The Diplomacy of Krill: negotiating the exploitation of Antarctic resources in the 1970s
Friday 13 May 2011
Alessandro Antonello, School of History, ANU
School of History Seminar Series
Wednesday 18 May 2011, 4.15-5.30pm, Seminar Room A, Coombs Building, ANU
In May 1980, after six years of discussions and negotiations, 15 states agreed to the Convention for the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources (CCAMLR), a convention which created a structure of principles and institutions to provide for the conservation of the whole Southern Ocean ecosystem, to control its exploitation as a nascent and promising fishery, and to insist on the continuing centrality of the Antarctic Treaty and parties to that treaty in the management of Antarctic affairs. This paper explores CCAMLR’s creation in the latter half of the 1970s, especially the ways in which diplomats and scientists conceptualised issues relating to understanding and exploiting the marine living resources of the Southern Ocean, especially the Antarctic krill, Euphausia superba.