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15.
The Antarctic Treaty System as a
Resource Management Mechanism-
Living Resources
John A. Gulland
INTRODUCTION
In the Antarctic the living resources offer a complete
contrast between marine and terrestrial systems. The
Southern Ocean is rich with life--among which krill,
whales, seals, and penguins are the best known. Historic
visits to the Antarctic have been largely those of
sealers, whalers, and fishermen engaged in harvesting
these resources. The management problem is thus one of
ensuring that this harvesting is carried out in a
rational manner, with due regard to future interests in
the resources. The Antarctic land mass is cold and
barren and extremely hostile to life. What life there
is, is probably vulnerable to disturbance through other
human activities, such as research, tourism, and possibly
in the future, extraction of minerals. The management
problem is one of diminishing or minimizing such
disturbance.
The management problems of sea and land are therefore
best discussed separately, with the exception of seal and
penguin requirements for a firm base (land, or ice
shelves) on which to breed. These essentially marine
animals can be vulnerable to damage to, or disturbance
at, these breeding sites, and mechanisms to prevent this
are best discussed together with other aspects of
terrestrial management.
MARINE RESOURCES
Background
While the Antarctic Treaty applies to the area south of
60°S latitude, in considering the marine resources of the
221
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region it is better to look at the whole area south of
the Antarctic convergence. The exact position of the
convergence is variable but on average corresponds closely
to the boundary of the area of responsibility of the
Commission for the Conservation of Antarctic Marine
Living Resources established by the 1980 Convention on
the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources
(CCAMLR). South of the convergence, the current systems
ensure a good supply of nutrients to the surface, and in
the summer, primary production in parts of the region in
the form of microscopic plants (phytoplankton) is among
the highest in the world, with the exception of a few
spectacular areas such as the upwelling zones off Peru
and California.
Further favorable factors from humanity's point of
view are that the food chain is generally short, with two
steps from phytoplankton to baleen whales via krill, and
that most animals are long lived. This means that a
relatively high proportion of the original primary pro-
duction appears in a harvestable form, and the standing
stock represents the accumulated production of several
years (several decades in the case of the whales) and is
therefore high.
The waters of the Antarctic and sub-Antarctic, despite
being cold, rough, and far from civilization, have
attracted sealers, whalers, and fishermen for the past
two centuries. The use of these resources shows that
unmanaged exploitation can be disastrous. By the end of
the nineteenth century the fur and elephant seals and the
right whales of the sub-Antarctic had been brought close
to extinction; by the middle of this century the larger
baleen whales (blue, fin, and humpback) had also been
greatly reduced. Partly through the measures introduced
by the International Whaling Commission (IWC), the deple-
tion of the baleen whales has been slightly less extreme
than that of right whales or fur seals, but of the baleen
whales only the mink e whale is now present in number S
similar to those at the time when human visitors first
came to the Southern Ocean.
Exploitation is now focused on krill and demersal
(bottom-living) fish. Several fish stocks seem already,
as reported at the third meeting of the CCAMLR in
September 1984, to be greatly reduced from their original
level. Krill are so far probably little affected. Cur-
rent catches, at approximately 500,000 tons per year, are
still far less than potential yield. Estimates of this
potential range from tens of millions of tons upward--
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comparable to the present total yield of all types of
fish from the oceans of the world.
The declines or collapses of seals, whales, and fish
stocks are not unique to the Southern Ocean. virtually
every commercially attractive, exploited fish stock has
been allowed to decline below its most productive level.
These declines have not often turned into catastrophic
collapses largely because of two factors: the high pro-
ductive capacity of most fish makes them less vulnerable
than mammals to sustained over exploitation, and most
fishing fleets can move to alternative resources when
stocks and catch rates in one area begin to decline. The
events in the Southern Ocean should therefore not be
ascribed to some unusual degree of greed or short-
sightedness on the part of the harvesters; they are the
predictable results of unmanaged exploitation of a
common-property, open-access resource.
From the point of view of managing the marine resources
of the Antarctic, three points can be made:
(1) The resources are rich and have made, and could
continue to make, a significant contribution to world
food supplies.
(2) Several important elements (fur and elephant
seals and whales) of the marine ecosystem have already
been greatly altered, and this has probably had effects
on many other elements; that is, in the ocean we are
not dealing 7 as is the case for the Antarctic land
mass, with an undisturbed system.
(3) If the resources are to be maintained in an
optimum condition, management will be essential.
The balance of this chapter will discuss the mechanisms
required to provide the necessary management actions
[including deciding on what is meant by "optimum con-
dition" in (3) above] and then, with special reference to
the purposes of the workshop on the Antarctic Treaty,
examine the past, present, and potential future role of
the Antarctic Treaty System in ensuring that these
mechanisms are established and operate correctly.
Mechanisms for Management
The basic requirements for successful fishery management
have been discussed on a number of occasions, notably by
the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization's Advisory
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Committee on Marine Resources Research and its working
parties. The need is not merely to have a mechanism to
introduce management measures. Before such action and
any decision on specific measures can be taken, it is
necessary to have discussion and agreement on the objec-
tives that the measures should achieve as well as adequate
technical and scientific information on the immediate and
long-term results of alternative management actions
(including the possibility of doing nothing). The actions
must then be followed by steps to ensure that the agreed
measures are actually implemented and to review their
success and, where necessary, revise them.
At each stage, it is important that all those actually
or potentially interested in the resource participate.
In an open-access situation, such as the Antarctic, unless
there is virtually unanimous agreement, few measures are
likely to be effective. Any participant that does not
abide by these, for example, by limiting total catch
volume, or by avoiding catching small or immature animals,
will gain nearly all the benefits of the management
actions of others, but there will be little net conser-
vation effect. Bitter experience has also shown that
management measures, as well as being unanimous, should
also be introduced as early as possible, before the indus-
try builds up excess capacity; the aim should be to have
to do little more than put the brakes on development as
the optimum harvesting rate is approached rather than to
have to cut back on overcapacity, with all the economic
and social problems that this is likely to bring about.
Unfortunately, the first criterion works against this:
all the participants are likely to agree on the need to
do something only after the need has become incontro-
vertible, with the collapse or severe depletion of the
resource.
INTERNATIONAL WHALING COMMISSION
How do events in the Antarctic fit in with these
requirements? The fur seal and right whale stocks
collapsed before there was any attempt at management, so
few lessons can be learned from these experiences. Much
more can be learned from the IWC: although the commission
has suffered from several serious flaws, it must not be
assumed that everything that the IWC has done is wrong.
Indeed, when it was first established in 1946, the IWC
was considered to be in the forefront of what would later
become the environmental movement.
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225
The first flaw in the IWC to become apparent was the
lack of good, quantitative information on what was
happening to the stocks and what, in quantitative terms,
would be the effect of different management measures (in
particular, the effect of a reduction in the quota).
Only when fishery scientists, who had long had a more
quantitative approach, were brought in as members of the
IWC's Committee of Three (later Four) Scientists, to
advise the commission in the early 1960s, did the commis-
sion have adequate information on which to base its
policies. The blame for this--if it is fair to talk
about blame with the benefit of many years of later
experience--lies further back, with those who determined
the level and direction of research in the Southern
Ocean. It was particularly unfortunate that, after the
government of the United Kingdom in 1925 had established
the Discovery Committee to carry out research in the
Southern Ocean in support of the whaling industry, no one
ensured that quantitative studies of the dynamics of
whale stocks and their reactions to exploitation were
actually carried out. Scientific benefits, for example,
in terms of knowledge of krill stocks, are still being
reaped from this program.
Other flaws that became apparent after the Committee
of Four had made its report, and when it was clear that
great reductions in quota were necessary, concerned the
objectives of the commission and participation in its
deliberations. From 1964 onward, once the commission was
receiving clear scientific information on what needed
doing, it had, until the mid-1970s, great difficulty and
encountered considerable delays in acting on it. This
was because the objectives of the whaling convention
implied, or could be interpreted as implying, that
considerable weight should be given to the economic
interests of the whaling industry. This problem was
compounded by the fact that the membership of the
commission was largely confined to countries with active
whaling industries, whose immediate economic interests
were a major factor in determining national policies.
This situation is now reversed, with many of the IWC
member countries having no direct connection with whaling
and the policies of some former whaling countries deter-
mined largely by active environmental lobbies. The
result is that the decisions of the commission tend to be
as strongly weighted against any harvesting of whales as
they previously were in favor of a volume of catches in
excess of what the resource could sustain. There is, for
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example, as little scientific justification (assuming
that the objective of the commission is to ensure rational
. .
use of the resource) for the currently recommended mora-
tor~um on all minke whale catching as there was for the
continuation of a total quota of 15,000-16,000 blue whale
units around 1960.
Events in the utilization and management of other
Antarctic resources (krill, fish, and the seals of the
ice shelf) have not proceeded so far as to facilitate a
historical judgment of the management arrangements.
Special mention should, however, be made of the 1972
Convention for the Conservation of Antarctic Seals (Seals
Convention). This convention was drafted at the initia-
tive of the Antarctic Treaty powers at a time when there
was no commercial harvesting of seals, although there was
a possibility that such sealing might start. Since it
recognized that commercial sealing was an intrinsically
legitimate activity, if done in a responsible manner, it
has sometimes been regarded as a pro-sealing convention.
This is very far from being true. Those responsible for
identifying the need for a convention were well aware of
the dangers of uncontrolled harvesting and the need to
set up proper controls early.
For about the first time
in history, the necessary framework to institute control
was set up in advance of any commercial activity. The
Seals Convention gives the interested countries rights
and responsibilities to manage any sealing, and, in an
annex, spells out specific controls (annual catch limits
and a pattern of closed areas), which should ensure that
any harvesting is well within the productive capacity of
the stocks, pending more precise scientific analysis.
The 1980 convention establishing CCAMLR was set up
while the krill fishery was still growing, while catches
were well below the likely level of the sustainable yield
and before there was any evidence that the volume of
fishing was affecting the stock. The taking of demersal
fish around several of the Antarctic and sub-Antarctic
islands had reduced some of the stocks well below their
unfished level, but there are some biological reasons for
being less seriously concerned about such reductions in
fish stocks than about similar reductions in mammals.
The real concern that led to the establishment of CCAMLR
was less for krill or fish in themselves than for the
impact that a large-scale krill fishery might have on
those species that feed on krill. Krill play a central
part in the Southern Ocean ecosystem, being the most
abundant herbivore and the major food of many of the
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larger animals, including baleen whales, penguins, and
crabeater seals. There is a fear that if krill abundance
were reduced by fishing, this could endanger the recovery
of the depleted stocks of baleen whales.
This probable interaction between krill fishing and
the dynamics of whale populations illustrates two points
that are becoming increasingly apparent in present-day
resource management: that the objectives of management
are complex and that, in order to achieve whatever objec-
tive is decided on, quite detailed scientific research is
likely to be needed.
If the Southern Ocean were to be managed purely in
order to maximize the supply of food from the region, it
is probable that harvesting should be concentrated on
krill (assuming that the technological and economic
problems of catching, processing, and marketing of huge
quantities of krill can be solved), allowing whale and
seal stocks to decline. Against this, there are those
who feel that no activities should be allowed that would
prevent a rapid recovery of whale stocks to their original
unexploited level. A more balanced and a more generally
acceptable policy might be for a krill harvest at rather
less than the maximum possible, sufficiently small to
offer no threat to the survival of the whale populations,
though probably not so small as to permit any harvesting
of whales.
Whatever objective is chosen, it is clear that those
setting quotas or other appropriate measures for krill
will need to know what the long-term effects are of
different patterns of krill harvest on stocks of krill,
whales, and other consumers. It is probable that the
answer will depend not only on the gross magnitude of
krill harvest but also on where and what sizes of krill
are caught and on how closely these correspond to the
location and sizes of krill eaten by whales. It may also
depend on the detailed population dynamics and other
aspects of the biology (feeding behavior, etc.) of both
krill and whales. This sort of research cannot be done
overnight, and effective management of the Southern Ocean
as a complete ecosystem will have to be based on good,
long-term multidisciplinary research. CCAMLR has avail-
able to it a good scientific basis for starting its work,
as a result of the research that has already been carried
out by the Scientific Committee on Antarctic Research
(SCAR) and especially by its Biological Investigations of
Marine Antarctic Systems and Stocks (BIOMASS) program.
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THE ROLE OF THE ANTARCTIC TREATY
In the narrowest sense, the Antarctic Treaty has had very
little direct impact on the management of marine re-
sources. Article VI, which states that nothing in the
treaty should prejudice the rights of any state with
regard to the high seas, might seem to preclude such
impact, except on seals or penguins, which can be har-
vested when they come ashore. In this connection, one of
the earliest actions under the Agreed Measures for the
Conservation of Antarctic Fauna and Flora was to give
special protection status to fur seals and to the Ross
seal.
It is also true that, while the responsibility under
Article IX(l)(f) of the treaty for the "preservation and
conservation of living resources in Antarctica" makes no
distinction between terrestrial and aquatic resources,
the initial focus of those concerned with the treaty was
on terrestrial animals and plants and those aquatic
animals that came to land, or the ice shelves, to breed.
For example, the Agreed Measures explicitly discuss
mammals (excluding whales), birds, and plants but make no
mention of fish, krill, or other marine animals.
Such a narrow interpretation would ignore the very
significant contribution that the Antarctic Treaty mech-
anism has made to managing marine resources in bringing
into existence CCAMLR and the Seals Convention and in
helping determine the content of the two conventions and
the way in which CCAMLR is likely to operate.
Though the conferences at which these conventions were
finally signed took place outside the formal framework of
the Antarctic Treaty, these final acts were the results
of lengthy discussions and negotiations, many of which
took place, formally or informally, during Antarctic
Treaty consultative meetings.
As remarked above, these conventions are notable for
the fact that they were established wholly or largely
before there was large-scale harvesting of the resources
concerned and well before such harvesting began to have
obviously harmful effects. Such public forethought is
highly exceptional in the history of the utilization of
national resources and owes much to the forethought and
initiative of a few individuals in a number of the treaty
countries.
Such private forethought would, however, have been of
little use if the Antarctic Treaty did not give it a
framework in which it could be effective. Despite the
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initial lack of focus on marine resources, the treaty did
give its signatory countries a joint interest and a
responsibility for all the resources south of 60°S
latitude. Because of the nature of the marine resources,
for which the 60°S latitude has no special significance,
this joint interest tended to extend northward to the
natural boundary at the Antarctic convergence.
Governments do not like taking action unless it is
very clear that failing to take action will cause much
more trouble than doing something. If the Antarctic
Treaty had not existed, providing the framework, and, to
a large extent, the political justification for the
initial discussion, it is fairly certain that there would
now be no sealing convention. It is also unlikely that
negotiations over a more general "ecosystem management"
convention corresponding to CCAMLR would have got much
beyond the initial confrontations between those interested
in conservation in the narrow sense of discouraging any
exploitation and those interested in immediate exploita-
tion with little concern for long-term interests.
The potential for confrontation is well illustrated by
the recent history of the IWC. Its problems were briefly
mentioned earlier. They illustrate that a management
body cannot work well unless there is a reasonable balance
among different interests. In the IWC the balance has
swung from undue dominance by short-term economic inter-
ests to dominance by conservation interests (and to a
large extent the more extreme conservation views).
Unfortunately, the IWC conflicts have spilled over
into wider discussions on the Antarctic marine ecosystem
as a whole taking place under the CCAMLR, since the
countries and some of the individual scientists who take
part in these two forums are much the same. The conflicts
in the IWC have reached the stage at which each side
distrusts the objectives and scientific integrity of the
other. In particular, those countries still whaling
believe, not wholly without justification, that some of
those attending meetings of the IWC are interested only
in stopping all whaling, without much consideration of
how this is done or whether it would be in accordance
with the spirit and intention of the original convention.
The whaling countries are largely the same countries
as those interested in harvesting krill and fish in the
Antarctic. They certainly would not have been prepared
to consider a new commission that seemed to be nothing
more than a repeat of the IWC, and probably it was only
because of the existence of the Antarctic Treaty mech-
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anism, and in response to a treaty initiative, that those
countries were prepared to consider actively a new
conservation mechanism for Antarctic marine resources.
The Antarctic Treaty states in Article IX(2) that
while any state that is a member of the U.N. may accede
to the treaty, participation in consultations is dependent
on serious interest in the Antarctic, as demonstrated by
substantial scientific research activity. The same prin-
ciple is expressed in the CCAMLR, in which a qualifying
interest for membership on the commission may be in terms
of either research or harvesting activities [Article
VII(g)]. While there are some good reasons for believing
that any body with long-term responsibilities for con-
servation should in principle be open to as wide a
membership as possible, including states whose current
interest in the resources is more potential than real,
there are equally good reasons for believing that the
extremely wide membership of, for example, the IWC is not
always conducive to finding a constructive solution. It
can be a very difficult problem when membership of an
organization, whether of nations or of individuals, is
open to all, without the qualification of a serious
interest in the objective of the organization. While the
founders of CCAMLR would probably have found a solution
to this potential difficulty, the way was made much
easier for them by the precedent of the Antarctic Treaty
and the existence of the consultative powers as a "club"
of countries with a proven and responsible interest in
the Antarctic.
In summary, therefore, the contributions of the
Antarctic Treaty System to current actions to manage
Antarctic marine resources have been very significant.
Without the treaty, the different interests would never
have got together to agree on a convention, and the
treaty provided a model of the form of membership that
should ensure a workable commission. Conservation inter-
ests may well believe that the commission is working
slowly, and the measures so far taken and contemplated
(minimum mesh sizes to be used when trawling for fish and
minimum fish sizes that can be landed) are more cosmetic
than real. However, the commission is moving toward more
effective measures and toward the collection of data that
would enable these measures to be soundly based. This is
clearly preferable to the only likely alternatives, which
would be an absence of any commission, or a commission
dominated by conservation interests but ignored by the
fishing nations.
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TERRESTRIAL ACTIVITIES
There is little interest in harvesting living resources
on land. The exception is the possible harvesting of
essentially marine animals when they come ashore to
breed. This is a special aspect of the general question
of the rational use of these resources, already discussed.
Otherwise the conservation of living resources on land
involves no serious conflict, and the task is one of
ensuring that any activity carried out does not acciden-
tally damage the resource.
This task the Antarctic Treaty, through its Agreed
Measures for the Conservation of Antarctic Fauna and
Flora, has done well.
Three broad types of control are used: those applying
to all human activities and additional protections for
certain species (Ross seal and fur seal) and for certain
areas. The choice of appropriate measures, and the
general agreement to be bound by them, has been helped by
the fact that scientific activities, combined with tourism
on a limited scale, have so far been the only activities
on the Antarctic land mass. In both cases, those
involved can be expected to have an above-average interest
in and knowledge of the resources as well as an interest
in their conservation.
The general measures include the prohibition, unless a
permit has been required, of the "killing, wounding,
capturing, or molesting of any mammal or bird" (Article
VI), the need to "take appropriate measures to minimize
harmful interference" (Article VII), and the limitation
under Article IX of the introduction of species that
might upset the ecological balance. (In effect, only
sledge dogs and laboratory animals can be introduced.)
At the present scale of human activities, these
general provisions are probably sufficient. They accept
that nearly any activity must have some immediate impact
on the ecosystem but that all ecosystems have some
natural resilience; that is, if the impact is suffi-
ciently small, it will be only temporary. Thus, when
permits are given to kill animals as food, the numbers
taken should be capable of being replaced in the follow-
ing breeding season. There is, however, some belief that
the Antarctic terrestrial ecosystem, at the limits of
conditions under which life can exist, is less resilient
than most others, including the Antarctic marine system,
in which, for instance, the fur seal population at South
Georgia has shown dramatic powers of recovery. There is
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little quantitative knowledge of the degree of resilience
of the Antarctic terrestrial and inshore life, that is,
how much disturbance different types of environments can
withstand without permanent damage. Such knowledge, and
the incorporation of this knowledge into quantitative
regulations--such as the amount of waste that can be
discharged into coastal waters and the number of visitors
that can be allowed to a given site--may become more
important if Antarctic activities increase. They would
seem to be essential if industrial activities such as oil
extraction ever became a practical possibility. In that
case, the Agreed Measures could still be seen as important
first steps.
Controls for certain areas applied initially to the
creation of Specially Protected Areas (SPAs), in which
many activities, including driving vehicles, were pro-
hibited. Some 17 SPAs have been designated and are given
very effective protection. However, the strictness of
the measures and especially the resultant difficulty in
carrying out research in these areas have probably
lessened the enthusiasm for designating SPAs. There has
been in addition some feeling that the SPAs do not cover
wide enough areas to achieve all the purposes that such
areas could serve. These purposes were identified at the
seventh consultative meeting, in 1972, at which it was
concluded that SPAS should include inter alla representa-
tive examples of the major Antarctic land and freshwater
systems and undisturbed areas to be used for comparison
with disturbed areas. The same meeting also made pro-
vision for the creation of Sites of Special Scientific
Interest (SSSIs), which are governed by less rigorous
restrictions and are of a temporary rather than a
permanent nature, although their designations may be
extended.
While there have been problems in achieving full and
rigorous observance of all the Agreed Measures, most
recently in the case of the proposed French airstrip in
Adelie Land, the measures have in general been obeyed and
have worked well. Even the exceptions seem to have
involved no serious threat to the conservation of
resources; they are important mainly in showing that no
agreement will necessarily be obeyed unless there is some
monitoring of compliance and that the Antarctic Treaty is
no exception to this.
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THE ROLE OF SCAR
No discussion of conservation in the Antarctic would be
complete without a mention of the special role of SCAR.
SCAR is formally an organ of the International Council of
Scientific Unions, which comprises national academies of
science, rather than governments. However, the qualifi-
cations for national membership in SCAR are the same as
those for consultative status under the Antarctic Treaty:
substantial research interest in the Antarctic. Thus,
the list of members of the two groups is very similar.
This list forms what is often considered the Antarctic
club, with the treaty being the political and SCAR the
scientific arm. The achievements (or failings) of SCAR
can be taken as reflecting in some way the merits (or
demerits) of the treaty system.
The immediate contribution of SCAR has been in provid-
ing, or helping to provide, the scientific base for the
three main substantive actions for conservation: the
Agreed Measures under the Antarctic Treaty, the Seals
Convention, and the CCAMLR. SCAR also carries out, until
such time as the majority of the contracting parties to
the Seals Convention establish their own scientific
advisory committee, the functions of compilation and
analysis of data relating to sealing and advising the
contracting parties on these matters.
In the long run, the most important function of SCAR
is to provide the coordinating mechanism for the long-
term fundamental studies that are essential to effective
scientific management of any natural system. CCAMLR has
its own scientific committee, and the boundaries between
the two scientific groups are not at present clear. The
CCAMLR committee may be expected to concentrate on the
more immediate practical aspects, such as analysis of
commercial catch and effort data, while SCAR concentrates
more on less immediate issues, such as the physiology of
krill. The latter may (or may not) turn out in the long
run to be of direct practical significance to answering
management questions.
In the context of CCAMLR's ecosystem approach, the
studies carried out by the BIOMASS program, coordinated
by the SCAR Group of Specialists on Living Resources of
the Southern Ocean, deserve special mention. These have
looked especially at the structure of the Antarctic
marine ecosystem and at the central role played in this
system by krill. The BIOMASS program accomplished a
number of studies that could have been carried out under
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the auspices of the CCAMLR institutions. Nevertheless,
there are various data requirements under the CCAMLR that
could not be met by BIOMASS.
Other SCAR groups, especially the Working Group on
Biology in relation to the Agreed Measures, and the Group
of Specialists on Seals in relation to the Seals Conven-
tion, have played, and continue to play, important roles
in conserving Antarctic living resources, both marine and
terrestrial.
Representative terms from entire chapter:
marine resources
