In the last Poles Apart (Vol. 23, No. 2) I discussed the issues surrounding the exploitation of Arctic resources, in particular climate change and overlapping territorial claims in the Arctic Ocean. Here I look at Antarctic resources, and the issues associated with how they are exploited, or might be in future. Two key facts make the Antarctic context different from that in the Arctic. First, the Antarctic has never had an indigenous population of any kind. Second, the Antarctic region is not sovereign territory belonging to individual countries but instead belongs to no one and is managed by international treaty (see Poles Apart in GEOGRAPHY REVIEW Vol. 20, No. 4, pp. 31–33).
Resources in the Antarctic can be divided into living (i.e. fisheries, whales, seals etc.) and non-living (minerals). The history of living resources in the Antarctic is one of repeated over-exploitation of a series of whale, fish and seal stocks.
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