The polluter pays. This environmental mantra will soon be enshrined in an extension to the treaty that governs Antarctica. Companies or nations that cause environmental disasters there will have to clean up the mess.
The agreement aims to force polluters to respond quickly to repair the damage they have caused. If they fail to do so, other agencies will have the legal right to do it for them and reclaim the costs.
Signed in Stockholm, Sweden, on 15 June by all 45 signatory nations of the Antarctic Treaty, the Stockholm annex, as it is now known, allows offenders to be fined if a clean-up is delayed and so causes irreparable damage. This money will help finance future clean-ups in which the guilty party is not known.
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Although the new measures will not directly prevent environmental disasters, they should encourage companies to take out adequate insurance to cover clean-up costs and to respond more quickly to accidents. With growing levels of traffic entering the Antarctic for tourism or bioprospecting, this issue is likely to become more urgent, says John Dudeney, deputy director of the British Antarctic Survey.
The treaty will be reviewed in five years to see whether it can be extended to cover the more complicated and ambiguous issue of cumulative environmental damage caused by Antarctic research bases.
