Politics and Power

New Zealand: 'an intellectual and logistics gateway to Antarctica'

Politics and Power: These two words are the Romeo and Juliet of diplomatic language, and the Antarctic is not immune to the lovers' tiffs that come with the pair. Yesterday we had Anne-Marie Brady come and give a lecture on 'New Zealand's Strategic Interests in Antarctica' and judging from my three pages of notes, I found it quite an engaging talk. It opened my eyes to other ways of seeing things and provided an excellent counterpoint to the science-based lectures on flora and fauna of the previous week. No carnivorous ducks here, but whenever power is involved you can guarantee that someone is thirsty for blood.

The first thing to remember is that there are differing ways of perceiving Antarctica. Coming from New Zealand it has always been relatively close and a place we have learnt about in school. Many explorers, both of the heroic age and of late, launched their missions from Christchurch and it is still the gateway city to Antarctica for NZ and the USA and many of us feel like the continent is 'part of our national heritage'. We look at a map of 'the pie' and point to the Ross Dependency as being 'ours'. According to the Antarctic Treaty we are allowed to assert this claim of sovereignty, but other countries are just as welcome to ignore it, leading to an interesting situation where places like NZ and Australia say 'ours' but places like the USA and South Korea say 'everybodys'.

New Zealand's territorial claim over the Ross Sea region is interesting too in that the Ross Dependency was only formally added to the Realm of New Zealand as recently as 1983. New Zealand had been in charge of administration of the region since the UK claimed it in 1923, but 1983 marks a definitive moment in our polar history: we asked if England wanted it back, they sat down over a cup of tea and said 'no thanks', so we adopted it officially as our own. It is particularly interesting that this happened many years after the Antarctic Treaty came into force in 1961, effectively putting all territorial claims 'on ice' and ensuring no new claims could be made. The addition of an area larger than all of New Zealand to our realm went largely unnoticed.

What was noticed was when the icebreaker that was to create a sea passage into McMurdo was recalled to the Northern Hemisphere and the suggested replacement was a nuclear powered ship. New Zealand has a well known nuclear free policy and do not allow nuclear powered vessels into our waters. Luckily for our politicians there was an easy out: this legislation does not apply to the Ross Dependency, only mainland New Zealand. In the end another non nuclear ship was used, but this was the sort of story that illustrates how complicated it can be to balance lawful behaviour, international diplomacy and resupply issues in the far South.

In many ways the money set aside in the NZ budget for Antarctic Research is done so more for political than scientific reasons because the more research we do down there and the stronger our presence, the better it looks on our 'Antarctic CV' and the more assertive we can be about our claim should the Antarctic Treaty collapse. Taking responsibility for Search and Rescue efforts in the Ross Sea is another notch on our way to getting a Duke of Ed medal, as was our offer of beds at Scott Base for Malaysian scientists. As in any other area of life, there is a lot going on out the back that is not necessarily said directly, but nevertheless strongly influences policies and approaches.

New Zealand actually has a relatively large influence internationally when it comes to Antarctic matters, largely because of the many research papers published by this country. Being so close to the continent, we have a vested interest in terms of security, but science, economics, politics and environmental concerns all play important roles for us too. New Zealand hopes to be 'an intellectual and logistics gateway to Antarctica', and if we play our cards right and get the right diplomats speaking to the right diplomats it is a very achievable goal.