CIWEM says no to Antarctic land grab
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CIWEM product story
Edited by the Buildingtalk editorial team
Nov 20, 2007
With global warming opening up remote regions, CIWEM is extremely concerned about increasing international interest in the exploitation of fragile environments for energy sources.
Russia was criticised for making claims beneath the Arctic Ocean, France has registered a claim around pacific island New Caledonia and now the UK is signalling that it intends to extend sovereign rights to oil, gas and mineral exploitation in the British Antarctic Territory by 50 percent.
CIWEM considers that this claim would be in defiance of the spirit of the 1959 Antarctic Treaty, which states specifically that no new claims shall be asserted on the continent and prohibits any non-scientific mineral related activity.
The UN's new commission on the limits of the continental shelf allows countries with an interest in drilling in the Southern Ocean until May 2009 to register a claim.
CIWEM regrets that the establishment of this commission actually encourages such claims when little is known about the environmental impact on marine life of drilling and exploration at great depths.
CIWEM believes that the UN secretary-general Ban Ki Moon should reinforce the message that Antarctica must remains under international jurisdiction.
Nick Reeves, CIWEM Executive Director, says: "This looks like a land grab of the worst kind, and one that is playing fast and loose with a unique environment that will have terrible consequences for us all".
"Just when we thought world leaders had understood that oil is a route cause of climate change and appeared to accept that something must be done to move to clean sources of energy, they remind us that they really are still hard-wired to oil and not committed to reducing carbon emissions at all".
"The case for commercialisation is wrong".
"The Antarctic Treaty should remain in place as an exemplar of international co-operation and of how we really can put the planet above the barmy short-term economic aspirations of governments.".
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