| Summary: | Abstract As the coldest, windiest, driest, and highest continent in the world, it is no wonder that Antarctica has been painted as exceptional in geographic and climatic terms. But not only that, Antarctica is also seen as politically exceptional. Since the Antarctic Treaty came into force in 1961, the continent has been under the Joint Guardianship of a group of states that have kept peace and privileged science as the main activity, ‘freezing' sovereign claims and focusing on the protection rather than the exploitation of nature. For scientists, Antarctica is the largest open-air laboratory in the world. This book proposes that Antarctica should also be seen as a laboratory for territorial governance, providing inspiration in places where both the regime of Permanent Sovereignty over Natural Resources of individual states and the international regime of Common Heritage of Mankind have proven insufficient and inadequate. At the same time, it shows that Antarctic governance can be made less state-centric and less anthropocentric by incorporating the political representation of nature in decision-making processes that affect the continent. To successfully protect Antarctica, the author claims moreover that action must be taken beyond it: governing Antarctica requires governing the world, and vice versa. Given the twin crises of climate change and biodiversity loss and the growing challenges to international law and cooperation, environmental governance around the world can—and should—benefit from the creative and often unexpectedly fruitful Antarctic political imagination.
|
|---|