Scientific and environmental diplomacy and the Antarctic

Antarctica is a unique continent because is mostly covered in ice
and, importantly, it is the only continent that has never been
settled by humans until scientific bases were established in the
20th C. This makes it an international space which has
implications for the environmental regulatory regimes that have
developed over time as well as the way we view the continent.
Without a popular tradition of natural history, or amateur
ornithology, or locals dependent on wild resources from which a
conservation ethic might emerge, it was trained, international
biologists who led the development of nature protection and
conservation in Antarctica.


The guest on this podcast episode is Alessandro Antonello, a PhD
candidate in the School of History at the Australian National
University Research School of Social Sciences, in Canberra,
Australia. In this podcast he explores the scientific,
environmental and diplomatic aspects of Antarctic history, in
particular from the inception of the Antarctic Treaty in 1959. He
also examines changing conceptions of the Antarctic in the second
half of the 20th century and places this in a wider historical
context.


Music credits: Where You Are Now by Zapac and 2012Piano by
snowflake. Available from ccMixter.