Masters Thesis Abstract: Debs Martin
"We run the ice": Critical geopolitics of New Zealand's Antarctic relationship in the "Environmental era".
From a past supporting British exploration and the eventual annexation of the Ross Dependency in 1923 (with claim issues set aside by the 1959 Antarctic Treaty), New Zealand’s governmental interests in the Antarctic are exercised primarily through scientific endeavour. Reflecting growing international concerns, strong domestic legislation ratifying the 1991 Protocol provides environmental protection of New Zealand’s activities in the Antarctic. New Zealand commercial interests including tourism, fishing, and bioprospecting place this under increasing pressure.
The tensions of territorial interest and responsibility in the Ross Dependency, increased environmental protection, pressures of commercialisation, and the legacies of a colonialist history create an uneasy template on which domestic perceptions of the New Zealand/Antarctic relationship are constructed and government policy is formulated. A closer understanding of the complexity of these dimensions provides the impetus for this study.
Critical geopolitics, a post-modern approach addressing spatial and temporal dimensions of the construction and expression of power/knowledge, is used to analyse these complexities. An interpretative examination is made of Antarctic documentary sources and interviews with key New Zealand Antarctic people in an attempt to identify the assumptions and rationale behind geopolitical reasoning.
Early research indicates that the Antarctic remains one of the last vestiges of colonial expression and masculine endeavour. Increasing commercialisation highlights different interpretations of environmental discourse and the pursuit of neoliberal objectives raises concerns about the ability to protect the Antarctic environment as comprehensively as is expected. Government plays a balancing role between conflicting demands, at times creating policy that interest groups view as contradictory.