The Protection of Wilderness and Aesthetic Values in Antarctica
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The Protection of Wilderness and Aesthetic Values in Antarctica Rupert Matthew Valentine SUMMERSON Submitted in total fulfilment of the requirements of the degree of Doctor of Philosophy September 2013 Faculty of Architecture, Building and Planning The University of Melbourne ii Abstract The protection of wilderness and aesthetic values in Antarctica was mandated by the Protocol on Environmental Protection to the Antarctic Treaty, the “Madrid Protocol”, which came into force in January 1998. Implementation of protection has, however, been delayed by problems of definition and assessment. A survey of the history of Antarctic exploration shows that from almost the earliest days of exploration visitors to Antarctica have been struck by the vast, awe- inspiring and beautiful landscapes and those attitudes have persisted to the present. The history of the development of the Madrid Protocol demonstrates that the desire to protect these values can be traced to guidelines for managing human impacts dating from the mid-1980s. Human impacts in Antarctica derive mainly from the operations of national Antarctic programs (NAPs) and although tourists now outnumber staff in NAPs, to date their impact has been confined to ten or twenty favourite landing sites and a small number of sites where tourism companies have established land-based facilities. NAP facilities, by contrast, are widespread, especially in coastal ice-free areas and are characterised by the establishment of permanent infrastructure. It was hypothesised that it is the establishment of infrastructure that detracts from wilderness and aesthetic values more than transient activity. A strong case can be made that all Antarctica is wilderness unless it has been degraded by human activity, i.e. the construction of infrastructure. In terms of wilderness degradation, therefore, the area which has been degraded is that from which infrastructure is visible. In order to test this hypothesis, a series of surveys were carried out, the final survey being established on the Internet and based on the use of digital images of Antarctic landscapes. The images in the survey were also categorised by landscape type, derived from the Environmental Domains of Antarctica (EDA) regionalisation. The survey comprised three components: a) perceptions of wilderness, in which respondents were asked to decide whether or not the scene in the image constituted wilderness; b) to give an aesthetic preference rating on a seven-point scale; and c) to assess the suitability of a number of adjectives for each scene. Some demographic information was also collected. The survey was made available in four languages: English, Japanese, French and Spanish. Over 500 respondents from 24 countries contributed to the surveys. The results of the Internet survey, in particular, show that human presence was found to make images significantly less likely to be considered as wilderness and also reduced their aesthetic rating; people therefore preferred natural landscapes. Coastal ice-free areas were less valued aesthetically than mountainous and ice-covered terrains. Human presence was consistently detected in responses to questions on perception of wilderness, aesthetic preference and in the semantic responses. The results were extended by terrain modelling to analyse the areas degraded by visibility of infrastructure. The results of this research show, inter alia, that iii wilderness and aesthetic values and human impacts on these values are measureable and therefore amenable to the development of policies to protect them. iv Declaration This is to certify that: i. the thesis comprises only my original work towards the PhD, ii. due acknowledgement has been made in the text to all other material used, iii. the thesis is fewer than 100 000 words in length, exclusive of tables, maps, bibliographies and appendices. Rupert Matthew Valentine SUMMERSON September 2013 v Preface The pre-cursor of this thesis was a three month pilot project on wilderness and aesthetic values under contract to the Australian Antarctic Division during 1997. vi Acknowledgements I would like to gratefully acknowledge the generous support and contributions to this research from many people in many countries. My supervisors Prof. Ian Bishop, Prof. Catherin Bull, Dr Martin Riddle and Dr Roger Bradbury provided every support and encouragement. I would like to particularly thank Prof. Ian Bishop for his patience over a very long time. Ms Jane Trewin at the research support Faculty of Architecture, Building and Planning, The University of Melbourne provided sterling support throughout my time at the Faculty. The logistic support of Antarctic fieldwork through the Australian Antarctic Science Grants Program is gratefully acknowledged (project no. 2250). The voyage and field staff in Antarctica were unfailingly helpful and I would like to particularly thank Gary Kuehn at Casey, Kym Newbery at Mawson and Andy Reid at Davis; our walk through the Vestfold Hills was inspiring. At the Australian Antarctic Division Dr Martin Riddle, Mr Ewan McIvor, Mr Tom Maggs, Mr David Smith, Mr Henk Brolsma, Dr Andy Smithies, Dr Lee Belbin and the staff at the Australian Antarctic Data Centre unstintingly provided me with help and advice. I am indebted to Ms Patty Hobsbawn who designed, built and helped maintain the code for the Internet survey and to Ms France Meyer, Ms Noriko Sakai and Mrs Diana McPhetres who translated the Internet survey into French, Japanese and Spanish, respectively. Mrs Moko Eade and Ms Amelia Fielden helped with the Japanese version of the Internet survey. Many people helped promote the Internet survey but I would like to especially thank the following: Prof. David Walton (UK), Prof. Julian Dowdeswell (UK), Mr Jason Anthony (US), Dr Robert Stephenson (US), Dr Harvey Marchant, Dr Julian Paren (UK), Ms Robyn Mundy, Dr David Kirby, Dr Harry Keys (NZ), Mr Benj Whitworth, Mr Martin Butterfield and Dr Adrian Howkins (US). I would also like to thank all the respondents who took the time to complete the surveys. A number of people kindly loaned me their photographs to use in the Internet survey and I would like to thank Dr Frederique Oliver, Mr Dick Barwick, the USAP Photo Library, Mr Matthew Lazzara (University of Wisconsin) and Mr Brian Vasel (NOAA). Mr Mark Chambers, Dr Peter Caley and Mr Phil Tennant provided me with invaluable instruction in statistics and I am very grateful to them. vii Dr Rob Lesslie, Mr John Hyslop and Ms Astrida Mednis kindly gave their time to act as a focus group. I have had many useful discussions about wilderness and aesthetic values and I gratefully acknowledge Dr Rob Lesslie, Dr Lisa Roberts, Dr Alan Hemmings, Dr Tina Tin (France), Dr Rosamunde Codling (UK), Dr Bernadette Hince, Ms Claire Beynon (NZ) and Ms Diane Erceg. I would like to thank my colleagues in BRS/ABARES for their patience and understanding, especially Dr Gavin Begg and Dr Ilona Stobutzski. Finally, and my no means least, I would like to thank my wife, Dr Janet Hughes and my three children, Isabelle, Huon and Iona for their patience, encouragement and support. viii Table of contents Table of contents ........................................................................................................................ ix Figures .........................................................................................................................................x Tables........................................................................................................................................xvi Chapter 1 . Background and introduction .....................................................................................1 Chapter 2 . A History of Antarctic Landscape Descriptions ....................................................... 10 Chapter 3 . Development of the Madrid Protocol and the origins of the desire to protect wilderness and aesthetic values .................................................................................................................... 32 Chapter 4 . Human activities in Antarctica ................................................................................. 50 Chapter 5 . Intrinsic, wilderness and aesthetic values ................................................................ 78 Chapter 6 . Methods ................................................................................................................. 108 Chapter 7 . Results ................................................................................................................... 131 Chapter 8 . Spatial modelling and mapping of areas of wilderness and aesthetic value ........... 200 Chapter 9 . Discussion and Conclusions .................................................................................. 238 Antarctic glossary and acronym list ......................................................................................... 259 References ................................................................................................................................ 261 Appendix 1. First survey questionnaire .................................................................................... 286 Appendix 2. Text of Survey 2 questionnaire ............................................................................ 298 Appendix 3. Disposable camera experiment ............................................................................ 299 Appendix 4. Surveys 2 & 3 photos & summary results ...........................................................