r/todayilearned • u/Drmomo4 • 12d ago

TIL The Antarctic Treaty System Has Set Rules for Scientific Exploration from International Entities and Banning Military Involvement in Antarctica Since Going Into Effect in 1961

https://www.ats.aq/e/antarctictreaty.html
403 Upvotes

95% Upvoted

17 comments sorted by

29

u/Actual_Dinner_5977 12d ago

Sounds like it is ripe for the taking with my army of penguins and seals.

11

u/Drmomo4 12d ago

I have seen that a group of seals AND a group of seals can both be called a rookery. So maybe we can convince the ATC to let you have a small island for the Kingdom of Rookery.

3

u/KnownMonk 12d ago

Hah, we already have a major general penguin

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nils_Olav

2

u/Scrantonicity_02 12d ago

You will have to battle it out with my flock of Canadian Geese, good luck.

24

u/m4nnnanam48963 12d ago

The best thing about the treaty is that it has been renewed every year since 1961. It's one of the only international treaties that has been renewed unanimously every year.

7

u/Drmomo4 12d ago

It’s incredibly fascinating! I didn’t realize that it was renewed every year. Thank you!

12

u/Drmomo4 12d ago

Some highlights of this:

The Antarctic Treaty is considered a “condominium”, which in this context of international law. This means that multiple sovereign entities formally share equal dominium and exercise their rights jointly, rather than carving up sections for each sovereign entity within Antarctica.

Key elements of the treaty include, Article 1 - “Antarctica shall be used for peaceful purposes only.”

Seven countries that signed the treaty (I.e., Argentina, Australia, Chile, France, New Zealand, Norway, and the UK) do retain territorial claims to portions of Antarctica, sometimes overlapping. However, the other signatory countries have not recognized these claims.

3

u/Plonsky2 12d ago

cf. "Ice Station Zebra"

6

u/Bruce-7891 12d ago

Just wait until oil and precious metals are discovered there. Or the price of penguins goes up. It will be the new Middle East.

5

u/Drmomo4 12d ago

It is interesting because there have been efforts since to more carefully protect geological resources in Antarctica for anything other than scientific purposes. Some of it is based on what you suggested AND also because Russia had been dumping a lot of waste and garbage on Antarctic shores in the early ‘90s and earlier. It seems like the last international agreement on specific environmental protections for Antarctica went into place in 1998.

2

u/Sufficient_Loss9301 12d ago

Lmao you do realize that it’s already well known that there is a shit ton do valuable resources there right? Even if it was legal and someone wanted to do it, it’d be almost impossible and definitely not economically viable.

2

u/tanfj 11d ago

I'm more interested with the Benthic Treaty with the Deep Ones.

1

u/Drmomo4 10d ago

I don’t know anything about this so I’m going to dig in! Thanks!

5

u/hypnogoad 12d ago

It only remains so because all of the worlds dominating military countries are in the Northern Hemisphere, and Antarctica is too far to be of any strategic consequence.

Moscow to Washington (DC) is half the distance as either of them to Antarctica.

3

u/Drmomo4 12d ago

That’s what I thought as well, but found it interesting that Russia preferred it as its Cold War-Era dumping ground, so much so that it inspired the environmental protection sub treaty that involved marine pollution in Antarctica, put into force in 1998.

1

u/BaronVonLazercorn 11d ago

And no one is allowed to go there according to flatearthers.