Antarctica, home to the south pole(s),
penguins, and about 5000 people during the summers,
but less than 1000 during the ever dark winter.
No one lives on the continent permanently,
so, who owns Antarctica?
Most stuff outside national borders, the sea floor, the moon,
really all of space, is the common heritage of mankind.
It belongs to none of us and all of us, held in trust for future generations.
Which is nice, if perhaps a bit presumptive
to say that the entire universe is ours,
and maybe someone will have something to say about that eventually,
story for another time, but still.
Well done humanity.
Except, it's never that simple.
Because the paperwork on Antarctica sort of says common heritage of mankind,
but it doesn't go all in.
Here's why. Explorers started landing
in Antarctica in about the 1800's, planting flags
and making claims. But these claims were a bit hollow
because on the civilization tech tree, Antarctica
wasn't colonizable. Nonetheless, like Monopoly,
the optimal colonial strategy is claim everything you land on.
In the early 1900's, the UK toyed with claiming all of
Antarctica before scaling back her ambitions to just
the coastal parts she had explored to the south pole.
France also claimed coastal explorations to the pole,
followed by Norway followed by the Nazis.
Mid-century, Argentina and Chile claimed slices overlapping
with the UK, who they figured was rather too busy
at the time to care, but later she and her now
independent colonies totally did. This left
Antarctica a mess of competing claims, at a bad time
to have large territorial disputes. Complicating things,
the United States and the Soviet Union gave
themselves the right to make a claim on
Antarctica, not now, but maybe later.
Given this, quite remarkably in 1959 the US and USSR
and ten other countries, Argentina, Australia, Belgium,
Chile, France, Japan, New Zealand, Norway,
South Africa, and the UK made a treaty to ease the tensions,
saying that on Antarctica, there would be
no military, no mining, and no nuclear exploding.
The Antarctican paperwork is the first Cold War
disarmament treaty, and set aside the continent
for science and nature.
By the way, because it's a nature preserve,
there's a rule about garbage. Leave nothing behind.
Nothing. Travel to Antarctica in the summer and you'll
fly back with your poo in the winter.
So this looks pretty great. What's the problem
with the line about common heritage?
Well, no one actually gave up their claims on Antarctica
because the only way to get everyone to sign was to
include this clause, which sidesteps the issue,
basically saying countries will act as though Antarctica
is the common heritage of mankind and as though
they have no claims, but they aren't legally for realsies
giving up anything, which is why maps of Antarctica
often include the current state of claim wedges.
This blank spot, by the way, is nobody's, leaving it
the largest territory unclaimed on Earth by any nation.
So far, anyway.
Now unlike the colonial days, countries have the tech
to build permanently staffed bases on Antarctica, and
it just so happens that countries build their bases
in their own claims, leaving no clear answer to this question.
According to the treaty, Antarctica belongs to everyone,
but the treaty itself has an intentional hole.
So Antarctica exists in this quantum state where
the claims are real and unreal. Some countries build
within their "borders" and some countries without claims,
like China, build their bases on the continent wherever
because it belongs to everyone, right guys?
These claims don't really matter, until they do in the
2040's when the mining ban comes up for review.
Oh, and there's possibly a lot of oil in Antarctica, not to
mention 70% of the Earth's fresh water, which could be
the more valuable resource in the future. The US and
the Soviet... er, Russia might just yet dust off those one
free claim because I say so tickets. But for now,
Antarctica is as the treaty intended. A continental
nature preserve and scientific research haven.
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