenburg 1988). Land is one of
the most frequently cited forms of property, but debates often erupt over what is the
"best use" of a particular area of land (Blomley 2004). Central to this study of
Antarctic bioprospecting are the rights to biota and intellectual property rights, each of
which bring their own complications to the idea of property.
Property relations regarding living things are complicated. These "biological
resources" exist in the overlapping space between human society (the application of
property relations) and the non-human environment (organisms which do not
acknowledge social constraints). The reproductive capabilities of objects like seeds
and their tendency to behave in ways that cannot be dictated by human social
conventions pose problems for the application of property laws. There are a number of
private property laws dedicated to regulating livestock and other biota which have
been cultured and "tamed" by humans, and these are fairly well established. The
exploitation of organisms that are gathered from the environment beyond typical
human occupation (or "the wilderness"), is largely based on the concepts put forward
by Locke that in the "state of nature" everything is considered to be common property
available to the first human able to exploit it the best. It is the exploitation of biota
gathered from outside of the regular social experience that concerns bioprospecting the
most. The organisms being studied by scientists are rarely openly considered as the
130
property of anyone or anything, yet there are rules that dictate their use and how they
are to be treated.
Knowledge is often depicted as existing in a common state, but there are other
ways of framing knowledge. Scholars such as Mario Biagioli resist the notion that
products of scientific research can even be considered property, when he states that
"scientific authorship is not about property rights but about true claims about nature"
(Biagioli 2003, p.254). Returning to the basic definition of property as a relationship
between people mediated by resources, knowledge is certainly something that can be
passed between people. Knowledge is transmitted by writing and reading material.
Knowledge can be actively engaged in classrooms where the most important
relationship between teacher and student is the exchange of knowledge. Knowledge is
regularly commodified whenever a tuition bill is paid. Knowledge/ ideas can be said to
be an appropriate type of property in addition to the conception of knowledge as a true
claim about nature. This is just another way of framing the relationship between the
researcher and subject. While the realm of ideas would seem to make this resource
immaterial, the ideas must, in fact, be physically enacted in order for them to become
actualized and real. The ideas that are the subjects of IPR are perceived as human
artifice; they can be based upon observed natural processes, but in practice are
achieved through methods that are not obvious when observing nature. Peter Drahos
and John Braithwaite have pointed out that in addition to the adage "knowledge is
131
power,"35 knowledge can also be the source of profits and IPR enables knowledge to
be explicitly profitable (Drahos and Braithwaite 2002).
The transition between the biotic property and IPR is facilitated by the fact that
both types within bioprospecting are considered largely in terms of the information
that they hold or provide. While biota have the properties of being able to replicate
and move independently as described above, one essential component to all life is
Deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA). DNA contains the genetic information that is used to
determine the basic structure and functioning of the organism through the construction
of certain amino acids that compose proteins. The field of bioinformatics is able to
translate DNA into computer code that is simply raw information, transitioning the
information from a "wet" to a "dry" form (Thacker 2005). The stage of bioprospecting
that this involves is step two, isolation. Most individuals and/or companies involved in
bioprospecting for genetic novelties are looking for biota with codes in their DNA (or
certain proteins) which have allowed or lead to certain adaptations in the organism.
Bioinformatics allow the translation of such information in a way that makes the two
resource types interchangeable, but definitely not the same. This mirrors the way in
which the two philosophies of Locke and Marx may be blended together in some
ways, and yet remain separate in others as described above. This again demonstrates
the complexity of the resources involved in bioprospecting and the difficulty in
simplifying the issue into a matter of one resource or the other.
35
An adage applied throughout the work of Michel Foucault and the work that emerged from his
theory. This is illustrated throughout chapter two of this dissertation in which geographical imaginaries
(a form of knowledge) help to dictate who holds power in Antarctica and to what degree.
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3.4 Conclusions
Is the commons, as a territorial identity of Antarctica enshrined into its
governance and practice through language and practice, threatened by the exclusivity
posed by bioprospecting activity? The answer is dependent upon the modern or
postmodern position taken. In the modernist narratives of Locke or Marx,
bioprospecting is a simple case of privatization to either be resisted or embraced. The
situation is only made slightly more complex in considering what is being privatized.
In either case, the governance body in charge of the territory, the ATS in this case,
should arbitrate the situation and employ its hierarchical bureaucracy to enforce the
course of action that will either limit or enhance the exclusive use of resources. This
approach is straightforward and simple, but lacks the subtlety of addressing all of the
complex issues involved.
As with the idea of the free exchange of science, the element of time becomes
involved. Is the use of the resource truly exclusive if it is only exclusive for a limited
time and over limited uses? The agreement between Cerylid Biosciences and the
Antarctic Cooperative Research Centre referenced at the start of this chapter was
limited so that the company had only three years to develop human medical products
based on the isolates derived from the research done by the Australian public center.
After three years, ownership of the isolates would revert back to the Antarctic
Cooperative Research Centre if no commercial uses were found for them. During that
time, the research center was free to license other companies to use the same isolate
133
for different applications (such as for veterinary medicine). This represents a rather
constricted view of exclusive rights that are neither total nor transferable, so that it
would be difficult to describe them as purely communal or purely private property
relations. Postmodern approaches to property that recognize the inherent complexity
of property may be better equipped to address the potential complexity of rights
involved in bioprospecting agreements. The value-neutral tone set by postmodernists
also encourages interaction and collaboration between parties that might otherwise be
diametrically opposed through their adherence to one modernist property trope against
the other. Acceptance (or at least acknowledgement) of the value to be had in different
perspectives is a key to cooperation. Whether or not those involved in Antarctic
governance should be cooperating with other bodies over the issue of bioprospecting
is a question for the next chapter.
134
CHAPTER 4
IS BIOPROSPECTING A THREAT TO EXISTING ANTARCTIC GOVERNANCE?
Alan Hemmings was clearly worried at the 2006 Antarctic Treaty Consultative
Meeting (ATCM) that the Antarctic Treaty System (ATS) was in danger. The threat to
the system could be found in the problem of bioprospecting. While Hemmings readily
acknowledged the problems that Antarctic bioprospecting posed to the free exchange
of scientific information on the continent and the question of ownership there, he
seemed most concerned about whether the ATS would be the body to manage
bioprospecting. He said that:
"[N]obody doubts that these are complex issues, but we need to discuss it. And
one of the reasons that we need to discuss them … from the perspective of the
Antarctic Treaty meeting is that it's already being discussed in other fora. In
the Convention on Biological Diversity, in the International Sea Bed Authority
discussions with CBD on jurisdictional issues between those two conventions
and so on. So if the Antarctic Treaty System doesn’t grasp the nettle of
bioprospecting, it will either continue to proceed in a totally unregulated way,
for the ad hoc, or it will be guided by other international institutions. The great
aim of the Treaty System is to be able to preserve this system’s hegemony over
Antarctic decision-making" (Hemmings 2006).
135
The statement alludes to a February 2004 meeting of the Convention on Biological
Diversity (CBD) treaty countries, which discussed Antarctic bioprospecting in the
context of access and benefit sharing. While they did request ideas from the ATS of
how to manage these activities in an Antarctic context, the implication seemed to be
that it was the ATS that was answering to the CBD. The ATS might therefore have
been perceived as subordinate to the CBD in this way. The lack of ATS
bioprospecting regulations was also perceived as creating a legal hole that non-ATS
states or companies could take advantage of to exploit Antarctic biota with abandon.
The solution to the question of establishing solid legitimacy over managing
Antarctic bioprospecting sought by most scholars is that the ATS should take action,
particularly through legislating bioprospecting in Antarctica via a regime or
agreement. This framing of the solution is based on a modern understanding that states
and hierarchical bureaucracies are the only legitimate sources of governance over
territorial issues, derived from the ideal of the state as a social contract developed by
Thomas Hobbes (Hobbes 1994). At the core of the Hobbesean philosophy is the idea
of the sovereign state. Sovereignty indicates a quality of being the supreme and
independent authority of a sovereign over subjects, often within a bounded geographic
area. State sovereignty over territory must be recognized by other states in order to be
legitimate; therefore, territorial sovereignty can be seen as a social contract between
states as well. Sovereignty anoints the sovereign institution or individual with the
authority to manage the activities of the subjects unless such regulation is excluded
through the social contract involved. In a territorial sovereignty, this applies to the
136
activities undertaken within sovereign borders. Enacting governance through the state
is therefore a dominative/ top-down method of deploying geographic power. A statecentered approach to territorial governance fits within Robert Sack's territoriality
combination of hierarchical bureaucracy. Klaus Dodds recently dubbed the dominant
territoriality exerted by the ATS "treaty sovereignty"36 as a way to distinguish it from
the sovereign states comprising the decision-making center of the ATS. In regards to
bioprospecting, those that adhere to a hierarchical bureaucratic model of territoriality
have called upon the ATS to enact one or another legislative regime which would
ostensibly manage the activity.
There are alternative solutions to managing bioprospecting that may be
imagined beyond the ATS or its member states that do not threaten the governance
structure of Antarctica. Recent postmodern explorations of governance find that it is
not wholly dependent on sovereign governments. Networks of institutions and
individuals operating in a non-hierarchical fashion can adequately manage activities.
One scholar to articulate a vision of governance without state government at the center
was James Roseneau (Rosenau and Czempiel 1992). Decoupling the idea of
governance from hierarchical bureaucracies creates the freedom to define another
territorial definition of social relations that is more networked and welcoming of other
governance types. While much of the focus has been on interstate governance through
the ATS, Antarctica already quietly accommodates a number of different governance
types that coexist peacefully on the continent. The International Whaling Commission
36
Klaus Dodds used the term "treaty sovereignty" in his 2010 Association of American Geographer's
talk and has recently stated that he is developing the term in a paper for the journal Polar Record that is,
according to him, "speculative and argumentative."
137
(IWC) serves as another international regime that exerts authority in the seas
surrounding Antarctica over whaling activities. The International Association of
Antarctic Tour Operators (IAATO) is an industry group that governs the tourism
industry in Antarctica. Neither of these examples is subordinate to the ATS, and yet
the ATS does not seem threatened by their governance work. This interaction allows
for the possibility of non-ATS governance of bioprospecting without the threat of the
collapse of Antarctic governance altogether.
This chapter explores the different territorialities of governance that frame the
issue of bioprospecting within Antarctica. The first section provides a brief history of
how certain activities have been governed within Antarctica. The original 1959
Antarctic Treaty explicitly forbids military activity and encourages scientific activity.
Other Antarctic activities that have established governance surrounding them include
whaling and tourism. The second section will illustrate the hierarchical bureaucratic
territoriality's theoretical basis, presence in Antarctica, and application to the issue of
bioprospecting in Antarctica. The section after that will explore the alternate territorial
definition of social relations in which non-hierarchical networked models of
governance function. Evidence of this model of governance territoriality in Antarctica
drawn from the historical section will be reiterated and potential application will be
outlined as to how the model might work with bioprospecting in Antarctica. The goal
of the chapter is not to suggest that only non-state governance solutions are best, but
only that parties involved in Antarctic governance would do well to include them in
their considerations of how to govern bioprospecting in the area.
138
4.1 How several activities within Antarctica have been governed
Many activities must be considered in providing a history of governance in
Antarctica because otherwise the implication is that the governance of activities in
Antarctica is uniformly undertaken by a single institution or that all activities in
Antarctica are managed in the same way. There is both diversity in the types of
organizations that oversee activities in Antarctica, and a diversity of ways in which
they are managed. This section will therefore consider a number of different activities
that have taken place in Antarctica, and the efforts that have been made to manage
them through governance. The discussion will begin by detailing efforts to control all
activities in the Antarctic (or sections therein) through sovereign claims and other
government strategies. The activities managed by the original 1959 Antarctic Treaty
are largely acknowledged to be limited in scope. The exploitation of whales will then
be considered. Tourism is an activity that enjoys less governance through the Antarctic
Treaty and more from the industry that benefits from it. There are too many activities
to consider providing a history of all of them here, but the selection provided will
hopefully provide a glimpse of some of the diverse management techniques that exist
in the region. These examples serve as evidence of both modern and postmodern
approaches to governance.
139
4.1.1 Governing all or part of Antarctic territory comprehensively
This is not to say that comprehensive governance of the Antarctic or sectors of
the Antarctic has not been tried before. As stated in previous chapters, sections of the
Antarctic had been subject to claim by a number of different states. If enacted, the
claims would exert the sovereign authority of the state in question over all activities
conducted in the area of the claim. Figure 9 illustrates the seven claims of sovereign
states that have been placed on the Antarctic, along with the area encompassed by
each claim and when the claim was made. The overlap between the Chilean,
Argentine, and British formal claims to Antarctica meant that acknowledgement of
140
claims would be perceived as political support for one state over another, potentially
leading to conflict. Donald Rothwell considers the activity of establishing sovereignty
itself one of the main reasons for human beings being in Antarctica at all (Rothwell
2010). The potential conflict between claimant countries over Antarctic sovereignty
was not the only conceptualization of Antarctic governance, as other states put
forward alternative models of Antarctic governance. The United States put forward an
'open door' policy of engagement with the Antarctic continent allowing the country to
exert its economic power into the area by not acknowledging the claims of other
countries while not formally establishing an American claim. The United States
reserved the right to make territorial claims of sovereignty to the continent, and took a
number of actions to this effect37, but more access to the continent and its resources
were opened up for the United States through this policy. H. Robert Hall depicts the
United States policy as part of the New Imperialism movement which led to the
establishment of the other formal claims to Antarctica (Hall 1989). The previous
chapter provided details of proposals of United Nations governance of the entire
continent. Such a commons involves a governance model where the United Nations
would serve as the sovereign institution and the subjects would be all of those who
conduct activities in Antarctica. These overlapping territorializations of Antarctic
governance have meant that finding a way to govern human activities on the continent
37
These actions included a number of independent actions. State Department official Edith Ronne took
pictures of the American flag flying over a United States post office in Antarctica during her husband's
1946-48 expedition. American explorers such as Robert Byrd and Ellsworth Huntington planted flags
during their expeditions and made statements about prospective American claims to regions of the
continent that they had discovered. While these statements were well received by the United States
government, they continued operating under the doctrine established by Secretary of State Charles E.
Hughes 1924 response to the French claim to Terre Adélie in Antarctica.
141
requires a delicate balancing act in considering the different interests that come into
play. Scholars such as Paul Berkman consider the ATS to be the embodiment of a
comprehensive governance system of the Antarctic that allows all of these
considerations to be balanced out (Berkman 2010). Although many have come to
regard the ATS as the sole authority in the Antarctic, it is not clear that those present
at the inception of the Antarctic Treaty had the same goals.
The negotiation of the Antarctic Treaty in 1959 was meant to create a forum in
which such issues could be managed, if not resolved, by the interested parties.
Although ideas of "Treaty sovereignty" float around today, the original scope of the
Antarctic Treaty was more limited. The process of creating the Antarctic Treaty was
highly contingent on a number of different factors and interests. The twists and turns
of how the document was created are aptly covered by John Hanessian's article on the
process (Hanessian 1960). The scope of both the subject matter that the treaty covered
and the membership of the treaty were both contested items through the process of the
Treaty's negotiation, but the Treaty ultimately wound up focused on a small group of
states making a small number of determinations about the continent. The two central
human activities considered within the Antarctic Treaty were security (particularly
regarding violent military conflicts among states) and science. Other, more
commercial, activities related to the Antarctic were not even considered.
The context of the negotiation of the Antarctic Treaty is important. Peter Beck
notes that it is impossible to understand the Antarctic Treaty without the context of
the Cold War going on between rival superpowers the United States and the Soviet
142
Union during its negotiation (Beck 2010). Within the context of the Cold War, the
primary goal for the Antarctic Treaty to reach was not the successful resolution of all
colonial claims to Antarctica but rather the careful balance of interests between the
two superpowers. Creating the Antarctic Treaty with the U.S.S.R. as a signatory
therefore suggested that both Cold War powers could keep each other in check in the
region without having to resort to military threats. Neither the United States nor the
Soviet Union desired conflict over the region, so the 'limited purposes' of the
agreement seemed to be a limitation on military activity on the continent. In order to
justify continued national presence in Antarctica, scientific activities by Antarctic
Treaty states were encouraged through the treaty. Military presence is therefore
justified in a logistical support capacity for scientific activity, but expressly forbidden
for other military exercises (see Article One) or nuclear testing (see Article Five). As
discussed in chapter two, science is encouraged through Articles Two and Three of the
Antarctic Treaty. The call for the sharing of scientific information through Article
Three shows that the openness about gathered observations is not an inherent part of
science, but a stipulation of activity within Antarctica. This was also necessitated by
the Cold War context because a number of American scientists had expressed close
ties to the military and an inclination not to share information with their Soviet
counterparts (Collis and Dodds 2008). Beyond science and peace, the original Treaty
is vague as to how other human activities should be governed in Antarctica. Article
Eight of the Antarctic Treaty states that people in Antarctica:
143
"…shall be subject only to the jurisdiction of the Contracting Party of which
they are nationals in respect of all acts or omissions occurring while they are in
Antarctica for the purpose of exercising their functions." (Treaty 1959)
All actions undertaken by individuals in Antarctica are therefore under the jurisdiction
of the national government of which they are citizens, which means that beyond the
stipulations about scientific and violent behavior all other activities were the purview
of state governments. In the case that two states disagreed about jurisdiction, they
were called upon to consult with each other in the following paragraph of Article
Eight. Further disputes between states were called upon by Article Eleven of the
Treaty to be resolved through consultation with all of the contracting parties. The
blind spot for regulating human action in Antarctica is rather large and covers a wide
range of industries, but the Antarctic Treaty did allow itself to become a focal point
for the discussion of contentious Antarctic topics of what actions could be allowable
within the region.
4.1.2 Governance of whaling in the Antarctic
As seal populations declined in the Antarctic, whalers were just beginning to
get started at the beginning of the 20th Century. Unlike sealers, the size of the prey
involved in whaling required that the initial whalers have a proximate whaling station
to process the dead whales. With the establishment of the first far-south whaling
stations at Grytviken on South Georgia Island in 1904, harvesting whales for their oil
144
became truly feasible in Antarctic waters. The industry grew quickly in the Antarctic
region, and by the 1910s the amount of whales harvested from the area was greater
than the harvest from the rest of the world combined (Walton and Bonner 1985). The
industry was altered in 1925 by the introduction of slipways onto factory whaleprocessing ships that allowed whales to be winched aboard (Dibbern 2010). Factory
ships had existed before then, but usually did not have enough steam power to run
both the motor and the whale processing machinery, meaning that ships needed a port
to anchor in if they were to process their whales. The new ships did not require
docking in a port to process whales. The number of these advanced ships increased
from 1 in 1925 to 41 in 1930, resulting in an increase in whales killed per year rising
from 14,219 in 1925 to 40,201 in 1931 (Fogg 1992, p.211). This not only led to a
depletion of whales, but a glut of whale-oil on the market, sending prices down. As
with the seal populations, whalers would focus on one profitable species before
commercially exhausting its stocks and moving on to the next-most desirable species.
Initially, whalers targeted humpback whales in the region before exhausting that
commercially-exploitable population and moving on to Blue Whales. As the Blue
Whale supply was exhausted in the region, whaling started to focus more on Fin and
Sperm Whales in the 1950s to 1960s, with the Sei Whale becoming the new focus of
exploitation towards the end of the 1960s (May 1989). Since the 1960s, only the
Soviet Union and Japan conduct whaling operations in the Antarctic, and currently,
the majority of whaling that takes place in the waters around Antarctica is conducted
by Japan and is centered on Minke whales, with Humpback and Fin whales gathered
145
to a lesser degree38 (IWC 2010). These whaling operations have met with protests and
increasingly aggressive conservationists seeking to obstruct the operations of these
whaling ships on the moral grounds that all whaling is wrong.
The initial moves towards governing the activity of whaling in Antarctica were
not based on moral stances against whaling, but came out of a concern that the
industry was unsustainable without management and that governments could profit
from such regulation. The British government certainly had nationalistic intent in its
Antarctic claim, but the strategic value of having access to a large source of whale-oil
was an additional reason for the British to loudly assert their claim to the area. Not
only was whale oil used in the production of soaps, margarine, and lubricants, but a
production by-product was glycerin (a component of nitroglycerin and therefore
explosives) (Beck 1990). Through the Falkland islands39, the British issued a licensing
system for whalers in order to gain some revenue from their profits, control the
industry, and reinforce their sovereign authority in the area (Walton and Bonner
1985). In 1917, the British Colonial Office set up a committee to examine the whaling
industry in the Antarctic area claimed by Britain (called the Falkland Island
Dependencies). The committee recommended in 1920 that a scientific research
program be set up in order to understand more about the whales in the region, which
led the United Kingdom to conduct their Discovery Investigations of the Southern
38
Japan's self-imposed scientific catch limits on whales in the Southern Ocean for each of its recent
annual whaling seasons is: 850 (with 10% allowance) Antarctic Minke whales (Eastern Indian Ocean
and Western South Pacific stocks), 50 Humpback whales (D and E stocks) and 50 Fin whales (Indian
Ocean and the Western South Pacific stocks) (IWC 2010).
39
The Falkland Islands are also known as Las Malvinas, but since I am addressing them here in a
British rather than an Argentine context I will use the British name for them.
146
Ocean from 1925 up to the Second World War. While the movement to slipway
whaling ships meant that the British government soon lost the revenue and control of a
whaling industry that no longer needed to process their whales in Southern British
ports, the information gathered from the Discovery Investigations would be used in
later international whaling agreements (Fogg 1992). The advances in whaling
technology not only led to a steep decline in whale populations, but recognition that
single-state governance of the issue was insufficient to regulate the industry.
The International Whaling Commission (IWC) was originally started as a
group meant to promote a sustainable global whaling industry, but later transformed
into an organization more concerned about conservation of whales for its own sake.
The first international attempt to regulate whaling was the Convention for the
Regulation of Whaling adopted in Geneva in 1931. The Convention was not very
successful as Japan and Germany refused to sign it and of the pelagic whaling states,
only Norway and the United Kingdom adhered to it (Fogg 1992). The IWC was
established by the United Nations in 1946 through another International Convention
for the Regulation of Whaling held in Washington, DC. The original purpose of the
IWC was to conserve whale stocks so that an "orderly development" of the whaling
industry could be made possible (IWC 1946). This was an agreement and a
commission set up to address world-wide whaling, which included, to a large degree,
that which was going on within Antarctica. At its inception, the IWC was composed of
countries with whaling industries or interests in whaling. As time progressed,
scientific management was strengthened in 1974 and more preservationist interests
147
were introduced into the IWC (Skodvin and Andresen 2003). After a more rigorous
scientific management regime was introduced into the IWC, certain species started to
be closed to commercial exploitation. A ban on Fin whales started in 1976, followed
by a ban on Sei whales in 1978, and ultimately there emerged a ban on all commercial
whaling in 1982 which has not yet been lifted40 (May 1989). The IWC is globally
applicable, but it did focus on Antarctic waters in 1994 when it created a Southern
Ocean Sanctuary, where commercial whaling was banned completely. This might
seem redundant given the overall ban on commercial whaling, but it did establish the
Antarctic as a safe zone for whales. The continued exploitation of whales in this
region by the Japanese noted before is allowed because it is labeled "scientific
whaling,"41 although this designation is contested by a number of different
conservation groups. The research (or catching of whales) is undertaken by a
privately-owned non-profit organization called the Institute for Cetacean Research,
which is funded by subsidies from the Japanese government and contributions from
Kyodo Senpaku, a for-profit company that processes the whale byproducts that are
gathered by the institute. Continued whaling action in Antarctic waters despite the
Sanctuary designation has driven a rift between Japan and non-whaling nations,
especially Australia which views the scientific whaling program as a disguise for
commercial whaling (Larter 2008). The ATS has not taken a stand on the issue,
deferring to the IWC as the governance body to handle this issue.
40
Although the ban has been questioned at recent IWC meetings.
The specific whale research programs that have been touted by the Institute for Cetacean Research
include JARPA (1988-2005), JARPA II (2005-present), JARPN (1994-1999), and JARPN II (20002001).
41
148
4.1.3 Governance of tourism in the Antarctic
Tourism is one human activity that has been slowly gaining momentum
through the life of the ATS. Tourism is a human activity that involves travel for
recreational purposes, usually to a place that is unusual or exotic for the tourist. This is
an activity that can be undertaken without utilizing facets of commercial tourism, but
to take a non-commercial tour of Antarctica is a very difficult logistical task. The
tourism industry is a service industry that caters to tourist needs by providing
transportation, accommodations, and hospitality. The idea of taking tourists down to
Antarctica was first advanced in 1910, but not put into organized practice until the late
1950s (Herr 1996 b). The first tourist expeditions to Antarctica included a 1956
flyover of Antarctica where tourists could view the continent from the windows of
their plane and a cruise that occurred in 195842 (Carvallo 1994). Regular "expedition"
cruises to Antarctica were started by Lindblad Expeditions in 1966, and small numbers
of tourists visited the continent this way for years. Overflights of the continent tend to
be offered by neighboring state airline companies. Overflights and ship-borne cruises
remain the methods by which the majority of tourists experience Antarctica, but there
has also been the lure of adventure tourism. Adventure tourism tends to attract fewer
individuals and a more elite clientele because of the prohibitively high costs involved,
high effort on the part of the tourists undertaking it, and usually a higher degree of risk
42
The first tourist fly-over in Antarctica was conducted by 66 tourists in a DC-6 plane operated by
Linea Aerea Nacional, the Chilean national airline. The first tourists to arrive by ship were a group of
100 paying passengers onboard Les Ecaireurs, an Argentine naval vessel. In 1959, a Chilean ship with
84 passengers crossed the Antarctic Circle (60º South latitude) on their way to Marguerite Bay.
149
than other forms of tourism. The first official company to manage adventure tourism
within Antarctica was Adventure Network International, started in 198543. Tourism
was a modest industry, consistently bringing under 5,000 tourists to Antarctica up
until the late 1980s when tourism rates started to climb sharply (see Figure 10). Erik
Molenaar points to increased public curiosity about Antarctica fueling this tourism
boom, which was itself engendered by the efforts of environmental NGOs to bring
attention to the beauty and fragility of the continent in their effort to counter any
exploitative mineral and marine resource harvesting that might take place there
(Molenaar 2005). Molenaar also notes that this increase historically came in
43
Adventure Network International's website is: http://www.adventure-network.com/
150
conjunction with the collapse of the Soviet Union and Eastern bloc states in 1991,
which freed up more ice-capable vessels for charter in the Antarctic region as the
emerging Russian and eastern European countries sought new revenue streams. The
end result was the availability of a larger fleet of tourist vessels combined with a
worldwide public that was both aware of and curious to experience Antarctica.
Because a key selling point of Antarctic tours is the environment, the type of tourism
that is largely espoused in Antarctica is "ecotourism." Ecotourism generally both seeks
to have a low environmental impact on the areas visited and educate the tourist
consumer about the environment encountered in the hope that they will contribute to
its stewardship. While the ostensible success of achieving these goals through
Antarctic tourism has been questioned (Eijgelaar, Thaper et al. 2010), most Antarctic
tour operators still depict themselves as operating in the spirit of ecotourism. There is
an effort by tour operators to present the Antarctic as a natural preserve, devoid of
people. This is a difficult illusion to pull off, since fewer than ten sites are visited by
more than 10,000 people per year (Haase, Lamers et al. 2009). In order to achieve this
effect, there is coordination between tour operators such that only one ship is visible at
a sight at a time44. A degree of close management and coordination is necessary if tour
operators are to provide their customers with a satisfactory Antarctic experience.
Governance of Antarctic tourism was slow to develop within the ATS, and so a
great deal of governance was developed by the tourism industry itself. The ATS,
wishing to shield scientists and historic monuments from the ill effects of tourism, first
44
This is known as the "one ship, one place, one moment" principle adopted by Antarctic tour
operators, which seeks to reduce popular tourist site congestion of ships and people (Haase, Lamers et
al. 2009).
151
considered the issue of tourism at its 1966 ATCM in Santiago, Chilé (Stonehouse
1992). The ATS developed Recommendation VIII-9 at the 1975 ATCM in Oslo,
Norway. This recommendation suggested the creation of 'areas of special tourist
interest,' although none were actually developed as a result of this suggestion
(Stonehouse 1992). In the time leading up to 1991, only 7 recommendations were
made at ATCMs regarding tourism, and very little action had come of them (ASOC
2008). In the meantime, tour operators had been functioning according to their own
principles. In July1989, four prominent Antarctic expedition leaders45 proposed an
"Antarctic Traveler's Code," which got widely circulated (Vidas 1996). Jack Talmadge
of the Division of Polar Programs at the National Science Foundation (NSF)
encouraged United States Antarctic tour operators46 to form their own association, and
in November of 1989 joint guidelines were formed between them (Vidas 1996). In
August of 1991, the initial group of three operators added four more Antarctic tourism
organizations47 from other parts of the world to their ranks and officially formed the
International Association of Antarctic Tour Operators (IAATO). Representatives of
the group then attended the 1991 ATCM at Bonn, Germany in October. They were not
the only tour operator group to have sent representatives, though. The Pacific Asia
Travel Association (PATA), at the behest of its Australian members, also expressed an
45
These expedition leaders were Ron Naveen, Colin Monteath, Tui de Roy, and Mark Jones. They had
collectively taken over 60 trips to the Antarctic and later published a book on their adventures called
Wild Ice: Antarctic Journeys (Smithsonian Books, 1990).
46
The United State Antarctic Tour Operators who were submitted to this initial "friendly coercion"
(Haase, Lamers et al. 2009, p.418) from the NSF were Society Expeditions, Travel Dynamics, and
Mountain Travel (Vidas 1996).
47
In addition to Society Expeditions, Travel Dynamics, and Mountain Travel, the tour operators added
to form the initial group of 7 IAATO members were: Ocean Cruise Lines, Salen Lindblad Cruises,
Adventure Network International, and Zegrahm Expeditions (Vidas 1996, p.301 fn.30).
152
interest in Antarctic tourism and attended the 1991 ATCM (Herr 1996 b). Although
IAATO and PATA could be seen as rivals, they still met before the meeting to
coordinate some common positions on Antarctic tourism. Both organizations were
initially not recognized by the ATS at the 1991 ATCM, where another group, the
World Tourism Organization, was invited to represent the issue of tourism in an
advisory capacity (Herr 1996 b). The World Tourism Organization was later
recognized at the following ATCM as being inadequate to the task of managing
Antarctic tourism for ATS purposes and legitimacy was transferred to IAATO.
IAATO describes its contribution to Antarctic governance on its website this way:
"IAATO's original visitor and tour operator guidelines served as the basis in
developing Recommendation XVIII-1 of the Antarctic Treaty System, which
includes guidance for Antarctic visitors and for non-governmental tour
organizers. IAATO provides a forum for Antarctic tour operators to come
together to continually develop the highest standards and best practices to
better protect the Antarctic environment. IAATO has been represented every
year at Antarctic Treaty Consultative Meetings (ATCM) since its founding in
1991. IAATO presents its annual report and an overview of tourism activities
each year at the ATCM." (IAATO 2010)
Recommendation XVII-1 mentioned in the quote above references a recommendation
regarding tourist and tour operator guidelines composed during the 1994 ATCM in
Kyoto, Japan. The boast that the recommendation was largely based on principles
already established by IAATO indicates that the industry group had a significant
153
amount of influence on how it was to be governed. Scholars refer to the dominance of
IAATO in Antarctic tourism by either referring to IAATO as a steward of the
Antarctic environment (Splettstoesser 2000) or by affirming that tourism in Antarctica
is a self-regulating system (Haase, Lamers et al. 2009). The only caveat to this
independent governance by the industry of itself by itself is that the ATS Protocol on
Environmental Protection composed in 1991 was meant to apply to all activities
within Antarctica. The industry is actually in line with the Protocol because it favors
IAATO interests by keeping the environment which visitors pay to see protected (Herr
1996 b). While concerns about tourism remain, very little action has been taken by the
ATS to impose unwanted regulations on IAATO or any other tour operators in the
region.
4.2 Modern governance
While the previous section has illustrated a number of activities and how they
came to be governed in Antarctica, this section will investigate the hierarchical
bureaucratic model that most scholars have come to rely upon when studying
governance in general and in Antarctica specifically. The origins of a hierarchal
perspective of governance that stresses dominance will first be investigated through
the writings of Thomas Hobbes and subsequent political realists. This approach
generally sees the sovereign state as the central governance body, with state authority
occasionally threatened by organizations at scales hierarchically above or below it.
154
The application of these ideas of governance to Antarctica will then be illustrated.
Finally, the application of this view to the issue of bioprospecting within Antarctica
will be shown not only to have an effect on how the issue is framed, but what moves
toward resolution are taken.
4.2.1 Hobbes and subsequent realist ideas of governance
The modern strain of hierarchical bureaucratic governance theory has its roots
in Leviathan by Thomas Hobbes through his concept of sovereignty. While it is true
that the concept of the sovereign exists before Hobbes48 (Beaulac 2003), it is Hobbes
who gives the concept the theoretical grounding with which, in the thought processes
of political realists, it has become so associated today. Hobbes defines the world as
divided in two. Part of the world exists in a state of nature outside of social
organization. A famous quotation from Hobbes states that humans existing in these
conditions live in "…continual fear and danger of violent death, and the life of man,
solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short" (Hobbes 1994, p.76). This is an anarchical
world of all against all and nothing can be guaranteed because no society exists. The
other part of the world is civilized society, ruled over by sovereigns. A sovereign may
be a single individual or an assembly of people who have been granted the authority
and power, though a social compact, to govern the actions of the humans that are the
sovereign's subjects (Hobbes 1994, p.109). The contract between a sovereign entity
48
Stéphane Beaulac credits Jean Bodin as being the "father of sovereignty" and grounds the legitimacy
of the sovereign in religious terms, something that Hobbes shies away from (Beaulac 2003).
155
and its subjects equates to the sovereign being responsible for protecting the subject
from an anarchical world of warfare of all against all, and in exchange the subject
yields the authority to govern its actions to the sovereign. This submission of the
subject to the sovereign condones the dominating power of the sovereign over the
subject, which, for Hobbes, is better than the alternative world of chaos. The choice is
stark and absolute from this perspective, and fits into a territorial conception of a
world ordered through hierarchical bureaucracy. The sovereign may delegate
authority, after all, but ultimate power and authority resides within the sovereign. The
sovereign was particularly empowered to undertake or instigate violent action not only
against the forces of chaos that might threaten the subjects, but also against the
subjects to enforce the governance rules under which they had entered into a social
contract with the sovereign. The use (or threat) of force was crucial to Hobbes because
"…covenants without the sword are but words, and of no strength to secure a man at
all" (Hobbes 1994, p.106). The coercion of violence is the ultimate weapon of
domination that sovereignty holds over the heads of subjects.
This concept of sovereignty was largely territorialized through the form of the
state, which became the centerpiece of realist political thought. As mentioned at the
start of this chapter, most international relations theory refers to territorially-bounded
states as sovereign entities responsible for the citizens who live within their borders.
States are amongst the few (if not the only) organizations which may legitimately
employ violence as a tactic according to their laws. Such states, when legitimated by
the international community of fellow sovereign states, are seen as having near156
absolute power to govern over what human activity goes on within their borders. As a
focus of political power and authority to govern within the context of sovereignty,
states have regularly been declared to be the central political units worth studying in
international relations and political geography (Cox 2003; Flint 2003; Low 2003). The
reasoning behind the focus on the state is presented as practical (it is where political
activity is currently taking place) and normative (it is the location or scale at which
governance over human activity should take place). Other alternative political spatial
units exist, but the emphasis and power remain situated at the level of the state.
The state exists at a spatial extent, or scale, which is usually classified as less
expansive than global or regional scales, but larger than local or urban scales. Often,
concepts of scale can be taken for granted. One common assumption articulated by
Harriet Bulkeley is that "decisions are cascaded from international, to national, and
then local scales," (Bulkeley 2005, p.876) as if the different scales were simply nested
containers of power. Within the framework of the authority of one scale being
automatically superseded by the authority of a scale with a broader spatial extent, the
power of the sovereign state might seem belittled by that of regional and/or
international organizations of which it is a member. These international organizations
are often referred to as regimes, regimes being social institutions consisting of agreedupon rules that govern the interactions of people in a specific area (Young 1997). The
agreement upon the rules in these regimes is commonly achieved through negotiations
between states. In this way, international regimes can be seen not so much as
organizations to supplant sovereign state power, but rather as "…plugging the gaps
157
between state spaces, or expanding the collective territoriality of the state into the
atmosphere and oceans" (Bulkeley 2005, p.878). This logic might also be applied as
extending the collective territoriality of Antarctic Treaty signatory states into the
Antarctic through the regime that governs the region, the ATS. Gail Osherenko and
Oran Young note that political realists view international regimes as reflective of the
interests of the state that has proved to be most hegemonic in the regime's creation
(Osherenko and Young 1993). Whether the hegemonic state achieves its goals through
coercion or benign negotiation, realists tend to see a hegemon as a necessary
precondition for an agreement at a broader spatial scale than the singular state. In this
way, international regimes are still beholden unto the powers exercised by the
sovereign state. Any challenge to the legitimacy of an international regime is therefore
also a challenge to the authority of the states involved through their preferred
configuration.
A world without the state as the central source of dominating power becomes a
terrifying concept in the ideals of political realists. The stark choice between anarchy
without the sovereign state and the totalizing control over human activities implied by
the sovereign state (and its regimes) means that if states or state-created regimes
collapse then only a devastating chaos can result. The fear of this condition drove
many realists to regard the growth of globalization as a palpable threat to world
international order. A redirection of attention away from the scale of the state and onto
the global, or rescaling, generated a debate over whether or not globalization was
eroding the power of states (Mansfield 2005). While Becky Mansfield ultimately
158
found the debate over rescaling to be an unhelpful argument to undertake in order to
understand changing political and economic relations, the preoccupation over whether
or not state power was collapsing was understandably an existential question for
political realists. If the state were to lose power, or even collapse, in the face of
political forces emerging from other scales, then according to Hobbesian logic a
disordered and dangerous existence lay in wait.
4.2.2 Realist governance applied to Antarctica
The responsibility for governing Antarctica has been widely recognized as the
purview of the ATS for the past 50 years of its existence. Under the realist model of
governance, the authority to regulate all human activities on the continent emerges
from the ATS regime, which is itself centered upon the Antarctic Treaty Consultative
Party states. These states are able to decide policy on what human activities are
allowed and to what degree they may be performed. The separate regimes that have
been developed separately to address different activities within Antarctica are
regularly perceived as "sub-regimes" subordinate to the central tenants of the Antarctic
Treaty (see Figure 11)
The dichotomy between ordered state-centric systems and chaotic other
systems has been applied to Antarctica, as illustrated through some of the examples of
governance provided in the previous section. Despite a lack of industry interest in
exploiting Antarctic minerals, the Treaty Party member states still perceived it as
159
necessary to construct some form of regime to address the issue, or else the oftrepeated threat of chaotic exploitation loomed large in the future. This hysteria over
mineral activity regulation was further heightened by the approach of the end of the
30-year moratorium on reviews of the Antarctic Treaty in 1991. The new potential
crisis point has been moved to 2041 with the expiration of the consensus mineral ban
in the Environmental Protocol and a switch in the voting procedures that could
possibly extricate it. While governance of tourism has been largely left to IAATO with
little ATS interference, this has not halted scholarly calls for stronger ATS regulation
of the industry or even a separate tourism regime (Carvallo 1994; Molenaar 2005). In
the words of Molenaar:
160
"A continuing strong reliance by parties to the Antarctic Treaty on industry
self-regulation reflects an inadequate discharge of their self-assumed
responsibility for the governance of Antarctica and thereby undermines their
international legitimacy and that of the ATS." (Molenaar 2005, p.294)
In Molenaar's view, if the ATS does not exert a dominant power over the activity of
tourism on the continent, it forfeits its legitimacy to govern the entire space. The
sovereign parties, through the ATS, are not meeting their Hobbesean sovereign
obligations under the social contract to protect subjects from the chaos of an
ungoverned world. The idea that tourism, or perhaps even mining, could operate
without the forceful dominative force of a state-centered system that can utilize the
threat of violence to enforce its edicts does not match up with the ideas set forth by
Hobbes and reenacted by political realists. This threat has been most recently
articulated by questioning if the ATS is able to govern currently unregulated
bioprospecting activities within Antarctica.
4.2.3 Modern governance applied to Antarctic bioprospecting
If the legitimacy of the ATS is at risk without explicitly incorporating
bioprospecting into its governance, then what forces could de-legitimize this regime?
Potential culprits that have been named include other (perhaps more global) regimes,
states, and biotechnology corporations. These potential usurpers of the ATS's authority
161
hail from a variety of scalar levels. To start with, there is a threat from the global
scale, as seen in this Alan Hemmings critique of the ATS:
"The ATS provides a restricted form of governance for the region, although the
tools it has available to it are rather limited - four treaties, two annual twoweek meetings, limited intercessional work through sub-groups and two
Secretariats. … It is not uncharitable to see this as a rather thin governance
regime. For so long as human activities in Antarctica were limited, this did not
greatly matter. … But, its failure to substantially develop the ATS further over
the past 16 years means it will be running to catch up. … If the capacity of the
ATS to manage, inter alia, modern commercial activities remains an open
question, a more substantive question is whether there is now the political will
and commitment to preserving a distinctly Antarctic regime at all, or whether
Globalism [sic] now makes the very idea of a separate continental regime look
archaic." (Hemmings 2007, pp.186-187)
It is important to note that the critique above hinges on the introduction of new human
activities into the region, a classification regularly applied to bioprospecting. The ATS
is depicted here as a sluggish regulator which may soon be superceded by new forms
of global environmental governance (GEG). Sanjay Chaturvedi agrees with this
assessment in the context of his writing on Antarctic bioprospecting; he states that
"Antarctica is now increasingly exposed to global forces and the ATS appears under
pressure in terms of exerting its legitimacy, authority and effectiveness" (Chaturvedi
2009). Hemmings has also stated in other contexts that if the ATS fails to adequately
162
regulate bioprospecting in the region, the issue is likely either to continue on in an ad
hoc fashion or be regulated by other regimes such as the Convention on Biological
Diversity (CBD).
Besides the possibility of ceding jurisdiction to larger GEG regimes such as the
CBD, others have voiced a concern that states might pose challenges to the ATS over
the issue of sharing the benefits derived from bioprospecting. Chapter three provided
an illustration of how the concepts of biodiversity and bioprospecting created a form
of property known as "biological resources" and instantly declared them to exist
primarily as a form of state property to be exploited at the direction of the government
that oversees the territory within which the biota exist. The issue of state jurisdiction
over biological resources is portrayed as both an external challenge arising from states
outside of the ATS as well as from those within it. Hemmings articulates the threat of
states that are not members of the ATS as arising from their interest in taking a share
of the benefits:
"But as the latest resource issue to arise in the Antarctic, there is also likely to
be significant international interest beyond the Antarctic Treaty System
amongst states and other players who believe themselves excluded or
disadvantaged by the present dispensation. It has, therefore, the capacity to
trigger another period of wide international debate over the modalities and
appropriateness of the existing regime of Antarctic governance." (Hemmings
2005, p.101)
163
The reference to "another period" is to the debate surrounding the creation of an
Antarctic minerals regime in the 1970s and 80s. Malaysia was a particularly vocal
state during this period as it railed against what it saw as the exclusivity of the ATS in
trying to manage a resource in an area that Malaysia took to be a global commons
(Tepper and Haward 2005). Claims to Antarctic biological resources between states
that have claims within Antarctica might also cause jurisdictional conflicts. The issue
of state territorial claims has never been completely resolved, as Article Four of the
Antarctic Treaty merely "freezes" claims. The potential for large profits emerging
from bioprospecting might tempt some states to disregard the moratorium on
enforcing territorial claims in the Antarctic so that they might benefit from the
exploitation of the biological resources in their sectors. One example of a biological
resource that has already drawn the interest of several countries is a flowering plant in
the Antarctic (Deschampsia antarctica), which is part of a widely dispersed grass
genus and could hold genetic secrets of how to make plants survive with less heat and
light requirements (Nobel 2009). The overlapping claims of Chile, Great Britain, and
Argentina create an area on the Antarctic Peninsula where the ownership of biological
resources could become contentious. While there has been no commercial windfall yet
derived from Antarctic biota, the potential to benefit financially from such a windfall
is seen as a strong motivation for states to exert as much control as possible over
biological resources.
The potential for windfall profits is also seen as a strong motivation for
biotechnology companies involved in bioprospecting to proceed in Antarctica
164
unregulated. As has been established in the first chapter, there are a number of
companies that have already gotten involved in bioprospecting endeavors in the
Antarctic with the hope of cornering the market on a novel biotech development.
Melissa Weber encourages the ATS to collaborate with the biotechnology industry in
order to create an accreditation mechanism to regulate bioprospecting in Antarctica,
noting that:
"Collaboration and cooperation between industry and regulatory bodies would
minimize the risk of an industry body challenging an international convention,
which may occur through allowing unregulated industry activities to
undermine the regime's responsibility." (Weber 2006, p.355)
Biotechnology companies are imbued in the above quotation with the power to disrupt
any bioprospecting regime for Antarctica of which they disapprove, which is still
speculative at the moment since no such regime exists. Weber also notes that
biotechnology companies may attempt to organize their own regime in the absence of
direction from the ATS, but "[w]ithout ATCP49 involvement, an industry-driven
initiative is unlikely to provide an unbiased comprehensive process and currently little
incentive exists for its development" (Weber 2006, p.354). Industry self-regulation has
precedence in Antarctica through IAATO, though as mentioned before this is not a
development with which political realists are comfortable. Biotechnology companies
are also portrayed as hesitant to enter into bioprospecting in such an unregulated area
because there exists a potential for new ATS bioprospecting legislation which could
49
ATCP refers to Antarctic Treaty Consultative Parties, states that have voting privileges within the
ATS.
165
negate their early investments (UNEP 2004). This regulatory uncertainty looms as a
large issue in discussing bioprospecting in Antarctica.
Although it is difficult to find an author who opposes the idea of
bioprospecting in Antarctica entirely, most who have written on the subject are
adamant that some sort of bioprospecting regulation needs to exist. No one has
proposed a ban or moratorium on bioprospecting. Even the Anatarctic and Southern
Ocean Coalition (ASOC), which was a strong advocate for the ban of commercial
mineral extraction within Antarctica, is hesitant to condemn this activity: "ASOC's
position is that commercial bio-prospecting should not be accepted as a fait accompli,
and that political choices are required by the governments to regulate this activity"
(ASOC 2009). The solution that continues to be proposed is regulation of some sort or
another through government. Julia Jabour and Dianne Nicol present a panoply of
regulatory choices in their article on Antarctic bioprospecting, suggesting some action,
however weak, is better than no regulatory action at all:
"The legal and policy issues are likely to become more troublesome as the
bioprospecting industry develops. Consequently, it would be in the best
interests of the Antarctic Treaty parties to prioritise [sic] the development of a
policy position on bioprospecting with a view to developing a legal regime in
the future." (Jabour-Green and Nicol 2003, p.110)
Jabour and Nicol do not even seek to prioritize which policy position or legal regime
they believe to be the best; they just seek to provoke some action out of the ATS50.
50
This stands in contrast to their student, Melissa Weber, who proposes industry accreditation (as
mentioned earlier).
166
The absence of regulation allows speculation to run rampant as to the potential
complications of bioprospecting within Antarctica. The status quo of non-regulation is
never advanced as an explicitly positive outcome for biological prospecting in the
region. The reason that regulation is pushed so hard as a solution to the potential
conflicts generated for the ATS by Antarctic bioprospecting may have its roots in how
governance is studied and perceived.
The realist model has been dominant in approaching the issue of Antarctic
bioprospecting and has even garnered policy results that it favors. Recommendation
XXXII-9, adopted at the 2009 ATCM in Baltimore, Maryland51, expresses the intent
of Antarctic Treaty consultative party states to stake out the issue of bioprospecting as
one which they will address internally. The resolution points out that the Protocol on
Environmental Protection as well as CCAMLR both regulate the collection of
biological material within Antarctica, which is the first stage of bioprospecting
activity. Where the resolution extends itself beyond already established guidelines is
in considering that use of biological material taken from Antarctica fall under the
rubric of activities that the ATS either has the right or the responsibility to govern.
Furthermore, by declaring that the ATS is the appropriate framework for managing
bioprospecting, Antarctic Treaty party states indicate that other frameworks such as
the CBD, individual state regulation, SCAR, or industry groups are not appropriate
forums for the governance of this activity within Antarctica. Through the crafting and
adoption of Resolution XXXII-9, realist policy-makers succeeded in defining
51
Recommendation XXXII-9 was adapted from Working Paper 18 by Australia and New Zealand
presented at the conference: "Regulation of biological prospecting under the Antarctic Treaty System".
167
Antarctic bioprospecting as an activity that must be exclusively governed by the ATS
and its constitutive states.
The desire of Hobbesean realists for a discretely ordered society governed
through state government is understandable, but ultimately limiting. This is not to say
that the contributions of states and regimes should be ignored or devalued, but rather
that the centering of governance on states is shown here to operate to the exclusion of
the consideration of other forms of governance. Hobbes and subsequent realists have
expressed either a fear that other forms of governance are anarchical or a contempt
that arises from the idea that governance practiced without the underlying threat of
violence are simply unenforceable words. But other forms of governance do exist and
have not only proven to be functional, but have specifically governed human activities
within Antarctica. The reality of governance within Antarctica is messy, and although
realists might feel better if Antarctic governance were streamlined and made clear, the
question of whether this mess can actually be made to function effectively is a
question that realists can only dismiss.
4.3 Postmodern governance
Recent investigations into how governance works have shown that not all
governance is entirely reliant on sovereignty or state government in order to function.
This section will explore non-hierarchical approaches to governance. The territorial
definition of social relationships wherein territories are used to define, enforce, and
168
mold social groups in an impersonal way fits well with the idea of territorial
governance of human activities. How better to mold social relations within an area
than by dictating which human activities are appropriate to practice and which are not?
The approaches to a broader notion of governance than the one offered by Hobbes
have historically emerged from the over-simplified rescaling debates that pitted the
power of states against globalizing forces. Some scholars involved in this debate might
have been over-zealous in declaring the obsolescence of states and the state system,
but recent updates to this critical theory have been able to incorporate the state as one
of many forms of effective governance. Empirical examples of effective governance
systems that employ the territoriality strategy of territorial definitions of social
relations exist within Antarctica itself. Finally, this section will apply the critical
model of governance to the issue of Antarctic bioprospecting and point towards
examples of its application that are underway already.
4.3.1 Governance not centered upon states
The movement to expand the definition of governance began within the last
forty years as scholars attempted to adjust their theories to a changing world. For a
long time, governance was synonymous with government, particularly when
considered under the Hobbesian realist view. While at its core governance remains
defined as managing human activity, recent scholarship on the subject has been able to
separate out governance from being synonymous with government. Governance is
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distinguished from government in that governance: 1) involves a wide range of
institutions including, but not limited to, the state, and 2) involves a coordination of
these institutions through networks and partnerships that are generally self-organizing
rather than imposed from above (Painter 2000). B. Guy Peters and John Pierre trace
the source of the academic discussion of "governance without government" back to
the United Kingdom and the Netherlands where in the late 1970s government
functions within those countries were supplanted by private companies (Peters and
Pierre 1998). One of the strongest voices in this discussion has been James Rosenau,
who edited with Ernst-Otto Czempiel in 1992 the volume Governance without
Government: Order and Change in World Politics (Rosenau and Czempiel 1992).
James Morrison quotes Rosenau writing that "… for more than three centuries, the
overall structure of world politics has been founded on an anarchic system of
sovereign nation-states that did not have to answer to any higher authority" (Morrison
1992, p.11). In a reversal from traditional Hobbesian ideals, here Rosenau cites the
system of sovereign states as being an anarchic and dysfunctional system for
addressing global issues. One chapter in his edited book is even entitled "The decaying
pillars of the Westphalian temple" (Zacher 1992), implying that the system of
sovereign states created at Westphalia in 1648 is no longer viable as a governance
system. There are networks of governance systems that do not depend on hierarchical
ideals of power or decision-making imposed upon subjects through sovereign states.
The non-hierarchical characterization of the new conceptualization of
governance does not fit well into hierarchical conceptions of scale mentioned in the
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previous section. The inadequacy of traditional ideas of power cascading down from
more geographically extensive scales to smaller ones has led to great debates about the
nature of scale (Marston 2000; Brenner 2001) and even calls to consider the abolition
of the concept within human geography due to its associations (Marston, Jones et al.
2005). Harriet Bulkeley, however, attempts to reconfigure conceptions of scale so that
it is more useful for the network analysis of modern governance systems (Bulkeley
2005). In Bulkeley's understanding of scale: 1) scalar hierarchies should be read in
terms of domination and subjugation without assuming that such a hierarchy is based
on territorial extent, and 2) scale should be recognized as socially constructed and not
assume that pre-existing official territorial boundaries necessarily limit their extent. As
long as the effects of scale are not assumed, but instead reinforced with evidence
gathered from empirical studies of relationships, it is a concept that may still be useful
to geographers in the context of new governance forms. While the state is not
eliminated as a scale of concern, a number of prominent geographers have argued
against centering all studies around the state (Johnston 2001; Painter 2003). This decentering of the state has allowed scholars to investigate governance activities
undertaken at the household level and connect them with state or global governance
practices in ways that challenge traditional readings of scale (England 2003; Marston
2003; Robinson 2003). NGOs are therefore able to impact governance directly,
bypassing the traditional stage in which they beseech the sovereign state to act as a
purveyor of influence. NGOs are capable of direct governance actions themselves.
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Given that NGOs are not simply organizations at a different scale from the
state that serve to influence and advise, it is important to understand some of the other
ways that NGOs can participate in this model of territorial governance. Although
regime analysis is one way to study how NGOs can participate in governance, the
technique finds itself limited to describing how NGOs influenced the states that were
the actors making decisions or building the regime (Betsill and Corell 2001; Corell
and Betsill 2001; Skodvin and Andresen 2003). The application of influence on states
within networks to secure governance outcomes is useful, but it is only one strategy.
Paul Wapner provides an account of how three environmental NGOs impact the
governance of the environment in other ways in his book Environmental Activism and
World Civic Politics (Wapner 1996). His first example of direct NGO governance of
the environment shows how Greenpeace bypasses the state and targets the cultural
realm of the general public to disseminate an ecological sensibility. In this way,
Greenpeace is able to spread their moral norms through symbolic actions such as
navigating a small zodiac boat in between a whale and a whaling ship. Wapner then
illustrates how the World Wildlife Fund raises money to build forest preserve fences
and environmental research stations where African locals can be employed to
participate in the preservation of wildlife. Rather than waiting for a given African state
to establish its own forest preserve, the World Wildlife Fund has taken direct action to
see that it is built. Finally Wapner illustrates how the Friends of the Earth creates a
network of social relations between smaller environmental groups working on
different local issues across the world in order to pool their knowledge and resources.
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Friends of the Earth also works at the interface between states and world civic society
in order to make governments more accountable for the global environment. These
examples illustrate that NGOs can have a large role in managing human activities in
myriad ways across the world.
4.3.2 Postmodern governance in Antarctica
Antarctica has long been held up as an example of a geographic area in which
conventional notions of governance do not apply. Richard Herr described Antarctica
in the following way:
"Distrust of sovereignty (and the state system it sustains) is scarcely novel, but
pursuit of the ideal of a stateless society in which to demonstrate the
cooperative rather than the competitive in human nature has probably never
enjoyed such a grand laboratory or been perceived so widely to have
succeeded as in Antarctica." (Herr 1996 a, p.91)
States still play an important role in Antarctic governance, so Herr's depiction of
Antarctica as a "stateless society" is hyperbolic, but the ATS parties consistently try to
erase or sublimate state interests to the interests of scientists publicly such that the
perception of Antarctica as stateless might not be too farfetched. The description of
science as a "shield" for state interests in the history section of this chapter supports
this perception of Antarctica as governed without state interests at heart, even if they
do exist just below the surface. Only seven states seek to exert sovereignty over
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Antarctic territories, and all of these states have been willing to delegate the authority
to govern certain human activities within Antarctica to a panoply of different
governance types. While Hobbesian realists might perceive a threat to Antarctic
governance from other international or global organizations such as the CBD, the
history presented shows that the ATS has been willing to cede authority over the
governance of whaling activities in the region over to the IWC. The realist worry over
states moving quickly to secure their own bioprospecting interests in the Antarctic, yet
states remain concerned about more than resource access and business interests. The
re-regulation of mining activities within Antarctica proves that states are willing to
adjust their interests in order to accommodate widespread public opinion. While
realists fret over the possibility that representatives from the biotechnology industry
might step in and create their own legislation in the absence of ATS state action, they
have also seen the historical development of an industry group, IAATO, to play a
large role in the governance of Antarctic tourism. There currently exists very little in
the way of formal ATS regulations regarding tourism in the region, and IAATO
maintains a presence at ATCMs. All of the different ways that different human
activities are governed within Antarctica can come across as not as neat as Joyner's
diagram might lead realists to hope that it might be. At the same time, the governance
in the region is more often based on the benefits of cooperation rather than the threats
of enforcement. Recent articles noting the passing of fifty years of the Antarctic
Treaty praise the agreement and its subsequent tendency to foster cooperative
governance as being highly effective, even if it was limited in scope and historically
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contingent (Beck 2010; Berkman 2010; Dodds 2010). Cooperation is a major
component in allowing non-hierarchical governance to work, because in order for
agreements to be effective without the use of swords, there must exist a bond of trust
between the various members of the network to allay the fears that are either quashed
or heightened (depending on your view) by the threat of violent enforcement.
Cooperation is a concept that comes up many times in conjunction with Antarctic
governance and science (Allison 2004; Jackson 2004; Press 2004). Cooperation offers
an alternative way to frame the construction of governance there. It is a model based
on hope and high expectations rather than the fear and low expectations of realist
politics.
4.3.3 Postmodern governance and Antarctic bioprospecting
As a result of this particular vision of Antarctica, it becomes possible to
imagine a role for non-state organizations in the governance of Antarctic
bioprospecting. The previous section on hierarchical territoriality recognized the
potential of organizational bodies other than the ATS and its member states playing a
role in governing bioprospecting activity, but held these up as negative examples to be
avoided. As the previous paragraph has suggested, each of the perceived threats to
Antarctic governance that are potential alternative venues for Antarctic bioprospecting
governance have been encountered before by the ATS for other governable activities
and incorporated into the messy system of governance that exists there. The
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consolidation of authority over Antarctic bioprospecting set forth in Recommendation
XXXII-9 would seem to indicate that the state consultative parties within the ATS
were only considering creating their own rules or regimes regarding bioprospecting,
although the discussion about bioprospecting that emerged from the same 2009
ATCM indicated that there were many different perspectives on the issue. There were
even those who suggested that the International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for
Food and Agriculture be consulted for guidance (ATS 2009, p.76). This matches up
nicely with David Walton's original intent to consult the CBD to see what
bioprospecting governance measures might be appropriate for Antarctica, an idea that
was later quashed and suggested as being "too political" to be advanced by a scientist.
Even today, however, the scientists within SCAR have been quietly taking governance
action regarding bioprospecting. As mentioned in Chapter One, at the 2006 SCAR
Delegates Meeting in Hobart, Australia took steps to govern bioprospecting within the
organization by revising and recirculating an amended "Code of Conduct for Use of
Animals for Scientific Purposes in Antarctica" as well as putting out Recommendation
XXIX-4, "Concerning the Recording of Confidential Data from Commercial
Activities" (SCAR 2006). These actions manage the activities of scientists who might
be engaged in Antarctic bioprospecting and provide a code of what actions are
considered acceptable by SCAR. There is no evidence that these actions were ever
brought to the attention of the ATS, but allowing SCAR to internally handle aspects of
bioprospecting makes sense due to the involvement of scientists in the activity.
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Aside from being able to envision bioprospecting governance as moving
beyond the confines of the ATS and the territorial state, such a governance might in
fact be necessary given the process of bioprospecting. Given the four-stage model of
bioprospecting illustrated in chapter one, it should be clear that it is unlikely that all
stages of bioprospecting will be completed within Antarctica. In fact, such activities
could be distributed between Antarctica and several other countries, depending on the
actors involved. In the event that Antarctic biological materials are being processed for
commercial use outside of Antarctica, it is not clear what authority or jurisdictional
power the ATS has to intercede and dictate use as suggested by Recommendation
XXXII-9. Alliances with other governance bodies that regulate aspects of
bioprospecting elsewhere in the world might be useful in this regard. The ATS is a
very territorially-centered governance regime and might have difficulty enmeshing
itself in global production processes without limitations. In this regard, it might help to
break apart the concept of bioprospecting such that the ATS only addresses the
harvesting of Antarctic biota. The idea of benefit-sharing as a result of the production
process was originally intended to compensate economically poor but biologically rich
countries for the exploitation of their resources (Eisner 1989). Since Antarctica is not a
country, nor a poor country at that, the whole concept of benefit-sharing may not
apply to the continent and could probably be dropped if the ATS would allow it. The
various actors engaged in Antarctic governance through the messy network of laws,
codes, and principles that comprise the social relations of Antarctica are already
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managing the activities of bioprospecting. The question is, does a dominant regime to
rule over the process of bioprospecting need to be composed for the region?
4.4 Conclusions
In addressing the urge to create a form of management to more explicitly
address the activity of Antarctic bioprospecting, it is important to consider what ideals
underlie the governance established. The Hobbesian realist approach believes that any
formal imposition of governance by a sovereign entity is preferable to the perceived
entropy that exists without it. The actual details of the agreement matter less than
achieving an agreement in the first place and only serve the interests of whichever
state has greater hegemonic power. As a result, a realist Antarctic bioprospecting
regime might be able to regulate bioprospecting activity on the continent, but through
structures of dominance. Under a critical model of governance, governance more
effective than sovereign imposition might be achievable through the self-regulation of
non-hierarchical networks. This model would allow the input of the actors involved in
bioprospecting, and increase their interest in abiding by governance rules that they
helped to create rather than having management hierarchically imposed upon them.
The growth of bioprospecting governance might be built upon the trust of the actors in
the system, rather than built out of a fear that other groups might come in and disrupt
the ATS.
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Currently, threats to the legitimacy and stability of the ATS from other groups
are fictional (or at worst, only potential threats). While organizations such as the CBD
have offered to aid in figuring out how to address Antarctic bioprospecting, no
organization has directly questioned the existence of the ATS over their absence of
direct regulations regarding bioprospecting in the region. The actions that the ATS has
taken to ensure its supremacy over the question of how to govern bioprospecting
within Antarctica are therefore unnecessary at best, and counter-productive at worst. If
the ATS opened discussions of how to govern bioprospecting in Antarctica to other
organizations, the resulting engagement might not only produce a more effective
governance method but also engender the goodwill of the other organizations. This
would provide additional legitimacy for any regime that was created and eliminate
rivals or competitors through their inclusion in the process. The protectionist rhetoric
espoused by Recommendation XXXII-9 only serves to isolate further Antarctic
governance from the rest of the world and creates a greater burden on the policymakers who work within it. There is little harm in listening to other groups and
potentially more to be gained in expanding the connections to a non-hierarchical
network.
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CHAPTER 5
SYNTHESIS
The Convention on the Regulation of Antarctic Mineral Resource Activities
(CRAMRA) was dead as of June of 1988, and its demise might have been presaged
through an observation of the process that was used to construct it. Amongst the
criticism that had been leveled at it was Malaysian Ambassador Zain-Azraai's
accusation that the closed-door negotiations of Antarctic Treaty Consultative Parties,
justified through their claims to Antarctic expertise, cultivated an air of exclusivity
that diminished CRAMRA's legitimacy (Azraai 1987). The formation of CRAMRA
had been largely facilitated through what Christopher Joyner called "corridor
diplomacy," casual and private encounters between negotiators in between the larger
sessions of convention negotiations (Joyner 1987, p.898). The image that the ATS
cultivated through this process was that it was an exclusive club about to control the
mineral resources of an entire continent. This was an image standing in contradiction
to its stated goals of managing Antarctica in the interests of all of humankind.
The negotiation of the Protocol on Environmental Protection to the Antarctic
Treaty that followed reflected an alternate approach to regime construction that took
into account diverse views and attempted to reconcile them. States and non-state
organizations brought forth proposals that were considered at the Antarctic Treaty
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Consultative Meetings (ATCMs) where the Protocol was being negotiated. While the
Protocol was presented as an internal matter for the Antarctic Treaty System (ATS),
environmental non-governmental organizations were authorized to attend the meetings
as observers which could contribute ideas but not vote on approving anything (Clark
1994). State delegations banded together to present their ideas and compare them to
those of others (Vicuña 1996). The process resulted in an agreement that was both
more inclusive and more legitimated than CRAMRA had been, ultimately leading to
its adoption.
If there is one thing to be learned from the previous three chapters and the
example above, it is that valuing diversity (in opinions, ideas, and approaches) is a
virtue in negotiating resolutions to complex issues. While the problems posed about
bioprospecting in Antarctica can be considered separately, larger patterns emerge
when the issues that frame them and the potential solutions are considered from a
wider perspective. The earlier chapters have established several patterns within the
various territorialities applied to Antarctica. This chapter will seek to synthesize what
has been gleaned within the discussions of the various chapters of both theory and
empirics. In addition, the chapter will explore the connections between theory and
reality through territoriality.
Geopolitical theory arises in each chapter with a contrast between seeing the
world through the lens of modern geopolitics and critical geopolitics. Modern
geopolitical theories remain entrenched in powerful positions throughout ideas of
Antarctic science, property, and governance. These perceptions of how the social
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world of Antarctica "really works" should not be totally dismissed as long as people in
positions of power within Antarctic governance continue to take modern geopolitical
ideas seriously and act upon them. However, it seems crucial to point out that critical
geopolitics does not negate modern geopolitical visions of the world, but rather places
them in a wider context which includes alternative perspectives. The views may be
differentiated by where their values are placed. Critical geopolitics values an infinite
diversity of perspectives and hybrid opinions that cannot be distilled for easier
participation while modern geopolitics seeks to essentialize the issues into their
component parts for easier management. This divide in theoretical approaches to the
subject matter can generally be grouped into perspectives on power; with modern
geopolitics focusing on achieving ends through domination and critical geopolitics
aspiring to empower individuals and organizations to participate in a cooperative and
non-hierarchical network. Domination and empowerment are different ways that
power relations are established and built, with advantages and disadvantages to each.
Each chapter also contains substantial empirical implications. To start with,
some seemingly intractable problems associated with bioprospecting become more
manageable when re-framed through a different approach. The dissertation also prods
various actors involved in the debate over Antarctic bioprospecting to act based on the
understandings revealed in each chapter. Scientists are asked to examine what science
is and consider more participation in the decision-making process through a
hybridized vision of their activity. Environmentalists are asked to articulate if they
embrace a vision of Antarctica as a commons, and are called to take independent
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action based upon their principles. The Antarctic Treaty consultative states are asked if
their legitimacy is truly threatened by outside forces, and then are called upon to
engage with other groups in a constructive way. Taken collectively, these suggestions
encourage a more open and cooperative model between interest groups in Antarctica.
Traditional roles within a nested hierarchy must be shed if the Antarctic Treaty System
(ATS) is truly going to move forward in the current century.
Finally, there is the nexus point between theory and reality that is territoriality.
Territoriality is an enactment of theoretical ideals on an actual area. Through its study,
geographers have staked a claim to testing how social ideals are inscribed into
everyday life both successfully and unsuccessfully. Any good theory should be backed
up by empirical facts. If a theory fails to explain what is happening in reality, then it
must either be augmented to accommodate what is happening (given a modernist
approach) or there must be an acknowledgement that the perspective is situated and
that alternative viewpoints should be sought (a postmodern approach). This
dissertation has sought to connect evidence of how the ideas of science, property, and
governance align with the activity of bioprospecting in Antarctica. The task has been
made more difficult because the problems associated with Antarctic bioprospecting
are given as prospective problems that have not yet been observed. Without solid
evidence to back up claims of troubles caused by bioprospecting or the lack of them,
this study has turned to regional historical precedent and the most recent theoretical
explanations of science, property, and governance.
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5.1 Theoretical Conclusions
This section reviews the broad theoretical positions that each of the previous
three chapters has provided and seeks to situate them in geopolitical visions of the
world. Chapter one introduced the idea of geopolitics in the context of critical
geopolitics, which this chapter now compares to modern geopolitics. Modern
geopolitics is an identification that fits the most dominant geopolitical imaginings of
Antarctic ideas: a constellation of conceptions that include Mertonian notions of
science, either Lockean or Marxist interpretations of property relations, and a realist
notion of governance. All together, these categories could be labeled as "modernist,"
if, as a template for reality, modernism is considered as using European experiences
and ideas for separating life into distinct spheres (Latour 1993; Clarke 2006). This
may be seen as a valid, yet limited, way to approach geopolitics. Critical geography is
situated in the postmodern era of thought, which does not negate modernist
interpretations of the world, but instead points out that they are not the only valid
interpretations. In this way, the larger constellation of postmodern thought includes
modernism and simultaneously allows for ideas that lie outside of the modern realm of
thought.
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5.1.1 Modern geopolitics
A modernistic approach is reflected in the dominant discourses from the earlier
chapters. Mertonian science seeks to classify scientists as disinterested objective
observers sitting apart from conflicts generated from differences of political opinion or
economic status, who can therefore be trusted to adjudicate the truth of whatever
subject they study. Scientists are set apart from nearly every other aspect of social life.
They are often given government funds through agencies like the National Science
Foundation (NSF) with their own oversight and governance of their scientific work
through peer review. Institutions such as tenure within the university system are
ostensibly set up to protect scientists from losing their job by pursuing lines of
scientific curiosity that might run counter to dominant economic or political interests.
Scientists are given this privileged position with the expectation that they may speak
truth to power without reprisal because they are dedicated to searching for the truth.
The social concept of property is dominated by two different lines of thought: the
Lockean ideal that holds that humans must privatize things that are held in common in
order to attain their best use and the reverse idea held by Marxists. Both of these
philosophies tend to reduce property into two states of being: held in common
ownership or held by private ownership. Both place a higher value on one state over
the other, and thusly satisfy the modernist mindset by reducing property to a simple
duality wherein one type of ownership is pure and the other is impure. Finally, realist
interpretations of governance envision states as the primary (or sole) institutions with
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the authority and power to manage territories such as Antarctica. This realist
conception might also be enlarged to accept supra-state organizations such as the ATS.
The realist conception of governance, as first expressed by Thomas Hobbes, reduces
the political environment to a choice between being governed by a state or existing in
a chaotic and perpetual war of all against all. Again, the dual classification system
exists here with an emphasis on reifying state territorial sovereignty.
Modern geopolitics is a way of ordering the world in order to minimize chaos
and categorize ideas, places, and people. Historically, geopolitics has had a complex
history since its inception as a term by Rudolf Kjellen in 1899. John Agnew broadly
categorizes three periodized discourses of geopolitics: civilizational geopolitics
celebrated European uniqueness from 1815 to 1875; naturalized geopolitics cast states
as organisms needing to expand their territories and evolve from 1875 to 1945; and
ideological geopolitics shifted the emphasis to promoting particular socio-political
orders during the Cold War between 1945 and 1990 (Agnew 1998). All three of these
geopolitical traditions are encompassed by the label modern geopolitics because they
share the characteristics of separating complex geopolitical situations into component
parts and imposing a comparative value on certain aspects. Klaus Dodds specifically
cites the use of geopolitics in the 1980s as being strongly influenced by political
realists:
"By the mid-1980s, geopolitical discussions within the United States were
primarily shaped by a group of scholars strongly influenced by political
realism and the desire to maintain American power in the midst of the so186
called second cold war following the collapse of détente. Geopolitics once
more became a shorthand for great power rivalries and signaled the importance
of the United States pursuit of its own national interests in an anarchical
world." (Dodds 2007, p.41)
Political realists are explicitly tied into Dodd's dominant geopolitical tradition of the
1980s. Recent incarnations of modern geopolitics have also been described as
"neoclassical geopolitics" by Alexander Murphy (Murphy, Bassin et al. 2004).
Michael Shapiro, from a critical standpoint, defines modern geopolitical discourse as
silencing "the historical process of struggle in which areas and peoples have been
pacified, named, homogenized, and fixed in modern international space" (Shapiro
1992, p.110)52. Through the process of categorization, some perspectives have been
subsumed, erased, or ignored by those imposing the modern geopolitical worldview.
Modern geopolitics is a valid, but limited way to see and interpret the world.
Timothy Luke points out that modern geopolitics is dedicated to a world where there
is a choice, rather than a world built on tradition where what has gone before is
assumed to be the rote truth (Luke 2007). It is hard to imagine issues such as genocide,
violent conflict over territory and resources, and the organized response to natural
disasters being addressed without the military, political, economic, and logistical
organizations that define modern geopolitics. The standardization of certain values,
such as "genocide is wrong", can be credited with creating a better world. The division
of the world into an assortment of territorial states also provides a degree of stability
52
This is referenced in Gearóid Ó Tuathail's 1996 book, Critical Geopolitics on p. 16 to help define
modern geopolitics.
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and predictability that subsequent social structures have come to rely upon. When
states break down or "fail," the results are often violent and chaotic. Modern
geopolitical models simplify the political world into abstract and heuristic components
that are easier to grapple with than the complex undifferentiated realities that are faced
everyday. Unfortunately, the application of some heuristic models does not always
work once they have been universalized and applied to other areas of the world.
Problems arise when modern geopoliticians commit in blind dedication to their model
of the world that runs counter to the reality encountered, thrusting them back into a
traditionalist approach based upon a belief in their system.
5.1.2 Postmodern geopolitics
Examples of the postmodern are evident in the previous three chapters.
Chapter two provided evidence of hybrid approaches to understanding science as
intricately interconnected with other aspects of life and complex in and of itself.
Mertonian ideals separate a very distinct type of scientist away from the rest of society
without acknowledging that not all scientists ascribe to Mertonian philosophies. If
scientists were truly aloof from the impacts of their research, they would not
participate at all in the patenting of their work. Once the perception of scientists as
disinterested advisors can be dropped within decision-making processes, scientists are
allowed more agency to act upon their findings. Chapter three illustrated how the
preconceived relationship between two categories of property ownership can be
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complicated by considering more perspectives. Not all objects of property relations are
either common or private. Some objects flow between ownership types and there are
occasionally people who engage in property relations with rights outside of ownership.
Chapter four illustrated how recent studies of governance can turn realist expectations
on their heads. A broader conception of governance includes more actors than states
and accepts the empowerment of ideas from non-hierarchical systems.
Critical geopolitics was developed during the postmodern turn. This line of
thought was strongly influenced by the postmodern philosophies of Michel Foucault,
who studied the construction of society through discourse. Geopolitics is nothing more
than a form of discourse according to Foucault's ideas, no matter how well-established
it seems. Rather than take geography as an unchanging backdrop to events of the
world stage, critical geopolitics recognizes that the understandings of geography may
be both fluid and dependent upon the standpoint from which the geography is viewed.
A collaboration between Gearóid Ó Tuathail and John Agnew produced one of the
first works of critical geopolitics in the early 1990s (Ó Tuathail and Agnew 1992).
Thinking along postmodernist lines, critical geopolitics sought to reveal the
complexities of world politics by acknowledging the wide range of types of actors
involved, the myriad kinds of techniques they used, the spectacle created through
those techniques, and how these spectacles and techniques utilized space (Ó Tuathail
1996). Discourse analysis is the tool that allows for researchers to understand world
politics in each of these aspects.
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There exists an apparent irony in eschewing a critique of modern dualities by
creating a contrast between the modern and the post-modern, yet the difference
between the two is not so simple. Clarke describes the relationship of the modern to
the postmodern thusly:
"…let us begin by clarifying that postmodernity is not in opposition to
modernity. Not only is it not a distinct epoch coming 'after modernity' - which
would imply absolute historical discontinuity (a conception in evidence
wherever hyphenation finds favor: 'post-modern') - it is not even a shift in
dominance (a relative discontinuity, which is what all those tedious twocolumn lists imply)." (Clarke 2006, p.114)
Postmodernists do not devalue the perspective of modernists, but rather seek to elevate
and give credence to perspectives that have been tossed aside by modernists as
"impure" and to acknowledge the complex source that modernists differentiate. Within
postmodernism, modernism is just another view. Ó Tuathail stresses that the
modernist view is also predominant amongst circles of policy-makers:
"…contemporary geopolitical discourses are still relentlessly modernist in
method, deploying an uncritical Cartesian perspectivalism to render the world
as already manifestly meaningful, disciplining unruly complexity by appeal to
unproblematized authority and expertise, reducing deterritorial questions to
familiar territorial registers, and falling back upon an unquestioned
exceptionalism." (Ó Tuathail 2000)
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From Ó Tuathail's account, it is clear that postmodernism has not usurped the
dominance of the modernist perspective, but revealed modernism's mission to tame the
complexity of life. Elsewhere, Ó Tuathail has pointed out how modernists are
ironically blind to the politics of their own gaze; that the act of overseeing and
imposing order is a particular (and often privileged) standpoint and that other
standpoints exist (Ó Tuathail 1996). Modernist thought and postmodernist thought
may each be thought of as a different political imagining which may exert influence
on how the geopolitical map of the world is constructed.
5.2 Empirical Conclusions
Aside from the reconciliation of the modern and postmodern modes of thought,
there still exists the practical question of what should be done about the commercial
use of Antarctic scientific research. This section will reiterate the three main issues
that have been raised about Antarctic bioprospecting. Judging the effectiveness of the
presented solutions is difficult because there has been little change to the act of
bioprospecting in the area, the profits derived from such activity, or management
decisions made. This dissertation can note, however, which solutions have been
endorsed strongly and which have been dismissed and the reasons given for each.
Through an examination of the discourse surrounding the questions surrounding
Antarctic bioprospecting, alternative interpretations of how to frame the issues can
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then be discussed as well as the possibility for considering different actors and what
constitutes bioprospecting.
5.2.1 If concerns are addressed separately, through modernist views
Although it originated from David Walton's inquiry into Antarctic
bioprospecting, the question of how to ensure the free flow of science as required by
Article Three of the Antarctic Treaty has not been addressed very much in the
academic literature. Kim Connolly-Stone suggests that there is no inherent
contradiction between patents brought about by bioprospecting and Article Three
because the information is shared through the publication of the patent (ConnollyStone 2005). Connolly-Stone has not been argued against in the literature, although
chapter two suggested that while the information might be available through patent
publication its use would still be restricted. The role of scientists in the debate over
bioprospecting has been discussed widely. Alan Hemmings suggests that the enshrined
position of scientists in Article Two of the Treaty might be threatened if they do not
police the boundaries between the types of science practiced (Hemmings 2010). Kevin
Hughes and Paul Bridge suggest that because the debate on bioprospecting involves so
many issues related to science, scientists should be more involved in its debate in the
Antarctic Treaty System (Hughes and Bridge 2010). The circumscribed role that
scientists have played in the debate over bioprospecting is illustrated by the continued
expectation that they should serve as disinterested observers on this and all other
192
Antarctic subjects. As mentioned in chapter one, the Scientific Committee on
Antarctic Research (SCAR) withdrew its paper advocating consultation with the
Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) from the 2002 Antarctic Treaty
Consultative Meeting (ATCM) because it was deemed "too political". SCAR made
few new recommendations to the ATCM after that, instead repeating its call for the
ATS and national committees to be aware of the issue. At the 2008 ATCM, SCAR
was called upon to provide information about Antarctic bioprospecting to the ATS, but
its input on the issue was not explicitly sought.
Concerns about the Antarctic system of property (or lack thereof) resonate with
several scholars, but the identification of Antarctica as a commons area is regarded as
politically idealistic and without much support within the ATS. Bernard Herber is the
strongest proponent of considering Antarctica as a commons space, and calls for the
intellectual property rights derived from Antarctic bioprospecting to be considered
part of the global information commons (Herber 2006). The classification of
knowledge derived from Antarctic bioprospecting should be considered a global
public good in Herber's system. While Julia Jabour promotes the idea of Antarctica as
a commons area, she is much more cautious about suggesting that a declaration of
such is a feasible outcome. Jabour suggests that it is possible that the ATS parties
could agree on a commons-based scheme for the intellectual property rights derived
from bioprospecting, although bioprospecting already exhibits a degree of egalitarian
standards that are in line with those articulated within the Antarctic Treaty (Jabour
2010). Morten Tvedt does express concern for "how this open space of genetic
193
resources and biological material can be safeguarded" (Tvedt forthcoming, p.9), but
ultimately expresses a belief that the worldwide system of patent law will dominate
any approach that the ATS may come up with. Discussion of Antarctica as a global
commons is rarely to be found within the context of ATCM debates or solutions. Even
groups like ASOC that would normally promote such an identity of Antarctica have
been relatively silent on the rhetoric when it comes to bioprospecting. The question of
the threat to the idea of Antarctica as a global commons has been dismissed out of
hand as not a concern of the ATS.
The issue that has been of the greatest concern to the ATS is the potential
threat that bioprospecting might pose to its authority in governing the continent by
empowering other groups to encroach upon their authority by pointing out their lack of
action on the subject. This fear has been regularly referenced by scholars writing on
Antarctic bioprospecting. At the end of their 2003 article, Julia Jabour-Green and
Dianne Nicol provide a list of six possible actions that the ATS could take to regulate
bioprospecting in the region with a warning that the problems engendered by
bioprospecting will grow over time if not addressed by regulation soon (Jabour-Green
and Nicol 2003). Jabour's student, Melissa Weber, specifically recommends an
accreditation scheme for Antarctic bioprospecting to engender goodwill between the
biotechnology industry and the ATS (Weber 2006). Patrizia Vigni, Sanjay Chaturvedi,
and Ann-Isabelle Guyomard all generally endorse the idea of the ATS taking some
sort of regulatory action, but tend to be less specific about what that action should be
(Vigni 2007; Chaturvedi 2009; Guyomard 2010). The impending threat of other forces
194
than the ATS extending their authority into Antarctica is a constant specter in these
works. This is the threat that seems to motivate the most action by the ATS on the
issue of Antarctic bioprospecting. Following the mention of bioprospecting in
Antarctica at the CBD meeting in February of 2004, the June 2004 ATCM finally
made an independent agenda item on bioprospecting. Resolution 9 at the 2009 ATCM
explicitly states that the ATS is the appropriate framework to address Antarctic
bioprospecting (ATS 2009). A corollary to this concern is that doing nothing is
tantamount to conceding authority and that some action taken by the ATS establishes
their authority better than no action taken at all.
The danger level of each of these threats is difficult to assess because they are
regularly framed as potential threats to be avoided. Dr. Walton brought up the issue of
bioprospecting in the first place out of a concern that an agreement between the British
Antarctic Survey (BAS) and several biotechnology firms called for the firms to get
exclusive rights to any samples after they were processed. In spite of the fear that this
might lead to claims against BAS about hording Antarctic scientific information, no
complaint about the deal was ever brought up at the ATS or against BAS in general.
Little action is taken to enforce the sharing of Antarctic scientific information and
there are no time limits given in terms of how quickly information needs to be shared.
In the case of polar meteorology, results are regularly shared instantaneously to help
predict weather patterns on the continent. Some geological samples can languish on
university lab shelves for years before any results are published about them or other
groups are able to access the samples. In the case of threats to the Antarctic commons,
195
it is unclear to what degree and over what resources privatization is considered a
problem. Is it the biological samples that must remain owned "in common" or must the
scientific results that are based on the study of those organisms remain in an
"intellectual commons"? The nebulous articulation of an Antarctic commons
generated by environmental groups like ASOC that purportedly support a "world park
Antarctica" vision provide little guidance as to what is or is not acceptable. A solid
rejection of mineral exploitation was articulated in the 1980s, but the right to exploit
certain levels of fish has not been contested. Although the ATS has composed
resolutions declaring that it remains the singular forum where Antarctic
bioprospecting must be addressed, it remains unclear what level of "outside"
interference in Antarctic affairs constitutes a breach of ATS authority. The
International Whaling Commission (IWC) is seen as having the authority to oversee
the pelagic resources of the Antarctic Southern Ocean and the International
Association of Antarctic Tour Operators (IAATO) is essentially given authority to
regulate tourism in the area, but it is unclear why the ATS needs to address
bioprospecting as a completely internal matter. Given the difficulties in assessing what
constitutes success or failure in managing Antarctic bioprospecting, perhaps the
parties involved should focus on addressing that issue before pursuing prospective
solutions that may only complicate matters.
196
5.2.2 Alternative approaches to Antarctic bioprospecting
The issues themselves might also benefit from alternative perspectives and/ or
re-framing of the problems. The solutions presented so far have been a limited set and
little action has been taken to move forward on anything specific. This suggests that
what has been presented so far is inadequate to the task for different reasons. The
inclusion of different perspectives into the debate has been rejected on a case-by-case
basis for different reasons. Scientists and scientific groups like SCAR have been seen
as needing to remain outside of any decision-making processes because of their
special status as objective observers. Chapter three has shown how those with
interpretations of Antarctica as a global commons are generally derided within the
ATS or treated as a threat because they might prefer United Nations governance over
the ATS's limited condominium arrangement. Input from outside international bodies
such as the CBD have been rejected because they would imply a ceding of authority to
these groups53. Earlier chapters have questioned the logic behind these justifications
for exclusion, and instead suggested that an inclusive model of discussion might yield
the best results. Discussion of possible solutions does not imply the imposition of one
group's authority over the others or that the roles of any group have been violated.
This might involve the transgression of traditional decision-making boundaries, but
the inability of the current governance body to either take specific action or justify not
taking any action suggests that outside ideas might be more productive.
53
This is seen as particularly difficult in the case of the CBD because the United States is party to the
Antarctic Treaty but does not belong to or recognize the CBD.
197
The decision to do nothing is regularly derided as a bad choice to make, but it
is not clear that definite negative consequences will arise out of this choice. After all,
the ATS has undertaken little to no action to legislate Antarctic bioprospecting so far
and there have not appeared to be any repercussions. Still, authors regularly predict
dire results if no action is taken. Herber suggests that "Option 1, the open access
(laissez-faire) approach amounts essentially to a 'no policy' approach that would allow
reckless access to, and exploitation of, valuable biological and genetic resources in
Antarctica" (Herber 2006, p.145). Vigni declares that "the absolute freedom of
carrying out such activities could seriously undermine the fragile political balance"
(Vigni 2007, p.99). Jabour and Nicols echo this sentiment:
"The legal and policy issues are likely to become more troublesome as the
bioprospecting industry develops. Consequently, it would be in the best
interests of the Antarctic Treaty parties to prioritize the development of a
policy position on bioprospecting with a view to developing a legal regime in
the future." (Jabour-Green and Nicol 2003, p.110)
Given the pride that individuals connected to the ATS have expressed about its ability
to anticipate and legislate problems before they become overly contentious, it is
understandable that the ATS and its proponents would wish for it to regulate
bioprospecting, even if threats have not yet materialized.
The potential for such vague threats is seen as enough justification to take
action against them, but the opposing view has yet to be fully articulated. The
precautionary principle, upon which this sentiment of pre-empting threats is based,
198
emerged from the Earth Summit of 1992 in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil54. Principle 15 of
that declaration states:
"In order to protect the environment, the precautionary approach shall be
widely applied by States according to their capabilities. Where there are threats
of serious or irreversible damage, lack of full scientific certainty shall not be
used as a reason for postponing cost-effective measures to prevent
environmental degradation." (Rio 1992)
As stated in chapter one, the possibility of unregulated environmental damage by
bioprospecting activities in Antarctica was ruled out by the ATS's Committee on
Environmental Protection (CEP), which declared that any activity regarding the study
of biological material in Antarctica was already regulated through the Environmental
Protocol of 1992. The precautionary principle may be interpreted more broadly to
consider potential conflict generated to science, property, or governance through the
three problems that have already been framed. In this case, the onus is on proponents
of bioprospecting to prove that there will be no harm in any of these categories
generated through their activities. This is a perspective that has not been fully voiced
at ATCMs. Reports by the United Nations University have indicated that industry
groups are keenly interested in the legislative outcomes of Antarctic bioprospecting
debates, but none have stepped forward to articulate a preferred vision for such a
regime (Lohan and Johnston 2003; UNEP 2004; Lohan and Johnston 2005). The
evidence so far is that current bioprospecting activities that have been taking place in
54
This is also referred to as the "Rio Summit" and it is also where the CBD was first opened for
signatures.
199
Antarctica have not yet limited the circulation of scientific information, impinged
upon the status of Antarctica as a commons space, or derided the authority of the ATS.
A representation of this perspective has been lacking in the discussions of
bioprospecting in Antarctica.
Even the term bioprospecting itself seems to be an ill-fitting description of the
process that is taking place within Antarctica. Recalling the inception of the term from
chapter one, Thomas Eisner's original intent in coining the term was to provide lesserdeveloped countries with defined resources (biological and chemical) for the use of
which more-developed countries would have to compensate them (Eisner 1989).
Without a defined group to compensate, is the commercial use of biological
information gathered from Antarctica really bioprospecting? If the intent of the term is
stripped away and the process itself is the sole consideration, as illustrated by Jabour
and Nicol (Jabour-Green and Nicol 2003), the term is restricted in such a way that
difficulty is presented in cases that do not align with the process. Take the example of
the Antarctic bacterium Oleispira antarctica. Oleispira antarctica was first discovered
in samples taken from Rod Bay in the Ross Sea region of Antarctica by an Italian
scientific expedition during the austral summer of 1999-2000 (Yakimov, Giuliano et
al. 2003). The biotechnology company Stratagene55 extract chaperonins Cpn60 and
Cpn10 from these bacterium and insert them into Escherichia coli bacteria to be sold
as "ArcticExpress™ Competent Cells"56 (Stratagene 2010). These cells allow for
lower cultivation temperatures for protein folding processes because of the
55
Aquired by Agilent Technologies in 2007
(http://www.chem.agilent.com/CAG/stratagene/agilent_stratagene.htm).
56
As of October 2010, ten .1 ml samples of the material are priced at $225 from their website.
200
chaperonins from Oleispira antarctica, but there are no patents based on this process
that trace back to the Antarctic bacterium. The company is just utilizing components
derived from the bacterium to produce the product. The fact that the product is derived
from an Antarctic bacterium is proudly proclaimed in advertising for the product
(Stratagene 2006, see Figure 21). If there has been no patent claimed on the Antarctic
biological material, should its commercial use still be addressed by regulations on
Antarctic bioprospecting? Stratagene was not a part of the original Antarctic
expedition that discovered the microorganism, but it did eventually make use of it. If
Antarctic bioprospecting can only be addressed through the ATS and the ATS only
has authority over Antarctica then this sort of exploitation seems difficult to address.
The questions of what bioprospecting is and where bioprospecting takes place are
essential to any regulation which addresses it, and these are questions that have not
been addressed.
What is needed is a forum to discuss issues of commercial uses of Antarctic
scientific knowledge generally. Scientists, biotechnology industrialists,
environmentalists, and participants in other bioprospecting regimes have all sat quietly
on the sidelines as Antarctic policy-makers have jealously guarded their authority to
legislate Antarctic bioprospecting. While national delegations discuss the issue at the
ATCMs, little heed is paid to these other actors, who are themselves key to the
implementation of any Antarctic bioprospecting policy that might emerge.
Representatives of these groups should work together, whether through a formally
ATS-endorsed meeting or through communication between leaders representing each
201
202
of these groups, to establish a set of guidelines regarding how knowledge derived from
Antarctica should be used or commercialized once it extends beyond the continent.
These guidelines would set what the expectations are for knowledge that has its roots
in the Antarctic environment. Guidelines for commercial uses of scientific information
from Antarctica would also serve as a nexus point that the numerous territorializations
of Antarctica could use as a pivot to help further clarify what kind of a place this
southern continent is.
5.3 Synthesis of the Theoretical and Practical
Using a combination of modern and postmodern approaches, more solutions to
potential political problems can be considered. Modernist approaches taken through
enacting state legislations can go a long way to fixing problems, but additional work is
necessary to complete the work. Consider the issue of Patagonian Toothfish
overfishing in the Southern Ocean. Most policy work concerning the issue had focused
on hierarchical bureaucratic territorialities, such as installing vessel monitoring
devices on ships and instituting a catch documentation scheme. These were shown to
be effective at ending roughly 66% of the illegal, unreported, and unregulated fishing
that took place in the area (Agnew 2000). A number of nongovernmental
organizations (NGOs) found creative ways of addressing not only the remaining 34%
of fishers that could not be swayed by state or supra-state imposed regulations by
setting up reward systems for turning them in, but also sought to address the wider
203
problem of staunching demand for the fish, one through a restaurant campaign entitled
"Take a Pass on Chilean Sea Bass". These NGOs did not seek permission from the
ATS or expect that the problem would be dealt with by state authorities, but took
action by themselves to address the problem. The capacity for individuals like David
Walton or organizations like SCAR and ASOC to act is present in the current situation
for Antarctic bioprospecting and exists for other issues elsewhere in the world as well.
Rather than simply call out for leadership on Antarctic bioprospecting, this
dissertation has offered a number of different ways forward. The decision rests with
all actors involved in Antarctic affairs what approach and ideals they will enact on the
issues facing Antarctica through acts of territoriality. This dissertation attempts to
broaden geopolitical horizons within Antarctica in the hopes that such broadening may
serve as an example for the rest of the world as to how anyone can be empowered to
make a difference in how the world is constructed. Working from the south pole
northwards makes terribly good sense.
The practical management questions that bioprospecting poses to Antarctica
are best addressed through a synthesis with the theoretical foundations upon which the
questions are based. The strategy of territoriality bridges the gap between the
theoretical geopolitical ideals that are held by the actors involved and the practical
implications and ramifications that are wrestled with in the reality of addressing the
activity. The territorializations of modernist approaches are revealed to have difficulty
addressing the nuances posed by the commercial use of Antarctic biota. Antarctica
might benefit from the inclusion of postmodern territorial approaches to understanding
204
and resolving the conflicts that surround such activities. For scholars to provide the
most helpful insights on which the involved actors may base their decisions, they must
recognize the standpoints that they are implicitly endorsing through their
territorialities.
Chapter one declared that territoriality would be a major tool utilized
throughout this dissertation to understand how different conceptions of science,
property, and governance are actually enacted upon the Antarctic continent. Each
subsequent chapter revealed both modern and postmodern approaches to each idea and
how those approaches had practical implications for how Antarctic bioprospecting is
addressed. The preceding practical section of this chapter illustrates that the majority
of academic approaches (as well as actual policy approaches) to the issue of Antarctic
bioprospecting are rooted in modernist expectations. The territorialities employed or
endorsed by modernist thought are generally reliant on an approach that is focused on
enacting policy through a hierarchical bureaucratic strategy. Scientists engage with the
decision-making process only as advisors and objective observers. Property is reduced
to a binary state as either public or private. Governance is only legitimately conducted
through the state or supra-state organization such as the ATS. Most proposed solutions
to bioprospecting problems call for action by the ATS, and the ATS has reinforced this
through Resolution 9 from the 2009 ATCM.
There may yet emerge an official bioprospecting regime from the ATS that
addresses the concerns that have been posed, but in the meantime a postmodern
territorial approach to Antarctica might provide some insight that would resolve these
205
issues. As mentioned before, a postmodern approach acknowledges a variety of
standpoints and allows for hybrids that would otherwise transgress modern
boundaries. Hybrid models of how scientists conduct themselves would acknowledge
the actual role that they play in the process of decision-making and enforcing
decisions on the ground in Antarctica. Since scientists comprise a substantial amount
of the population there and are the ones who are involved in bioprospecting-related
activities of sample collection and processing, they will ultimately dictate how any
rules are enacted on the ground. If the territorial concept of Antarctica as a commons
is to be maintained, it will rely on its proponents being able to articulate exactly what
that ideal means in territorial terms. This is a task that has been avoided so far by
environmental groups such as ASOC in favor of focusing on specific issues of which
they feel more certain. A postmodern conception of a commons as something beyond
a private or public dichotomy could go a long way to allowing proponents of the
common leeway to negotiate their vision of Antarctica into a feasible reality. Finally, a
recognition that input to the ATS from other governance bodies does not equate to
ATS capitulation to them might allow the organization to open up and consider a
wider range of possible ways to address the issue of bioprospecting. The current
modernist mindset has the ATS parties tightly clutching to a model of dominating
power. Accepting alternative territorial concepts of Antarctica is not only an
opportunity to win allies and learn more effective governance techniques, it is also
holding true to the spirit of the fourth article of the Antarctic Treaty. The acceptance
of overlapping territorial conceptions lies at the heart of what has made the Antarctic
206
Treaty a unique (and somewhat postmodern) agreement that accepts even seemingly
contradictory claims as equally valid as long as they are not acted upon.
Political geographers are in a particularly good position to articulate how
different visions of Antarctica are and can be articulated within Antarctica. Antarctica
is a site of synthesis. Examples of modern and postmodern approaches to issues there
abound. Scholars have not only a duty to reflect what the dominant territorial views
are, but also to present alternatives that those in power might not already have
considered. There is a role for modernist territorial approaches that focus on
hierarchical bureaucratic methods, but there is also value in revealing the diversity of
possible approaches to the situation that might be revealed through the postmodern
territorial definition of social relationships.
207
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