All eyes on the last wilderness (the Antarctic treaty and non-enforcement)

[LeftyMom]

http://www.smh.com.au/news/world/all-eyes-on-the-last-wilderness/2006/07/16/1152988415153.html?page=fullpage#contentSwap2

snip
Yet we do not call the shots in this land, and increasingly turf wars are conflicting with Australia's interests in Antarctica. New stations are only one infrastructure problem. Deep inside the Australian territory, Russia is going ahead with a hotly opposed plan to drill through the ice into a giant, until now pristine, sub-glacial lake.

Offshore in Australian waters, Japanese whalers and pirate fishers are at work little affected by the treaty's powers. At the same time, international pressure has stymied the Australian Government's bid at the United Nations to extend its territorial claim to the Antarctic continental shelf. And oil is beginning to raise its black head again.

At the core of the dilemma is a bargain Australia and other original signatories to the Antarctic Treaty made when it was agreed at the height of the Cold War in 1959: all territorial claims are frozen.

Other countries do not need permission to go to the Australian Anatacrtic Territory. So yesterday's Soviet Union built a series of strategically located bases in the Australian claim, today's China has a competition to name its mountains after its philosophers, and tomorrow's India will build where it wants.
snip