| Summary: | This paper discusses high-level environmental policy objectives under the Antarctic Treaty System (ATS), and their relation to Strategic Environmental Assessment (SEA). It reviews the need for SEA in Antarctica; discusses existing ATS strategic processes and the impediments to achieving the high-level environmental policy objectives agreed within the ATS, and suggests ways to improve strategic consideration of environmental issues. Whilst the concept of a strategic approach is already accepted in principle within the ATS, there remain difficulties in realising this. These include, inter alia, limitations in the established processes addressing environmental issues (particularly cumulative impacts), and ongoing tensions between the nominally agreed international objectives and national interests (including issues around unresolved territorial sovereignty claims) in practice. The article contends that given growing pressures on the Antarctic environment, high-level environmental policy objectives cannot be achieved through accumulated reactivead hocmeasures, or by industry self-regulation, but requires a systematic approach to strategic environmental considerations. Antarctica, Antarctic Treaty System, environmental impact assessment, strategic environmental assessment, Protocol of Environmental Protection to the Antarctic Treaty (Madrid Protocol)
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