BriefingMar 31st 2007 edition

Antarctic history and geography
The last wilderness

Antarctica is a geographical and political anomaly

AT 14m square kilometres (5m square miles), Antarctica is not that large as continents go; Eurasia, Africa, North and South America all trump it. Only Australia is smaller. In most other ways, though, it is a record-breaker. Some 98% of its surface is covered by ice. This ice sheet represents roughly 90% of the world's ice, and at its thickest point is piled up to an altitude of more than 4km (2½ miles), making Antarctica the highest continent on Earth. With winds that can exceed 300kph, average winter temperatures of -40°C, and (despite the ice) a dearth of precipitation, it is the windiest, coldest and driest continent too. It is also the emptiest. A mere 1,000 people work there all year round, with a further 3,000 joining them during the summer.

In addition to its geographical extremes, Antarctica is also a political curiosity. Despite the coloured pie-slices found on many maps, no country owns any part of the continent. In 1958, after the completion of the International Geophysical Year (IGY), which saw the establishment of many permanent bases, America's president, Dwight Eisenhower, invited the other participants in the IGY to come to an arrangement to ensure that “the vast uninhabited wastes of Antarctica shall be used only for peaceful purposes”.

What resulted the following year was the Antarctic Treaty. Its 45 signatories have agreed to suspend territorial claims and disputes, to forgo all military and mining activity, to protect the Antarctic environment and to preserve the continent as “a natural reserve, devoted to peace and to science”.

So far, no minerals that have been discovered would be worth the extraction costs. And the few tourists who come are reasonably well behaved, usually taking their litter home with them. Whether the treaty would stand up to serious commercial pressure remains to be seen. But at the moment, Antarctica remains a pristine scientific playground.

This article appeared in the Briefing section of the print edition under the headline "The last wilderness"

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