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A campaigner's life: saving Antarctica
I then got an opportunity to work for marine protected areas. Large scale marine protected areas work to ensure the resilience of ecosystems in the Southern Ocean and to create climate refugia and protect the marine biodiversity.
The Antarctic is one place where we haven't destroyed 70% of our marine biodiversity. I think it's also really important to try and maintain that breathing space.
That led me to the opportunity to write a PhD about the viability of the convention that currently looks after the Antarctic, and why it's imperative that we make it work. That has become even more important.
The first big campaign I got involved in was to prevent mining in Antarctica and working for Greenpeace. I had been working for an organisation called the Antarctic and Southern Ocean Coalition, which is a coalition of social and environmental groups that came together in the late 1970s.
Initially, it was to ensure that the regime that the Antarctic Treaty nations were negotiating for in the Southern Ocean was a conservation regime, rather than a fisheries regime. And the Coalition was successful in that.
So to be involved in that campaign, I switched to Greenpeace. I was sort of working across both organisations. One of the things about Greenpeace is that it has very good training for its campaigners.
I was identified as a political advocate. I still think it's hilarious I ended up being a lobbyist. I got sent to a mining negotiation meeting that was being held in Tokyo in 1983.
What happened was that the treaty nations finished negotiating the regime to conserve and regulate human activities, conserve the environment and regulate human activities in the Southern Ocean, and that's called the Convention on the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources, or CCAMLR.
They looked around and said, "Oh, well people might be interested in mining, so we need to negotiate a regime to regulate mining activities in the Antarctic."
Just to step it back a bit, the Antarctic treaty was set up and came into force in 1960 in the height of the Cold War, in order to ensure peace in the Antarctic region. And it's the most important peace and anti-nuclear and demilitarised regime in the world.
The Antarctic was set up by a bunch of countries in order to encourage peace and scientific cooperation and then later, environmental protection.
They're looking around the Southern Ocean and said "oh, people might want to mine so we need to negotiate a mining regime." There was no real interest in mining at the time so it was really a preventative mechanism.
They held 12 meetings over 1982 - 1988, to negotiate a mining regime. That culminated in 1988, with the signing of a convention, called the Convention on the Regulation of Antarctic Mineral Resources (CRAMR) .
During the negotiations of that regime, the Antarctic and Southern Ocean Coalition (ASOC) and its member countries, including Greenpeace, tried to do two things. They tried to stop the regime from coming to fruition and simultaneously tried to make it so horrible, so that it wouldn’t actually allow mining.
I then got an opportunity to work for marine protected areas. Large scale marine protected areas work to ensure the resilience of ecosystems in the Southern Ocean and to create climate refugia and protect the marine biodiversity.
The Antarctic is one place where we haven't destroyed 70% of our marine biodiversity. I think it's also really important to try and maintain that breathing space.
That led me to the opportunity to write a PhD about the viability of the convention that currently looks after the Antarctic, and why it's imperative that we make it work. That has become even more important.
The first big campaign I got involved in was to prevent mining in Antarctica and working for Greenpeace. I had been working for an organisation called the Antarctic and Southern Ocean Coalition, which is a coalition of social and environmental groups that came together in the late 1970s.
Initially, it was to ensure that the regime that the Antarctic Treaty nations were negotiating for in the Southern Ocean was a conservation regime, rather than a fisheries regime. And the Coalition was successful in that.
So to be involved in that campaign, I switched to Greenpeace. I was sort of working across both organisations. One of the things about Greenpeace is that it has very good training for its campaigners.
I was identified as a political advocate. I still think it's hilarious I ended up being a lobbyist. I got sent to a mining negotiation meeting that was being held in Tokyo in 1983.
What happened was that the treaty nations finished negotiating the regime to conserve and regulate human activities, conserve the environment and regulate human activities in the Southern Ocean, and that's called the Convention on the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources, or CCAMLR.
They looked around and said, "Oh, well people might be interested in mining, so we need to negotiate a regime to regulate mining activities in the Antarctic."
Just to step it back a bit, the Antarctic treaty was set up and came into force in 1960 in the height of the Cold War, in order to ensure peace in the Antarctic region. And it's the most important peace and anti-nuclear and demilitarised regime in the world.
The Antarctic was set up by a bunch of countries in order to encourage peace and scientific cooperation and then later, environmental protection.
They're looking around the Southern Ocean and said "oh, people might want to mine so we need to negotiate a mining regime." There was no real interest in mining at the time so it was really a preventative mechanism.
They held 12 meetings over 1982 - 1988, to negotiate a mining regime. That culminated in 1988, with the signing of a convention, called the Convention on the Regulation of Antarctic Mineral Resources (CRAMR) .
During the negotiations of that regime, the Antarctic and Southern Ocean Coalition (ASOC) and its member countries, including Greenpeace, tried to do two things. They tried to stop the regime from coming to fruition and simultaneously tried to make it so horrible, so that it wouldn’t actually allow mining.
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