South Africa, Antarctica, and the ATS: An Unrealized Foreign Policy Leadership Opportunity

Abstract

Although South Africa is a founding member of the Antarctic Treaty, the southernmost continent has played little part in its post-apartheid foreign policy. This article, however, argues that vigorous engagement with Antarctica and Antarctic politics represents an unparalleled opportunity and means for South Africa to simultaneously assert leadership in an increasingly important area of global politics and to address some of its most critical socio-economic problems. Due to its founding member status, the paper suggests that South Africa is uniquely positioned to be able to advocate for and champion reform of the Antarctic Treaty to achieve greater democratization of Antarctic governance. Furthermore, the introduction of a bioprospecting governance framework in the Antarctic commons based on equitable benefit sharing would help reorient South African foreign policy to better meet some of its expressed objectives, and could also generate capital funding revenue for domestic development priorities.

Acknowledgements

The author thanks the two anonymous referees for their helpful comments.

Notes

1 Argentina, Australia, Belgium, Chile, France, Japan, New Zealand, Norway, South Africa, Soviet Union, the UK, and the USA.

2 Not in force

3 The UN Human Development Index (HDI) uses four categories (very high human development; high human development; medium development; and low human development) as a basis for measuring the aggregated data of several indices to produce an overall picture of global progress towards development. On a crude basis, the very high and high human development countries in the HDI can be regarded as forming the global North category, and the medium and low human development countries as comprising the global South (UNDP 2013).

4 Both Nigeria and Namibia may be usefully canvassed as possible future signatories to the Antarctic Treaty and their support enlisted.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the AUT Contestable Research Fund [grant number AX14/03]. The author gratefully acknowledges the support of the funding body.