Non-State Actors in Antarctica Vol 32, No
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THE PUBLICATION OF THE NEW ZEALAND ANTARCTIC SOCIETY Vol 32, No. 3, 2014 32, No. Vol RRP $15.95 Non-State Actors in Antarctica Vol 32, No. 3, 2014 Issue 229 Contents www.antarctic.org.nz is published quarterly by the New Zealand Antarctic Society Inc. ISSN 0003-5327 The New Zealand Antarctic Society is a Registered Charity CC27118 DESIGN: Gusto Design PO Box 11994, Manners Street, Wellington Tel (04) 499 9150, Fax (04) 499 9140 Email: [email protected] GUEST EDITOR: Janet Bray New Zealand Antarctic Society PO Box 404, Christchurch 8140, New Zealand Email: [email protected] INDEXER: Mike Wing PRINTED BY: Format Print, Wellington This publication is printed using vegetable- 31 based inks onto Sumo Matt, which is a stock sourced from sustainable forests with FSC (Forest Stewardship Council) and ISO accreditations. Antarctic is distributed in From the National President 29 flow biowrap. The Winter Flights of 1964 29 Patron of the New Zealand Antarctic Society: The Changing Face of Non-State Actors in Antarctica 30 Patron: Professor Peter Barrett, 2008. Immediate Past Patron: Sir Edmund Hillary. As if the Weddell Sea were not Big Enough: NEW ZEALAND ANTARCTIC SOCIETY Two Explorers and One Challenge in 1914 33 LIFE MEMBERS The Society recognises with life membership, Antarctic Bibliographies 36 those people who excel in furthering the aims and objectives of the Society or who have given outstanding service in Antarctica. Natalie Cadenhead 38 They are elected by vote at the Annual General Meeting and are restricted to Children’s Illustrated Book: 15 life members at any time. Dogs of the Vastness – Ice Dogs of Lyttelton 40 Current Life Members by the year elected: 1. Bernard Stonehouse (UK), 1966 2. John Claydon (Canterbury), 1980 3. Jim Lowery (Wellington), 1982 4. Robin Ormerod (Wellington), 1996 5. Baden Norris (Canterbury), 2003 6. Bill Cranfield (Canterbury), 2003 7. Randal Heke (Wellington), 2003 8. Bill Hopper (Wellington), 2004 9. Malcolm Laird (Canterbury), 2006 10. Arnold Heine (Wellington), 2006 11. Margaret Bradshaw (Canterbury), 2006 12. Ray Dibble (Wellington), 2008 13. Norman Hardie (Canterbury), 2008 Cover photo: Back cover photo: Climber on grounded iceberg, Pleneau Island, with cruise ship Scott Base, with Mt Erebus behind passengers looking on Image courtesy of Colin Monteath / Hedgehoghouse.com Image courtesy of Colin Monteath / Hedgehoghouse.com This page: Map courtesy of Alan D. Hemmings and Tim Stephens Issue 229 From the National President write this deeply saddened, along with many others of our Natalie was our Antarctic treasure and we will miss her. Society, by the untimely passing of Natalie Cadenhead, Our condolences and thoughts are with her husband Iour long-serving Antarctic editor. Natalie’s friendliness, George and her family. enthusiasm, heritage knowledge, editorial expertise and This edition of Antarctic comes to you with our tribute willingness to assist in all endeavours Antarctic were to Nats, her life and work. I would like to sincerely thank extraordinary – she lived up to the words of Sir Ernest Janet Bray, who has stepped up as Guest Editor over Shackleton, who said “Superhuman effort isn’t worth a this time, and Lester Chaplow for working with Janet to damn unless it achieves results.” Nats certainly achieved maintain the continuity of our publication. My thanks also to a lot, and the obituary in these pages is testament to her Gusto Design, and to those who supported Janet by providing tenacious drive to learn and contribute to anything she was leads to stories or contributing items at short notice. We invite passionate about. Her contribution to the New Zealand your contributions and content for future editions. Antarctic Antarctic Society, as our Editor, Council member and magazine correspondence and articles should be sent to the active Canterbury Branch member, and to the broader Guest Editor at [email protected]. Antarctic community, will be only part of her legacy. Jud Fretter, National President, New Zealand Antarctic Society Lt. Cdr. RV Mayer] had ever seen in [his] departure from Antarctica, despite what The Winter Navy career” helped the plane to make Lt. Cdr. Mayer described as, with some a safe landing on the specially prepared understatement, “minor difficulties”. Flights of 1964 runway at McMurdo. Two hours later, The Antarctic report of fifty years the Hercules took off for Christchurch ago refers to this mission as “the most he Antarctic issue from fifty years with the injured fire chief on board. hazardous operation undertaken ago – Vol. 3, No. 11, September The plane landed safely in Christchurch by the US Navy in all its years of 1 T1964 – carries on page 480 a seven and a half hours after its Antarctic support”. story headed “United States Airmen Break Antarctic Winter Barrier”, which describes “the first flight ever made into the Antarctic in winter”. Until this 26 June 1964 flight, the latest out-of-season flight to Antarctica had been in April 1961, to Byrd Station via McMurdo, about two weeks before sunset at McMurdo.2 The June mercy mission from Christchurch to Williams Field, McMurdo Sound was to evacuate the seriously injured McMurdo Station fire chief, and was undertaken by a C-130 ski-equipped Hercules of the US Navy VX-6 Squadron, one of two that had been sent from Rhode Island for the rescue. Two New Zealand naval frigates, Pukaki and Otago, were diverted to near 60° S to support the Hercules with “weather reporting and search and rescue duties”, and “a rescue team of four of New Zealand’s best mountaineers [stood] by at Christchurch ready if necessary to fly in the second Hercules if the rescue plane got into trouble.” A change to clear calm weather, together with a full moon and the “best lit strip [the Hercules’ commander, 1 See http://www.antarctic.org.nz/pastissues.html . 2 For an account of that flight see Bill Spindler’s South Pole Station website: http://www.southpolestation.com/trivia/igy1/medevac/kuperov.html . Vol 32, No. 3, 2014 29 The Changing Face of Non-State Actors in Antarctica by Alan D. Hemmings, Gateway Antarctica, Christchurch, and Perth, Western Australia From the International Geophysical Year and the commencement of the modern Antarctic era with the 1959 Antarctic Treaty, governments were the dominant actors in Antarctica and in decision-making about Antarctica. ur thinking about Antarctic management, nationally fishing is sanctioned. Similarly, a tourism company needs to meet and internationally, is predicated on the assumption prior environmental impact assessment (EIA) obligations under Othat the state, “the government”, remains the driver. the Madrid Protocol – and does so through its own government. Taking New Zealand as a generally applicable example: In short, for commercial activities, the state rides shotgun on the the national Antarctic programme is led by a state entity private carriage. (Antarctica New Zealand), which coordinates getting to/from Something similar happens in relation to a third category the place (collaborating with other New Zealand agencies of non-state actor operating in Antarctica: environmental – such as the Royal New Zealand Air Force – and other non-governmental operators such as Greenpeace and governments (USA and Italy)), runs the facilities (Scott Base), Sea Shepherd. They too must meet the obligations of the contracts support staff, and manages the scientists. Madrid Protocol, and this often (always with Greenpeace) The scientists are overwhelmingly drawn from universities means that some sort of EIA for their proposed Antarctic activity or Crown Research Institutes funded by the state. is done through a state. Adding to the complexity here is that the Going to Antarctica is thus largely a state-controlled function. activity against which these e-NGOs are protesting is an activity It is government agencies (Ministry of Foreign Affairs and not itself regulated by the Antarctic Treaty system – whaling. Trade, Antarctica New Zealand, Department of Conservation, Notwithstanding the critical role the state plays in mediating etc.) that represent New Zealand at Antarctic meetings, and it between the aspirations of these actors and the international legal is the Officials’ Antarctic Committee that advises government obligations of the Antarctic Treaty system, the state is plainly on policy. Ministers make the final decisions. Even for those not the driver of the activity. Their engagement with Antarctica states that contract out parts of their Antarctic programme therefore represents something of a complication of the already to the private sector – as the US has historically done complex set of relationships there between states. for support services – the state remains in the driver’s seat, These three non-state actors (fishing industry, tourism through contractual and national legal arrangements. industry, e-NGOs) have also sought to engage with the formal This picture has been complicated by commercial activities Antarctic governance structures. They have persuaded progressive in Antarctica – fishing and tourism – which are manifestly not states such as New Zealand to include representatives on the planned, conducted or funded by the state. New Zealand has, national diplomatic delegations to Antarctic meetings; and they like other Antarctic-active states, companies fishing or conducting have each gained independent “expert” status recognition for tourism in Antarctica. These activities, like those directly run their international umbrella group at the Antarctic meetings. by the state, are subject to the obligations under the Antarctic Tourism companies are represented by the International Association Treaty system, including various duties around environmental of Antarctica Tourism Operators (IAATO), fishing companies by protection under the Madrid Protocol, and these are managed the Coalition of Legal Toothfish Operators (COLTO), and e-NGOs through the state. So, for a fishing company to catch fish in a by the Antarctic and Southern Ocean Coalition (ASOC). particular area, its government has to make the proposal through IAATO, COLTO and ASOC are players in the Antarctic the Commission for the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living political arena.