The Antarctic Treaty (1959) was adopted for the purpose of bringing peace and stability to Antarctica and to facilitate cooperation in scientific research conducted on and around the continent. It has now been over fifty years since the signing of the treaty, nevertheless security continues to drive and shape the laws and policy regime which governs the region. Antarctic Security in the Twenty-First Century: Legal and Policy Perspectives assess Antarctic security from multiple legal and policy perspectives. This book reviews the existing security construct in Antarctica, critically assesses its status in the early part of the Twenty-First century and considers how Antarctic security may be viewed in both the immediate and distant future. The book assesses emerging new security threats, including the impact of climate change and the issues arising from increased human traffic to Antarctica by scientists, tourists, and mariners. The authors call into question whether the existing Antarctic security construct framed around the Antarctic Treaty remains viable, or whether new Antarctic paradigms are necessary for the future governance of the region. The contributions to this volume engage with a security discourse which has expanded beyond the traditional military domain to include notions of security from the perspective of economics, the environment and bio-security. This book provides a contemporary and innovative approach to Antarctic issues which will be of interest to scholars of international law, international relations, security studies and political science as well as policy makers, lawyers and government officials with an interest in the region.

The thawing Antarctic continent offers living space and marine and mineral resources that were previously inaccessible. This book discusses how revisiting the Antarctic Treaty System and dividing up the continent preemptively could spare the world serious conflict. The Antarctic Treaty and related agreements—collectively known as the Antarctic Treaty System (ATS)—regulate the seventh continent, which is the only continent without a native human population. The main treaty within the ATS came into force in 1961 and suspended all territorial claims in Antarctica. The Antarctic Environmental Protocol followed in 1998 and prohibited any minerals exploitation in the continent. With this prohibition up for review in 2048, this book asks whether the Antarctic Treaty can continue to protect Antarctica. Doaa Abdel-Motaal—an expert on environmental issues who has traveled through the Arctic and Antarctic—explains that the international community must urgently turn its attention to examining how to divide up the thawing continent in a peaceful manner. She discusses why the Antarctic Treaty is unlikely to be an adequate measure in the face of international competition for invaluable resources in the 21st century. She argues that factors such as global warming, the growth in climate refugees that the world is about to witness, and the increasingly critical quest for energy resources will make the Antarctic continent a highly sought-after objective. Readers will come to appreciate that what has likely protected Antarctica so far was not the Antarctic Treaty but the continent's harsh climate and isolation. With Antarctica potentially becoming habitable only a few decades from now, revisiting the Antarctic Treaty in favor of an orderly division of the continent is likely to be the best plan for avoiding costly conflict.

The Antarctic and Southern Ocean are hotspots for contemporary endeavours to oversee 'the last frontier' of the Earth. The Handbook on the Politics of Antarctica offers a wide-ranging and comprehensive overview of the governance, geopolitics, international law, cultural studies and history of the region. Four thematic sections take readers from the earliest human encounters to contemporary resource exploitation and climate change. Written by leading experts, the Handbook brings together the very best interdisciplinary social science and humanities scholarship on the Antarctic and Southern Ocean.

The polar regions (the Arctic and Antarctic) have enjoyed widespread public attention in recent years, as issues of conservation, sustainability, resource speculation and geopolitical manoeuvring have all garnered considerable international media inter

Following the 2008 Beijing Olympics and Global Financial Crisis, China's foreign policy shifted to become more assertive, effecting a systematic deterioration in the US-China relationship. In 2017, the US' China policy shifted from that of 'engagement' to 'strategic competition' under Trump — a policy which has remained under the Biden administration.Indo-Pacific Security: US-China Rivalry and Regional States' Responses explores how states in the Indo-Pacific region have had to adjust to the reality and implications of this growing great power rivalry. In the process, this book fills a gap in the area studies, international relations, and security studies literature. It provides a compelling account of the trajectory of US-China relations while illuminating the varied responses of regional states: from Australia, India and Japan, to South Korea, Thailand, Taiwan, and Pacific Island states.

The governing international space law regime has been locked in a norm-creation stalemate for over 40 years. This stalemate endangers the preservation of established, guiding legal principles, as well as the sustainability of the parts of outer space that humans utilize. The discrepancy between norm creation, technological advancement, and the ecosystem of novel actors could generate serious consequences for future space activities and the nature of international relations. Besides the return of old rivalries in a New Cold War, new activities and actors emerging amidst a legal void emphasizes the risks of the stalemate: unstable peace, fragile cooperation, uneven technological development, and uncertain eco-sustainability. The prolonged legal stalemate cannot be treated simply as an academic question, for it has broader political and economic implications of growing strategic relevance. Unresolved issues in international space law could threaten the survival of space as a global common, thus it is essential that the ability of the norm-creation mechanism of UN COPUOS is equipped to address the ongoing changes and provide for adequate global governance. This book evaluates the current legal state and sheds light on potential future prospects, offering an overview of the political context within which it developed, providing an assessment of the selected successful examples in international law, and analyzing lessons learned. It makes recommendations for how the UN COPUOS legal apparatus should be modified in order to ensure that future space activities are possible beyond anarchy, greed, and ecological irresponsibility, and to ensure that the principle of the peaceful uses of outer space remains the governing norm.

This book brings together thirteen selected papers presented in the Third International Seminar on Science and Geopolitics of Arctic-Antarctic-Himalaya, held in India in September 2015. The papers and have been grouped according to the Seminar’s three main themes: a) Geopolitics of the Polar Regions, b) Global Climate Change and Polar Regions, and c) Climate Change and Himalayan Region.

This timely Research Handbook explores the concept of polar law as a coherent body of law and as a set of rules and principles that applies to both the Arctic and Antarctic. It captures the evolution of polar law and policy, identifying future directions for research in this emerging and growing field.

Of the many challenges that society faces today, possibly none is more acute than the security of ordinary citizens when faced with a variety of natural or man-made disasters arising from climate and geological catastrophes, including the depletion of natural resources, environmental degradation, food shortages, terrorism, breaches of personal security and human security, or even the global economic crisis. States continue to be faced with a range of security issues arising from contested territorial spaces, military and maritime security and security threats relating to energy, infrastructure and the delivery of essential services. The theme of the book encompasses issues of human, political, military, socio-economic, environmental and energy security and raises two main questions. To what extent can international law address the types of natural and man-made security risks and challenges that threaten our livelihood, or very existence, in the twenty-first century? Where does international law fall short in meeting the problems that arise in different situations of insecurity and how should such shortcomings be addressed?

Polar law describes the normative frameworks that govern the relationships between humans, States, Peoples, institutions, land and resources in the Arctic and the Antarctic. These two regions are superficially similar in terms of natural environmental conditions but the overarching frameworks that apply are fundamentally different. The Routledge Handbook of Polar Law explores the legal orders in the Arctic and Antarctic in a comparative perspective, identifying similarities as well as differences. It points to a distinct discipline of "Polar law" as the body of rules governing actors, spaces and institutions at the Poles. Four main features define the collection: the Arctic-Antarctic interface; the interaction between global, regional and domestic legal regimes; the rights of Indigenous Peoples; and the increasing importance of private law. While these broad themes have been addressed to varying extents elsewhere, the editors believe that this Handbook brings them together to create a comprehensive (if never exhaustive) account of what constitutes Polar law today. Leading scholars in public international and private law as well as experts in related fields come together to offer unique insights into polar law as a burgeoning discipline.