This book explores how geopolitical tensions have shaped the Antarctic Treaty System (ATS) and offers insights into managing future challenges. The ATS, established with the 1959 Antarctic Treaty during the Cold War, has been a successful model of international governance, ensuring Antarctica's peaceful use and environmental protection. However, the ATS now faces new pressures, including an expanded membership of 57 states, increased economic activities such as tourism, fishing, and bio-pr...

This Encyclopedia examines modern polar law and the specific legal regimes applicable in the Antarctic and the Arctic. It outlines related areas of international law, including the law of the sea and environmental law, providing an invaluable overview and encouraging further research.Analyzing a breadth of topics, including biodiversity, marine protected areas and maritime zones, the Encyclopedia reflects increased global attention on the polar regions, their resources, environment...

As global great power competition intensifies, there is growing concern about the geopolitical future of Antarctica. This book delves into the question of how can we anticipate, prepare for, and potentially evenshape that future? Now in its 60th year, the Antarctic Treaty System has been comparatively resilient and successful in governing the Antarctic region. This book assesses how our ability to make accurate predictions about the future of the Antarctic Treaty System reduces rapidly in ...

Anthropocene Antarctica offers new ways of thinking about the ‘Continent for Science and Peace’ in a time of planetary environmental change. In the Anthropocene, Antarctica has become central to the Earth’s future. Ice cores taken from its interior reveal the deep environmental history of the planet and warming ocean currents are ominously destabilising the glaciers around its edges, presaging sea-level rise in decades and centuries to come. At the same time, proliferating researc...

The Antarctic is one the most hostile natural environments in the world. It is an extraordinary physical space, which changes significantly in shape and size with the passing of the seasons. Politically, it is unique as it contains one of the few areas of continental space not claimed by any nation-state. Scientifically, the continental ice sheet has provided us with vital evidence about the Earth's past climate. In this Very Short Introduction, Klaus Dodds provides a modern accou...

In August 2007 a Russian flag was planted under the North Pole during a scientific expedition triggering speculation about a new scramble for resources beneath the thawing ice.But is there really a global grab for Polar territory and resources? Or are these activities vastly exaggerated? In this rich and wide-ranging book, Klaus Dodds and Mark Nuttall look behind the headlines and hyperbole to reveal a complex picture of the so-called scramble for the poles. Whilst anxieties over t...

Geopolitics and climate change now have immediate consequences for national and international security interests across the Arctic and Antarctic. The world’s polar regions are contested and strategically central to geopolitical rivalry. At the same time, rapid political, social, and environmental change presents unprecedented challenges for governance, environmental protection, and maritime operations in the regions.With chapters that raise awareness, address challenges, and inform...

This book examines the post-Cold War challenges facing Antarctic governance. It seeks to understand the interests of new players in Antarctic affairs such as China, India, Korea and Malaysia, and how other key players such as Russia and the USA or claimant states such as New Zealand or France are coping in the new global order.Antarctica is the world's fifth largest continent and its territories are claimed by seven different states. Since 1961 Antarctica has been managed under the...

The Antarctic Treaty (1959) was adopted for the purpose of bringing peace and stability to Antarctica and to facilitate cooperation in scientific research conducted on and around the continent. It has now been over fifty years since the signing of the treaty, nevertheless security continues to drive and shape the laws and policy regime which governs the region. Antarctic Security in the Twenty-First Century: Legal and Policy Perspectives assess Antarctic security ...

With a population of just 329,000 (barely more than Nottingham), Iceland is the most thinly-populated country in Europe, and 80% of it is uninhabited. Despite this, in the 1100 years since humans first settled there, the Icelanders have built a remarkably resourceful, diverse and robust community - and they have never had to go to war. In fact, in 2013 the United Nations ranked Iceland the 13th most developed country in the world. Professor Gisli Thorsteinsson is a Professor of Education i...

Climate change and rising oil prices have thrust the Arctic to the top of the foreign policy agenda and raised difficult issues of sovereignty, security and environmental protection. Improved access for shipping and resource development is leading to new international rules on safety, pollution prevention and emergency response. Around the Arctic, maritime boundary disputes are being negotiated and resolved, and new international institutions, such as the Arctic Council, are mediating deep...

Human activities have taken place in the world's oceans and seas for most of human history. With such a vast number of ways in which the oceans can be used for trade, exploited for natural resources and fishing, as well as concerns over maritime security, the legal systems regulating the rights and responsibilities of nations in their use of the world's oceans have long been a crucial part of international law. The United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea comprehensively defined the...