If your country is on the list below, you live in an Antarctic Treaty Consultative Party nation*.
Argentina
Australia
Belgium
Brazil
Bulgaria
Chile
China
Czechia
Ecuador
Finland
France
Germany
India
Italy
Japan
Korea (Republic of Korea)
Netherlands
New Zealand
Norway
Peru
Poland
Russian Federation
South Africa
Spain
Sweden
Ukraine
United Kingdom
United States
Uruguay
This means that each year, people from your country go to meetings and make decisions that will direct the course of Antarctica's future.
Which means you're involved, albeit indirectly, in Antarctic governance.
Which might seem a little strange if, like most people, you've never been there.
Don’t worry. Many of the people involved in Antarctic decision-making haven’t been there either.
These annual meetings (called Antarctic Treaty Consultative Meetings - ATCMs) aren’t in Antarctica. They take place in cities all over the world. This year’s ATCM (2023) is in Helsinki, Finland.
The people who go to these meetings are predominantly diplomats, bureaucrats and academics. There are also many Antarctic specialists across the sciences, humanities and industry, who are invited to give expert advice that helps guide decision-makers.
Decisions about Antarctica’s future are made when the representatives of 29 different countries (all ‘consultative parties’ to the Antarctic Treaty) all agree - and this happens every year.
So if you ever need some reassurance that humanity can work together for the common good, I suggest looking to Antarctica. It’s where:
The US and Russia found common ground, developing and ratifying the Antarctic Treaty during the Cold War.
Multiple industrialised nations agreed to ban mining and the extraction of Antarctic mineral resources, except when used for science (this is not entirely unproblematic as you can probably imagine, but go with me).
Scientists from continents across the globe routinely collaborate on research that has implications for all of humanity.
Antarctica is often portrayed as a surreal and otherworldly continent. A desolate and indomitable white wasteland somehow sealed off from the rest of the planet.
While this may be one of many coexisting and contradictory truths about Antarctica, and a legitimate way of viewing the deep South, it doesn't tell the whole story. And I'm not sure it's particularly helpful.
I work in Antarctica, and over the past 7 years I've travelled to the Antarctic Peninsula 20+ times. During that time I've gone from seeing it as a pretty harsh, fearsome and remote place to something akin to home.
A few months ago I was back there after a three year hiatus due to the pandemic. It was disarming to find that even after my time away, many of the places we visited felt as familiar as the local shops. I was surprised to find myself excited to make landfall at some beaches, irrationally eager to 'catch up' with my penguin friends.
Now I'm back home I think fondly of the colonies we encountered, and wonder how this year’s chicks are faring on their first season at sea. Sometimes, for example when I’m standing in a queue at the post office, I find myself smiling at the memory of a penguin sliding down a snow slope using its pink flippers for propulsion, or the memory of sitting in silence, waiting for the creak of glaciers flowing unseen through veils of mist; listening out for the whispery fizz-pop of ancient ice exhaling into the sea.
In perpetuating the time-(worn) narrative of Antarctica as alien / pristine / other, we risk alienating ourselves from a place that's very much part of our world.
The ice, ocean and life in and around Antarctica have a profound impact on global systems like the weather, the carbon cycle, and the thermohaline circulation that pumps water around the planet, keeping the climate mostly mild.
Antarctica may be strange and sublime, but it is in no way separate.
So Antarctica is many things, it turns out, most of them contradictory:
Barren and lush (moss scientists compare some moss forests in East Antarctica to Australia's Daintree Rainforest).
Desolate and teeming with life (between crabeater seals and krill, Antarctica lays claim to some of the largest biomasses on the planet. Add the blue whale and it also hosts the largest life form ever known to exist on earth).
Frozen and fiery (parts of it are still volcanically active).
Uninhabited and overrun (Antarctica is roughly twice the size of Australia, and quite varied.
There are many places in Antarctica humans have never been.
Others see the footfalls of hundreds of thousands of people in a single summer).
Vulnerable and formidable.
Threatened by humanity
and a threat to it.
So, this is where I invite you to stay with me. Take a little dip into another world.
An otherworldly world, which is very much part of our own.
And which you, in part, own.
You can follow my writing and subscribe for updates at Way to Antarctica on Substack.
© Nina Gallo 2023