The geopolitical implications of glacial geoengineering proposals in Antarctica: lessons for the North?

Generally, geoengineering governance research exhibits a tendency to make best-case assumptions about global cooperation. The Antarctic Treaty System is often hailed as a role model for international cooperation, but there are crucial geopolitical fault-lines in the system that need to be more seriously considered in the glacial geoengineering debate. Unlike other types of geoengineering governance where a lack of regulation poses the main challenge, for glacial geoengineering in the Antarctic and the Southern Ocean there is a clear regulative context. Even if the ice curtain idea were to be technically feasible and environmentally harmless, this type of geoengineering has the potential to undo the current governance arrangements in the Antarctic, which has successfully kept the southern continent “a natural reserve, dedicated to peace and science” for over six decades. By impacting contentious areas of Antarctic geopolitics, such as authority, sovereignty, and security, there is a significant risk that the project would make the Antarctic “the scene or object of international discord”, which, according to the preamble of the Treaty, is something it should not be.

Political feasibility and the desirability of a geoengineering intervention matter as much as technical feasibility or environmental desirability. By comparing the Arctic to Antarctica in this regard, the paper makes the case for a closer appreciation of the geopolitical dimensions in the debates about geoengineering infrastructures, especially with regard to who decides (authority), who owns (sovereignty) and who controls (security).