Alessandro Antonello. The Polar Journal. Volume 4, Issue 2, 2014.
Introduction
At their third consultative meeting in June 1964, the Antarctic Treaty consultative parties passed the Agreed Measures for the Conservation of Antarctic Fauna and Flora (AMCAFF). The Treaty parties began discussing the subject of nature conservation during their earliest meetings following the Treaty’s signature in December 1959, even before all signatories had ratified it. They were responding to calls from biologists working within the newly formed Scientific Committee on Antarctic Research (SCAR). When AMCAFF was finally passed, it was not only an early achievement for Antarctic nature conservation and environmental protection, but was also a landmark of Treaty diplomacy proving the capacity of the regime, and the intention of several of the parties, to regulate human activities rather than simply keep a watching brief on Antarctic affairs.
This article is about nature conservation in the early years of the Antarctic Treaty and offers the first sustained and critical history of the origins and negotiations of AMCAFF. It is also about the implications of this subject for the shape and direction of Antarctic diplomacy. It argues that the Agreed Measures came about because the conservation challenge posed by scientists to the new Treaty parties allowed for an opportunistic and advantageous embellishment and expansion of the young regime. Though of a lesser order than the Treaty itself or the later conventions on seals and marine living resources and the Madrid Protocol, the scientific impulse and diplomatic negotiations that led to the Agreed Measures are worthy of attention for what they can illuminate about the early life of the Treaty. The Agreed Measures were not a pre-ordained or natural and easy outcome. They required intellectual effort and the expenditure of diplomatic capital. Making a diplomatic space for them meant subtly prying open the Treaty for reinterpretation very shortly after its difficult birth.
As well as advancing arguments about the content of the negotiations and their importance, this article pursues a more critical reading of Antarctic history after the Treaty based in archival research and informed by contemporary concerns in environmental history and international history. Though, as far as archives and sources go, this article has its limits: it draws on archives from only the four English-speaking parties—Australia, New Zealand, the United Kingdom and the United States. Antarctic diplomacy after the signing of the Treaty has only recently been gathering sustained attention from historians. Important questions about Antarctic history in the 1950s continue to occupy historians’ minds, and new questions and approaches have continued to change the way we view Antarctica before the Second World War, especially the Heroic Age. These are all important and necessary research paths. My historiographical argument is that we must move more fully into researching the history of the Treaty era; we cannot concentrate our research only on the formation of the Treaty document, but must realise that the Antarctic Treaty has been given life through enacting it, arguing about it, and talking about it after 1959. Hence, my argument that AMCAFF was a “reinterpretation” of the Treaty rather than merely a “development”. “Development”, to my mind, implies design and intentionality and suggests a teleology of ordered movement into the present, rather than the implicit or explicit politics involved in every decision made within the Treaty regime. A fuller understanding of the Treaty period is especially pressing given contemporary concerns and debates about the resilience and future life of the Antarctic Treaty System as it faces potential challenges, ranging from climate change to increasing resource exploitation.
This article has three sections. The first gives an account of the scientific impulse for nature conservation in Antarctica, and is especially concerned with the language of conservation articulated in 1959 and after by Australian biologist Robert Carrick and other biologists working through SCAR bodies. The second section is concerned with the place of conservation in Antarctic diplomacy, specifically the place of nature and the environment within the text of the Antarctic Treaty itself. The final section describes the negotiations towards AMCAFF at the first three consultative meetings.
SCAR and the scientific impetus for conservation
Before the late 1950s, ideas or rules relating to Antarctic nature protection were limited in scope and intent, applying to whales and seals and framed around the conservation of resources. Specific regulations regarding seals first appeared in the last quarter of the nineteenth century, and were applied by the UK over its Falkland Islands territories and by the Australian colony of Tasmania over Macquarie Island. As the Antarctic whaling industry rapidly developed at the beginning of the twentieth century, whales also came to be covered by various regulations. The French, New Zealand and Norwegian governments also passed similar regulations regarding seals and whales in their Antarctic and sub-Antarctic possessions.
These regulations were passed and prosecuted for reasons other than that of pure nature conservation. On the one hand, these regulations existed most often to tax the profits of sealing and whaling activities. In Britain’s case, whaling income began at a time when ideas about colonial development and economic self-sufficiency were taking hold in Whitehall. On the other hand, these regulations were also used by officials looking for ways to perfect territorial sovereignty. The appointment of curators and inspectors of wildlife and the passing of conservation and management ordinances were administrative acts that could demonstrate effective occupation.
In other regions and places, a conservation ethic emerged from various sources. In some places, a popular tradition of natural history spurred such an ethic; in others amateur ornithology did; and in other places still, locals dependent on wild resources and personally affected by their decline were the sources of conservationist thinking. Antarctica was without these experiences, so it was trained, internationally connected biologists who led the development of nature protection and conservation there. A small group of biologists emerged at the close of the 1950s from the shadow of the geophysical sciences to call for protections for the fauna and flora that were their subjects of research. The International Geophysical Year had thoroughly occluded the animal life of the continent in favour of its geophysical forces, bequeathing to the Antarctic Treaty an almost lifeless and inert view of the region. Yet, the continent and its surrounding seas were not lifeless. The troubling reality was that, in their search for the hidden forces of the earth, or searching for the shape of the continent and ice cap, geophysical scientists were causing harm, if mostly unintended, to Antarctic life. In the eyes of many biologists, the “assault on the unknown” actually became an unintended assault of the animal life of the Antarctic. As articulated in a resolution passed at the 1959 Antarctic Symposium in Buenos Aires, biologists saw that Antarctic birds and mammals had an “extreme vulnerability to the mischief of unprincipled men and uncontrolled dogs”—the resupply operations for scientific expeditions had brought in “persons, members of ships’ companies and others, who possess a minimum of interest in the natural life and its conservation and who … have made and will continue to cause serious damage to the floral and faunal populations”, and modern operations had developed some “careless aspects” like flying over rookeries and pumping ships’ bilges near the shore.
It was a 1959 paper by Robert Carrick—“Conservation of nature in the Antarctic”—which ushered in the broad debate about the issue of conservation. Carrick prepared the paper for the Antarctic Symposium in Buenos Aires in November 1959, but because he could not attend, only the title of the paper was read. Seeing the importance of the subject, Gordon Robin, the secretary of SCAR, solicited it for publication in the SCAR Bulletin in late 1960. A biologist with the Wildlife Division of Australia’s Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO), Carrick’s Antarctic research concerned the seals of Macquarie Island, and was, during ANARE’s early years something of a de facto head of Antarctic biology in Australia. Trained in zoology at the universities of Glasgow and Edinburgh, Carrick turned to the behaviour and ecology of starlings when a lecturer at the University of Leeds before the Second World War. After the war he moved to a senior lectureship at Aberdeen, and in 1952 he joined the recently established CSIRO Wildlife Survey in Canberra. In Canberra, he continued his ornithological work, including establishing the Australian Bird-Banding Scheme and working on the territorial behaviour of Australian magpies. In addition to his Antarctic conservation work, he had joined the Royal Australasian Ornithological Union’s conservation committee in 1954, and at the end of the decade would also join the early national conservation efforts of the Australian Academy of Science.
The revised and published version of Carrick’s paper began with the premise that “man” had an inevitable impact on “his environment”. That impact was due to “wasteful over-harvesting, uncontrolled interference, ill-advised introductions of alien forms, destruction of the resources on which flora and fauna depend, and, in general, to lack of well-informed long-term planning during the earlier stages of human occupation”. This description of human impact could have been made for any region. For Carrick, though, noting this for the Antarctic was “a challenge and an opportunity”, recognising that the threat of human activity in the Antarctic could be anticipated and prevented.
Carrick made a threefold case for conservation. First, there were scientific values. The harsh and extreme Antarctic environment had produced “living forms which represent the end-point in structural, physiological and ecological adaptation to extremes of low temperature, high wind and day-length”, and knowledge of these adaptations “offers information of fundamental importance on the extent to which anatomical, physiological, and behavioural mechanisms are perfectable [sic]”. Furthermore, preserving the Antarctic flora and fauna would assist biogeographical studies of the southern hemisphere.
There were aesthetic reasons. Carrick felt that “Penguins, albatrosses and seals enliven the bleak landscape and open sea”, penguins being particularly attractive for “their upright gait and reciprocal curiosity toward us”. In addition, to these visual pleasures was psychological succour. Carrick thought that there was “the mental and spiritual recuperation derived from contact with living nature, especially to those who are becoming introspective, worried and stressed”. This was especially important for the Antarctic, as men were isolated, with little outside of their mind. Expeditioners in the Antarctic required “pleasant, objective and impersonal thoughts” to help “restore perspective”, and for this local wildlife was valuable.
Finally, there was conservation’s economic value. Carrick, though hardly a booster for Antarctic whaling or sealing industries, made the commonplace, yet still largely ignored, statement that conservation was necessary to prevent the disastrous extermination of species through over-exploitation. He noted, however, that evaluating the exploitation potential of these animals was a complex ecological problem. He also commented on the household economy, as it were, of the Antarctic, noting that the use of seals, birds and eggs as the food of men and dogs was not without its potential dangers. Given the highly localised character of populations, any excessive use would endanger the local supply.
One of the notable aspects of Carrick’s perspective on conservation was its emphasis on the wholeness and totality of the biotic community. In his analysis, one had to look past the “evident losses” of penguins and seals (though certainly not ignore them), to the “more complex problem of conservation of… flora and fauna, marine and terrestrial, as a whole”. Conservation had to rely on and begin with the “scientific grasp of the ecological and behavioural relationships within the biotic community”—the “intricate interacting system”. This emphasis on the scope of the conservation effort to include the whole community or system was not taken up in the Agreed Measures, yet it stands as one of the earliest, if inchoate, articulations of the need to protect the ecosystem as a whole, rather than simply parts of it.
Carrick was supported and joined by a formidable group of Antarctic biologists. They all, notably, shared a scientific research interest and speciality: birds. Carrick, W.J.L. Sladen, Robert Falla, Carl Eklund, Jean Prevost and Robert Cushman Murphy were all important actors in the conservation cause to their own governments and in forming SCAR’s position. Each of these men was also a highly experienced Antarctic scientist and expeditioner. Another notable ornithologist in this mix was Brian Roberts, the lead British Antarctic diplomat, who had been ornithologist on the British Graham Land Expedition (1934-7). Additionally, in the chorus of bird people, was the resolution of the May 1960 conference of the International Council for Bird Preservation which called explicitly for the protection of birds in Antarctica. Not only were they coincidentally all ornithologists or zoologists, but there were important professional connections between some of these men: Roberts and Sladen had been acquainted from the late 1940s, when Sladen was a member of the Falkland Islands Dependencies Survey; Cushman Murphy and Falla had developed a close professional relationship around the years of the Second World War when Murphy travelled to New Zealand where Falla was head of the Dominion Museum; and Carrick traded off the close relationships of the Australian Antarctic Division and Phillip Law with Brian Roberts, Gordon Robin and the Scott Polar Research Institute. That the leading scientists in the push for strong conservation measures in Antarctica should all be ornithologists points us towards the long trajectory of conservation in the first half of the twentieth century, to the origins of modern wildlife protection in the late nineteenth century—Cushman Murphy, for example, had first travelled to the sub-Antarctic in 1912. These ornithologists drew on a venerable vocabulary and sensibility of conservation deeply embedded in the specific practice of ornithology and natural history.
Gordon Robin asked Carrick in April 1960 to draft some preliminary recommendations on conservation for discussion at the fourth SCAR meeting in August-September 1960, where it was set as an important agenda item. Carrick duly obliged Robin with a discussion paper outlining general principles, information required from SCAR members for conservation measures and recommended conservation measures. His principles were based on those he had set out in his 1959 paper, though the economic values of Antarctic fauna were played down, and his suggested regulations were narrowly conceived and basically concerned with establishing the idea that species vulnerable to human actions should be protected through a permit system.
While much of Carrick’s language was unobjectionable, some of his ideas demonstrated something of a tin-ear for Antarctica’s political reality. He wrote, for example, that “Political boundaries have no significance for migrating animals, and rare and interesting species are, in a very real sense, the property of the whole world”. Robin and Brian Roberts, more attuned to political realities and constraints (or perhaps more willing to concede them), took Carrick’s basic propositions and fashioned a more politically acceptable paper. The final paper, while continuing to emphasise the importance to the world of Antarctic animals, revised Carrick’s idea that Antarctic animals were “the property of the whole world” and suggested that they merited “preservation as a world heritage”.
Interestingly, while there was strong agreement that conservation was an important topic for Antarctic science, there were apparently subtle disagreements about SCAR’s pursuit of the topic. SCAR had only been established two years previously, and there was not extensive agreement about exactly what part it should play in the emerging political architecture. Drawing on the IGY tradition of excluding, at least superficially, politics from its discussions, some delegates thought that making specific recommendations about conservation measures would be too political. This is, at least, the position Brian Roberts’ recorded in his Foreign Office minutes. The situation is subtly hinted at in the SCAR conservation report itself, noting that the Executive Committee and Biology Working Group thought the report was “a reasonable compromise between the view that the statements should be confined to setting out general principles and the opinion of those who would prefer more detailed recommendations”. Those working within SCAR would not resolve this tension—scientific advice against expert recommendations—through the conservation debate, nor would they resolve this tensions for many years.
By the end of 1960, therefore, biological scientists working with SCAR had made their position on conservation clear, offering the Treaty parties a mix of general principles for conservation with a range of suggested measures—they hoped the Treaty parties would pay attention. Apparently content with this broad-based advice, SCAR and its members did not revisit its conservation position while the parties were negotiating the Agreed Measures. Though some of those scientists would participate in the consultative meetings, SCAR in some ways exited the stage. If those scientists who had participated in the International Geophysical Year had the unanticipated pleasure of affecting the course of Antarctic affairs, Robert Carrick and his biologist colleagues were evidently more conscious of their efforts to shape Antarctica’s future.
Living resources in a lifeless Treaty
Given the speed with which the parties of the soon-to-be-ratified Treaty dived into the conservation issue, one might assume some specific sanction for their actions in the Treaty, or at least a broad coverage of the issue in the recently concluded Washington negotiations. However, the Treaty contains only one sub-paragraph on conservation. Article IX, which establishes the meetings of consultative parties and the subjects for which they should take further action includes within it the subject of “preservation and conservation of living resources” (Article IX, paragraph 1[f]). While the Treaty as a whole is concerned in many parts with the Antarctic as a natural environment for scientific study—though a relatively inert and geophysical environment—this sub-paragraph is the only one which relates to the living parts of the Antarctic environment.
The issue apportioning or recognising rights to Antarctica’s natural resources had a long history. Natural resources featured unevenly in plans and proposed texts circulating in late 1957 and early 1958. Some US State Department officials, for example, thought that one of the tasks of an international regime for Antarctic would be the “regulated development and utilization, in the general interest, of the natural resources of the Antarctic region” and the “conservation, in the general interest, of renewable natural resources of the Antarctic region”. For others, discussing resources was worrying. Australia bullishly adhered to its position on sovereignty, which meant that it could not countenance any potential regime being concerned with the issue. Indeed, Australia’s position saw the Americans soften their own pre-negotiation position on the question of resources to read “The establishment of uniform and non-discriminatory rules for any possible development of resources in the future”. So thoroughly had Australia insisted on its position regarding resources, that Ambassador Daniels did not even include resources within his first scoping document for a Treaty in the first preparatory meetings.
The IGY had played a significant part in this conception of the region, allowing for an evasion of conservation and resource issues. On the one hand, the IGY had embedded the idea of a relatively lifeless continent—save for scientists and sailors—the observation point for the earth’s geophysical phenomena. On the other hand, the IGY also contributed to the view of a continent without economic value. Adrian Howkins has argued that IGY provided proof for the major players—the US and UK—that there were no mineral resources in the region, or at least not readily and economically available. Persuasive as far as the US and UK are concerned, Howkins’ argument lends further weight to the continent having become a relatively lifeless and inert region. The combination of these two conceptions allowed for the Treaty to see the Antarctic environment as the neutral stage for international relations.
The conservation of nature and resources was essentially absent from the preparatory meetings beginning in June 1958, which preceded the main treaty conference. The issue had not, for example, featured in the American aide memoire circulated in March 1958 to canvas the possibility of a diplomatic conference—at that time the absence was questioned by a Norwegian diplomat in London, who noted the likelihood of discovery of minerals. The preparatory meetings were meandering and loosely structured affairs until about the middle of November 1958. Between June and November, while the negotiators discussed some substantive issues, the Soviet Union’s lack of willingness to fully negotiate hampered efforts to come to basic agreements; only the draft rules of procedure and agenda items were discussed. It was at the meetings on 12 and 18 November 1958 that Paul Daniels circulated a full US draft Treaty. This draft contained no reference to resources or nature conservation. Except for a couple of reported instances of brief mentions of resources or economic rights—usually in the case of the Australian representative insisting that they were not topics for discussion—resources and conservation remained off the table for the remainder of the preparatory meetings. This was not an oversight; rather, the issues were deliberately avoided because some parties did not want them discussed.
When the formal conference opened on 15 October 1959, the draft Treaty still did not contain any clause relating to conservation or preservation of nature or resources. In the afternoon of 22 October, the issue briefly arose when the Chilean delegate stated his country’s hope that the treaty might refer “to the preservation of the maritime health and riches in the Antarctic”; it was not seen as a substantial enough comment by the secretariat to include in the summary record. The subject got another brief mention the next day. The Chilean delegate finally expanded on the point at the morning meeting of 24 October, when he officially proposed an addition to the article on consultative meetings. On the morning of 26 October, he “noted the special concern of the Government of Chile for the preservation and protection of natural resources, especially maritime resources”. In the discussion that ensued, South Africa and the UK explicitly supported the proposal. The UK delegate asked whether “natural resources” included minerals, and further pushed that the question of “wild life” be considered. The Chilean delegate replied that Chile was mainly interested in protecting maritime resources “but had thought it might be useful to use the broader term ‘natural resources’”. Australia, however, thought the Chilean proposal went “beyond the scope of the present treaty”, putting a damper on the mild support. The issue was left in that undetermined state.
The issue arose again the next afternoon (27 October), when Paul Daniels, the US delegate, evidently replying to the Australian objection, outlined why, in fact, the issue was a matter for the Treaty parties, and consistent with one of the central purposes of the Treaty, the encouragement of scientific research. He suggested: “certainly one of the objects of scientific investigation in Antarctica is investigation of living things there. And if we don’t conserve them, there will be nothing to investigate”. The Chilean delegate amplified his previous comments by stating that Chile “would have preferred a special article, or at least an annex or protocol” on the issue, but was willing to pursue it in the proposed manner to not delay the negotiations. In the continuing discussion, the French and Argentine delegates agreed with the Australian assertion that the issue was outside the Treaty’s scope. In spite of the reservations, and the disjointed and slightly indeterminate discussion, the representatives on Committee II agreed to the inclusion of the clause relating to the “preservation and conservation of living resources”. The matter was not discussed again during the conference, and the words agreed in the early evening of 27 October remained in the final text of the Treaty.
This sub-paragraph has become one of the most productive of the entire Treaty, giving licence to major discussions over the following decades on seals, marine living resources and all environmental concerns. Its expansive re-interpretation has become a hallmark of the Treaty era. But that it has become so was through no clear intention of the negotiators in 1959. Its inclusion came about through a combination of specific Chilean concerns about fisheries, indeterminate debates about the purpose of the Treaty, pockets of insistence, and no determined opposition.
Negotiating the Agreed Measures
It was the US representative Paul Daniels who proposed that the Treaty parties should place conservation on the agenda of their first consultative meeting, which would meet within two months of the entry into force of the Treaty. He made this suggestion in January 1960, at the very first of the interim meetings following the Treaty’s signature. Only the British government took up the conservation issue with any vigour. More specifically, it was Brian Roberts, the Polar affairs research officer with the Foreign Office, who doggedly pursued a full and separate convention for the conservation of Antarctic wild life.
The British pursuit of conservation needs to be appreciated within the general context of their Antarctic policy. Having resigned itself to the difficulties of maintaining the South Atlantic and Antarctic outposts of empire, Britain’s new tack within Antarctic affairs was that the newly inaugurated Treaty regime should be a vehicle for internationalisation. It was internationalisation, importantly, with Britain leading the way. This policy, it was hoped, would secure Britain’s position and future in the Antarctic especially to be used against Argentina and Chile. Within this context, and still in the midst of preparatory meetings in 1960, Brian Roberts articulated the importance of achieving something in the area of conservation as “one of the first real tests of the international co-operation envisaged in the Treaty”. While Roberts was gung-ho on the issue, indeed seeing in conversation measures a threefold test for the Treaty—in co-operation between SCAR and governments, procedures for harmonising legislation between parties, and in the eyes of the public with their “emotional approach to protection of penguins, etc.”—even the most junior FO officers had to keep hard political issues in mind. Responding to a Roberts minute, KG McInnes wrote “We must take care however, that by producing too many bright ideas for the Canberra agenda we do not prejudice the Treaty ratifications of Chile, Argentina or the USSR”. McInnes’ caution to Roberts is suggestive of how much the British had invested in achieving the Treaty, and perhaps even of their hopes of using it against their South American Treaty partners.
At the first consultative meeting in Canberra in 1961, in the context of the comprehensive advice from SCAR, the parties quickly and readily agreed to a recommendation on the subject of conservation. The recommendation (I-VIII) was extensive if loosely worded. The delegates urged governments to recognise that conservation and protection were needed, to promote scientific studies and exchange information, to make people aware of protection needs, to work towards formal measures for conservation, and to accept interim measures. The recommendation also included “general rules of conduct for preservation and conservation of living resources in Antarctica”, which closely followed many sections of the SCAR report. The recommendation would only, therefore, impose the loosest and most general obligations on the parties.
The delegates made their recommendation in the presence of Robert Carrick, who was a member of the Australian delegation. Carrick took his position as a scientific leader in Antarctic conservation seriously, pushing delegates to agree not only on basic conservation measures but also to recognise and act on the need to protect species in their marine environment. If Carrick thought his lobbying was wise and necessary, it did display, once again, his lack of political antenna; the high seas had been excluded from the Treaty. Brian Roberts complained in his diary of Carrick’s actions, noting that he
introduced a red herring in the form of a proposal that it is no good protecting Antarctic birds and mammals unless protection is also extended to their food in the sea. Biologically speaking, of course, there is much in this, but he did not seem able to realise that at present this is not a practical issue, and that the complications of attempting any agreement involving territorial waters or high seas would certainly wreck our intention. We wasted two hours clearing this out of the way, and reached no conclusion on the main issue.
Carrick frequently bumped heads with his intellectual and professional peers in many situations, and Roberts was simply another to add to that list.
As the recommendation articulated aspirations and involved essentially no obligation beyond good will, it was easily agreed to. For the prime mover, the British, the recommendation was an obvious step to a more binding agreement, and one step on the road to further internationalisation—indeed, the British had prepared a full draft convention on the matter, but decided not to circulate it for fear of forestalling the Argentine and Chilean ratifications. For other states, it was a seemingly benign advance, though one that still had to be monitored for its potential effects on the Treaty regime.
Following the first consultative meeting, Brian Roberts and the UK kept pushing for a detailed and binding conservation agreement. To their disappointment, the 1962 consultative meeting in Buenos Aires was a lacklustre meeting and conservation saw little progress. It became more apparent in the minds of Roberts and others that the US, in particular, would be the potential wrecker of robust agreement. Roberts and others noted the continued antagonism and conservatism of the principal US delegate, George Owen. Roberts wrote in his diary that Owen was “overbearing and truculent to an extent which leaves me astonished”. The other major roadblock—though certainly not opponent—was Chile, which voiced misgivings over the potential form of a conservation agreement. Writing to Gordon Robin, Roberts said “Our project for a wild life conservation Convention was wrecked by the United States and Chile”, going on to say that “It would also be most useful if SCAR could endorse the vital need for sanctuaries, without which the whole scheme must fail”.
To force the pace and further refine the terms of discussion, the UK presented a full draft convention for consideration. This draft was essentially the same as the one it had drafted, though not circulated, in preparation for the 1961 meeting. The UK’s suggested provisions followed closely the SCAR recommendations—unsurprising as Brian Roberts had a hand in drafting both. Apart from the basic provision of prohibiting the killing or disturbance of Antarctic fauna without permission, designating “absolutely protected species” and “absolute sanctuaries”, the British draft also included provisions, though minor, relating to commercial activity—though this was later silently dropped.
While the 1962 meeting produced another loose recommendation, it was nevertheless clear that all the parties supported negotiating a full conservation agreement. The Chilean government, which was maintaining its strong sovereigntist position in the early Treaty machinations, took up conservation as a worthwhile pursuit. However, its position frustrated Roberts—the Chileans were not eager for a separate convention, but rather for some agreement within the existing Treaty mechanisms. The US delegation made specific complaints that the creation of “absolute sanctuaries” or other kinds of protected areas would hamper actions under the inspection provisions of the Treaty, in which it had placed such confidence and importance. Brian Roberts interpreted the US position as contrarianism and part of a broader position to wrest influence in the early Treaty years away from the British.
Because of most parties’ general reluctance to rush to a third consultative meeting, there was time for them to grapple with the conservation issue. For 15 months between March 1963 and June 1964, the consultative parties met in Brussels on several occasions to discuss the agenda of the third consultative meeting, with a set of meetings dedicated to drafting and thrashing out an agreement on conservation. It is worth noting that, despite the recommendations of the first two consultative meetings, some parties appeared not to have given serious attention to the conservation matter before these meetings began. The US State Department only convened an inter-agency working group on 26 April 1963 (this was unknown to other parties), and the American representative observed that the Argentine representatives to these working groups did not seem to have a full brief.
It was on 6 June 1963 that the parties finally sat down to consider the texts. There were three papers on the table: the 1962 British draft, and Chilean and Soviet responses to that draft. The Chilean and Soviet papers each supported and offered amplifications of the British draft. The Soviets especially suggested that the agreement should be preceded by a preamble outlining general principles, which, with some stylistic changes, remained at the head of the Agreed Measures when it was finally agreed to. It was not a terribly auspicious start to detailed negotiations: the atmosphere of this meeting was described by the New Zealand representative as having “deteriorated badly”, noting that “some of the exchanges were acrimonious to the point of being embarrassing”. Moreover, what was more problematic, and adding to the embarrassment, was that “it was hard to see exactly what crucial points were at issue”—though the “unique display of inconsistency” on the part of the US representative may have had something to do with it. Nothing substantial was achieved, except having reached the milestone of actually discussing the texts.
By September 1963, with dwindling momentum, the Belgian chair Alfred van der Essen went to prepare a composite text of the British, Chilean and Soviet proposals. It was only at this stage that the Americans indicated that they would circulate their own draft text. The British representative at this meeting, reported that this “bomb-shell… was not well received”. The Americans circulated their draft in early November, framed as “Agreed Measures” rather than as a separate Convention. Their draft took on the Soviet preamble, and replicated most aspects of the British draft, but subtly changing the terminology from “absolutely protected species” and “absolute sanctuary” to “specially protected species” and “specially protected areas”. Brian Roberts found that the draft was compatible with British intentions, though van der Essen, at a meeting of 14 November, was reported as being in a “dark mood” because the Americans had not framed their proposals as amendments to the existing drafts on the table, but as a whole new draft.
This negotiating manoeuvre by the Americans, whilst aggravating some parties, did in fact clear the air. The Americans were central to the Treaty, despite their fitful contributions between 1960 and 1962. It is unimaginable that a conservation agreement would have been finalised without the US having at least put forward a comprehensive position on the matter, not simply responding to the initiatives of others. This was more so given that the Soviets had given the matter serious attention. If Roberts was annoyed because the Americans had taken so long to come to any position (and it then being so similar to the British position), and if van der Essen was annoyed because of his responsibilities in chairing the negotiations, others were evidently pleased at the clearing of the air: the New Zealand representative reported that “this move served more to resolve the confusion that to add to it, since it forced everyone to accept that a closer examination of the different proposals should now be carried out”.
It was the US proposal in November (and a more refined draft of 12 December) that framed the discussions firmly around “agreed measures” as the form of the agreement. Until this point, the only full draft on the table was the British draft convention, intended to be a separate legal instrument from the Antarctic Treaty. The only declared opposition was from Chile, and other parties simply acquiesced to the idea of a separate convention. The matter was not simply a matter of legal form, but rather one about the operation of the Treaty. The US justified its move toward “measures” as insisting on “the primacy of the Antarctic Treaty and of the authority and procedures it provides for dealing with measures to achieve its objectives”—they did not want to risk setting the precedent of dealing with newly arising issues through separate instruments, seeing the potential for the growth of an unintentional hierarchy of Antarctic legal texts. Nevertheless, the British position was firmly in favour of a separate convention (though their position softened with time), so too did the Belgians, who made the case for a convention along the lines that their constitutional procedures required it. The matter was resolved by February 1964 owing to the immovable US position, and the British desire to see something achieved.
A major legal and political issue related to the geographic area covered by the measures. The Treaty applied to all land and ice shelves south of 60°S, but specifically did preserve rights on the high seas. Many Antarctic species, however, spend most of their lives on pack ice or in the surrounding seas. The question as to whether pack ice was covered by the Treaty was raised. The Australians pursued this issue with some vigour, in most part owing to the influence of Robert Carrick on Australian policy at this time—which aggravated Brian Roberts. In the end, pack ice was not included in the Agreed Measures, and was only resolved with the Convention on the Conservation of Antarctic Seals in 1972.
It was not simply the physical area that mattered, but also what to label it. The final measures labelled the whole Antarctic a “Special Conservation Area”, but other designations were proposed. In their July 1963 comments, for example, the Soviets referred to the Antarctic as an “International Wildlife Reserve”, as did early US drafts. Argentina thoroughly objected to such a designation, implying as it did a supranational power over Antarctica, rather than the individual sovereign nations, though the US put up a fight in its favour.
Other disagreements are suggestive of the state of environmental thinking and its relationship with inter-governmental agreement and obligations. On the issue of what to label what was being protected—the “fauna and flora”—the disagreement arose principally for the English-speaking parties. Article 9(1)(f) of the Treaty in English describes “living resources”—as does the Spanish and Russian—but in French “la faune” and “la flore”. The choice between one of three terms was not simply about the appellation for the agreement itself, but tone setting. Wild life was favoured by the British for reasons of tradition. On several occasions, Brian Roberts insisted on wild life for no other reason than that the English-speaking parties had government agencies dealing with animal and plant management who used “wild life” in their titles. For the British, living resources would be inappropriate because the point of the text was to “conserve not only named species but also certain habitats”. The Americans disagreed, stating their belief “that the importance of Antarctic flora and fauna lies in the fact that they constitute a ‘resource’; that is, something of potential value, whether it be exploited through commerce, scientific study, or simply appreciation of esthetic [sic] qualities”. The parties finally agreed to “fauna and flora” at the 2 April 1964 meeting, which had been pushed by Australia as a resolution between the American and British positions.
When it finally passed, the Agreed Measures designated the whole Antarctic a “Special Conservation Area”, emphasising the vulnerability and uniqueness of its fauna and flora and binding the Treaty parties to protect it. The first major aspect of AMCAFF was to protect animals and birds as individuals and as species. In general, it prohibited “the killing, wounding, capturing or molesting of any native mammal or native bird” (Article VI, paragraph 1), except with a permit granted for the needs of indispensable food for men or dogs, and for specimens for science, museums, zoos or other similar institutions (VI, 2). The issuing of permits had to take into account the ability of the fauna to “normally be replaced by natural reproduction” (VI, 4a), and for the maintenance of “the variety of species and the balance of the natural ecological systems” with the Treaty area (VI, 4b). Additionally, the measures obligated governments to “minimize harmful interference” with the living conditions of birds and animals, and included restricting the free movement of dogs, aircraft flight, vehicle proximity, explosives, firearm use and any disturbance during breeding seasons. Polluting waters near stations was also prohibited. Some species would be listed as “Specially Protected Species”, which could only be taken with a permit under a higher burden of protection insisting on “compelling scientific purpose” (VI, 7).
Combined with the protection of species, the Agreed Measures also established the category of “Specially Protected Areas”, places accorded special protection “in order to preserve their unique natural ecological system”. These areas were protected with additional burdens, especially that the collection of specimens could only occur for “a compelling scientific purpose which cannot be served elsewhere” (VIII, 4a). The Agreed Measures also prohibited the importation of alien species of animals and plants and obliged governments to keep and exchange records of the numbers of animals killed or captured. Working outside of these protective provisions was excused by an overriding waiver “in cases of extreme emergency involving possible loss of human life or involving the safety of ships or aircraft” (V).
Conclusion
From Robert Carrick’s November 1959 paper in Buenos Aires to the passing of the Agreed Measures in Brussels in June 1964 was a period of less than five years. It would take a further 18 years for the measures to come into force, when Japan became the final country to accept the consultative meeting’s recommendation in 1982—recommendations of the consultative meetings had to be accepted by all parties, like the Treaty, to come into force. For some parties, the complexities of legislative drafting and a lack of political and official will kept them off the table. Nevertheless, in spite of their not coming into force, the parties behaved as if they did, pursuing the inscription of Specially Protected Areas at subsequent consultative meetings, and adding to the system with Sites of Special Scientific Interest. In 1991, barely a decade properly in force, the AMCAFF regime was subsumed into the Madrid Protocol on Environmental Protection—which was ratified with greater speed than AMCAFF.
If the Agreed Measures took so long to be ratified, they represented the beginnings of a new conceptual force about nature and the environment. Scientists were in the invidious position of seeking to study the Antarctic while, in that very pursuit, they were also a destructive alien species. That realisation, which had progressively occurred to natural historians and biologists from the late nineteenth century, was now in Antarctica. Scientists could not excuse themselves from their own strictures for preserving the environment. In the same rhetorical step, the human presence in Antarctica, an almost exclusively scientific presence, was conceived of as interloping, unnatural, impermanent, dangerous and destructive. This was an important for the developing vision of an environmentally sensitive and precious Antarctica, a movement away from visions of lifeless inert ice.
That governments and diplomats took up the scientists’ position might have come from what Adrian Howkins has called “environmental authority”. In his studies of Britain’s relationship with the Antarctic, especially as contesting Argentine and Chile positions, Howkins has argued that British policy and action deployed a rhetoric of “environmental authority”, by which knowledge of science and the natural world necessarily led to and allowed for imperial authority and territoriality. The example of the AMCAFF negotiations fits well in this conceptual framework: Britain, having tempered its claim to the Falkland Islands Dependencies (later renamed the British Antarctic Territory) by signing the Antarctic Treaty, sought to continue its imperial relationship with the Antarctic through the leadership of the diplomatic issue of conservation. Arguably, the “environmental authority” conceptualisation could be extended to the Treaty parties as a group, working in concert: each had, to a greater or lesser extent, participated in a process of gaining and bearing environmental authority by signing the Treaty, and so sought to prove that as soon as possible through the Treaty regime. Conservation was geopolitics by other means.
By passing the Agreed Measures, the Treaty parties were giving principles to “unprincipled men”—to use the words of the biologists’ 1959 resolution—and each of the parties (some more than others) was trying to ensure those principles suited their purposes. The Antarctic Treaty was a document whose meanings and purposes arose out of specific antagonisms and frustrations and a peculiar conjunction of events and interests. Its continued existence would rely on filling it with meaning, principles and possibilities. That nature conservation was among the first of these filling-in actions set the Treaty regime on a course which it has followed into the present. The contemporary Antarctic Treaty System without environmental protection and management at its core is almost unimaginable, and the Agreed Measures are the earliest manifestation of that development.