We have plenty of academic books about the Treaty, the associated Conventions, the international laws arising from this, etc. What we have largely lacked is detailed insight into the way negotiations actually took place, the positions taken and abandoned by Parties and the reasons for the compromises finally reached. This is, at least in part, due to the secrecy associated with diplomacy and its written records, as well as the reluctance of diplomats to air details of discussions in public. There is then a great deal to welcome in Malcom Templeton's efforts since he retired from Foreign Affairs in New Zealand. Reading through what must have been hundreds of files to establish not only the New Zealand position but insights into those of other Parties, where in many cases the governments have not made the detailed papers available, he has made public some fascinating insights. Given the reluctance that Foreign Affairs has always shown in clearing Antarctic files for public access, Templeton's position as a previous employee gave him unfettered access in a way that others could only dream of!
This volume follows on from Templeton's first book in which he described New Zealand's activities in Antarctica from the early 1920s through to the negotiations leading up to the Antarctic Treaty in 1959. In this new book he records, often in forensic detail, the arguments over the Agreed Measures on Fauna and Flora, the rapid development of the Convention for the Conservation of Antarctic Seals (CCAS) and that for the Convention for the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources (CCAMLR), as well as the tortuous negotiations for the Convention on the Regulation of Antarctic Mineral Resource Activities (CRAMRA). With almost 25 pages of references, including many unreleased files, there are plenty of leads to take up in other archives to investigate the positions that other Parties brought to the table.
CCAS was not a contentious discussion as all Parties recognised that there could be no repeat of the historical indiscriminate slaughter of seals, and since it was thought that countries outside the Treaty, like Canada, might want to participate, it was agreed to have a Convention. Rather different is his account of the negotiation of CCAMLR where I feel he rather ignored the efforts of SCAR from 1968 onwards to highlight Russian activities in establishing a krill fishery, then closely followed in 1973 by Japan's commercial fishery. Interestingly, he does not cite either of the FAO reports on krill (Everson Reference Everson1977) or on the krill fisheries (Nicol & Endo Reference Nicol and Endo1997). In fact, if there is one significant drawback to this view of the way the Treaty has worked it is that Templeton almost never leaves official Government files to relate the discussions to the rest of the world!
The majority of the book (almost 200 pages) is devoted to the CRAMRA negotiations, not surprisingly since they were led by the New Zealander Chris Beeby. Whilst some of these details have appeared in other places, Templeton provides for the first time a continuous narrative of the negotiations, admittedly from a New Zealand viewpoint, but with considerable insight into the drivers for other key states. Minerals appeared to show the long-term prospect of real financial gain and the claimant states were generally keen to establish that they needed to be treated differently to the other non-claimant Parties. Whilst Joyner (Reference Joyner1996) has examined some of the compromises and frailties of CRAMRA, Templeton's narrative explains why and how these compromises were reached. The chapter devoted to the failure of CRAMRA and the reasons for it, especially in Australia and France, is illuminating with quotations from various letters and memos. I especially enjoyed the comment from Tucker Scully, Head of the US Delegation, that "the Australians' argument was intellectually bankrupt, fallacious and internally inconsistent"! Whilst Templeton hints that Bob Hawke joined the Australian Treasurer Paul Keating in opposition to CRAMRA for internal political reasons, he does not link this to the suggested deal with the Green Party in Tasmania that has been written about elsewhere. What is clear is that the two countries denounced CRAMRA for different reasons. Keating saw no financial gain for Australia from the Convention, whilst Mitterand and Rocard in France were forced to ride on a public backlash engineered by Jacques Cousteau, whose popularity exceeded that of the politicians.
Despite my long acquaintanceship with the Treaty, there were many new insights for me from this volume. For example, the first conservation initiative, the Agreed Measures, was designated as that by the United States as a convenience to allow it to be agreed by Executive Order rather than having to gain the Senate approval that a Convention would have required. Who knew that Germany was such a difficult element in the CRAMRA negotiations, or that the New Zealanders almost vetoed the whole Protocol over US intransigence over the mining ban? As always, the key to the explanation is in the details and here Templeton gives us plenty to go on.
His two books are very important contributions to the Treaty literature, especially as he tries hard to adopt a neutral tone and is willing to criticise New Zealand Government positions and actions as well as those of others. He could have strengthened his narrative with more direct citation of relevant material outside the papers of Foreign Affairs but perhaps he felt this was beyond his competence. We can hope that someone will now look carefully at the relevant files in the UK, USA, France and Australia to see if his commentary on their positions is correct. There is still much to learn.
