CONFIDENTIAL
10.
Hawke is likely to say that his espousal of a self-denying
ordinance on Antarctica is in line with a world environmental
opinion. More important in our view is the steadily increasing pressure on the global resource base. Our policy is not, like Canute, to deny that pressure any expression in Antarctica, but to
show how it can be managed in an environmentally sustainable manner in the sense urged by the Brundtland Commission. The Minerals
Convention provides an excellent expression of that policy. We have
therefore told the French and Australians that we, like the
Americans, continue to believe the Minerals Convention provides the
best available means of protecting the Antarctic environment against
the threat of unregulated mineral activity and that we do not
believe an outright ban is negotiable.
11. The split between the French and Australians on the one side
and the majority of Antarctic Treaty Consultative Parties who have
signed the Convention on the other, threatens the Antarctic Treaty
System (ATS) which operates by consensus. The task for the
-
-
future, which we expect to carry forward in Paris, is to manage the
split so as to avoid damage to the ATS while developing a package of
environmental measures within which the French and Australians could
feel able to reconsider their position.
SOUTH PACIFIC DEPARTMENT
October 1989
SPDAAG
CONFIDENTIAL