Should Development Be Allowed in Antarctica Essay Example
Should development be allowed in Antarctica?
Antarctica. The coldest driest and windiest continent on the planet. It is a vast cold sheet of ice that’s over 4 ½ kilometres thick, contains 90% of the world’s ice and 80% of the world’s water. The lowest temperature in the world has been reached there, −89 °C, at the Russian Vostok Station. Due to the Antarctic circumpolar current, Antarctica is an isolated desert and has gone from a tropical climate to the freezing wilderness that it has become. The ancient Greeks were the first to imagine ‘Terra Australis’ (‘Southern Land”), but it was only seen in 1820, and the first person set foot on it in 1821. It only receives a minute 200mm of annual precipitation and even that mostly along the coast. Creatures that live that live on this inhospitable place are extraordinary; they have adapted to the harsh challenges of living on Antarctica and have unique characteristics that you don’t see in other places of the world. The total area of Antarctica is 13,829,430 km2, to put that into perspective, that’s 58 times the size of the UK! Antarctica has and will always greatly affect the rest of the world and that’s why we are so in awe of it.
For a continent that has so much significance over man-kind how do you tell who it belongs to? As you can see from the diagram, many countries have made claims to Antarctica, and some of these overlap, causing conflict. Antarctica could have become a war-ground if these conflicts were to be developed, and Antarctica would also have been exploited and all of its valuable resources carted off to other lands. That is why the Antarctic Treaty was introduced. The Antarctic Treaty does not get rid of claims to Antarctica; it just temporarily resolves the problem. The Treaty covers five main areas, but over time, four more rules have been added; to summarise they are:
• No military activities are allowed on Antarctica – it must be used for peaceful purposes only
• The Treaty promotes
Antarctica. The coldest driest and windiest continent on the planet. It is a vast cold sheet of ice that’s over 4 ½ kilometres thick, contains 90% of the world’s ice and 80% of the world’s water. The lowest temperature in the world has been reached there, −89 °C, at the Russian Vostok Station. Due to the Antarctic circumpolar current, Antarctica is an isolated desert and has gone from a tropical climate to the freezing wilderness that it has become. The ancient Greeks were the first to imagine ‘Terra Australis’ (‘Southern Land”), but it was only seen in 1820, and the first person set foot on it in 1821. It only receives a minute 200mm of annual precipitation and even that mostly along the coast. Creatures that live that live on this inhospitable place are extraordinary; they have adapted to the harsh challenges of living on Antarctica and have unique characteristics that you don’t see in other places of the world. The total area of Antarctica is 13,829,430 km2, to put that into perspective, that’s 58 times the size of the UK! Antarctica has and will always greatly affect the rest of the world and that’s why we are so in awe of it.
For a continent that has so much significance over man-kind how do you tell who it belongs to? As you can see from the diagram, many countries have made claims to Antarctica, and some of these overlap, causing conflict. Antarctica could have become a war-ground if these conflicts were to be developed, and Antarctica would also have been exploited and all of its valuable resources carted off to other lands. That is why the Antarctic Treaty was introduced. The Antarctic Treaty does not get rid of claims to Antarctica; it just temporarily resolves the problem. The Treaty covers five main areas, but over time, four more rules have been added; to summarise they are:
• No military activities are allowed on Antarctica – it must be used for peaceful purposes only
• The Treaty promotes