Location: British Library - London
Category: NRF Calendar

Seminar 3, UNCLOS and the Antarctic Treaty: competing models of Polar governance?
British Library, London, Tuesday 15 February 2011

Discussions within the European Union have suggested that the Antarctic Treaty might provide a new model for Arctic governance, whereas the littoral states prefer a model based on the provisions of the UN Conventions on the Law of the Sea. Is the development of such a regime possible for the Arctic? How does the Antarctic Treaty System deal with the overlapping framework of UNCLOS? This seminar will discuss these issues.

ESRC Seminar Series, January 2010 - July 2011

The Polar Regions have recently returned to widespread public attention. Media reports of melting sea ice, the plight of polar bears, the sustainability of indigenous livelihoods and the claiming of the Arctic and Antarctic seabeds have garnered international interest. Geopolitical machinations in both Polar Regions have been in evidence, from the building of new scientific bases to the commissioning of replacement icebreakers. Meanwhile, oceanographic and geophysical research has gathered momentum within the context of evidentiary submissions of extended continental shelves to the UN Commission on the Limits of the Continental Shelf. Resource speculation, particularly in the Arctic, has added extra interest and verve to policy-related discussions. Such discussions increasingly now involve a range of actors, including not only the coastal states and the Arctic Council, but also regional organizations such as the European Union, extra-regional states such as China, environmental NGOs, and political representatives of indigenous peoples, such as the Inuit Circumpolar Council.

This ESRC Seminar Series, ‘Knowledges, Resources and Legal Regimes: The New Geopolitics of the Polar Regions', is designed to investigate critically the contemporary Arctic and Antarctic.

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