By Paula Padilla Argelich
Punta Arenas, Chile, Apr 30 (EFE).- With nearly 125,000 visitors per season, more than double the number five years ago, tourism in Antarctica continued to grow during the last Austral summer without any binding and thorough regulation to limit the impact of expeditions in one of the most pristine areas on the planet.
“The main problem with tourism in Antarctica is that it is growing rapidly, and there is no strict regulation, something that urgently needs to be addressed,” Claire Christian, director of the Antarctic and Southern Ocean Coalition (ASOC), an NGO, told EFE.
“If we want to continue to consider tourism a legitimate activity, it needs to be better regulated,” she added.
Researcher Chantal Lazen of the Antarctic Studies Program at the University of Chile told EFE that the signatories of the Antarctic Treaty, which was created to govern the continent and has been signed by 58 countries, has adopted over 50 resolutions related to tourism since its creation in 1961.
However, most of them are “voluntary guidelines or recommendations” that also need to be adopted by national legal systems, Lazen said.
For the time being, tour operators undergo national environmental audits and voluntarily register with the International Association of Antarctica Tour Operators (IAATO), whose requirements are stricter.
Nonetheless, once in Antarctica, tourism is self-regulated and ultimately depends on the operators’ “ethics” as there is no actual control, no police, said guide Santiago Imberti to EFE.
In response to the growing demand, some operators also find it “necessary to break or push the rules a bit” to “provide better experiences,” said Imberti.
“Conscious tourism”
According to IAATO, tourism in the frozen continent is still mainly maritime, as it was when it begun in the 1950s.
About 80 ships arrive on the Antarctic coast each season, carrying between 12 and 3,150 passengers, mostly Americans.
It is recommended that only cruise ships with fewer than 500 tourists disembark at selected points on the peninsula.
Under the motto “you can’t take care of what you don’t understand,” most of the expeditions promote “a different kind of tourism, of contemplation, learning, and awareness,” the director of the Antarctic 21 Foundation, Edgardo Vega, told EFE, adding that these activities met the “high standards of sustainability and social responsibility.”
Despite measures to mitigate its impact on the polar ecosystem, multiple studies have shown that tourism does change wildlife behavior and contributes to melting ice, the introduction of invasive species, and water pollution.
However, according to Vega, “it would be an illusion to think that by limiting human activity in Antarctica we will avoid all the consequences,” as “these changes are mainly due to what we do as a society in the rest of the planet.”
Unified and binding regulation
The members of the Antarctic Treaty agreed in 2023 to agree upon a “comprehensive, unified and binding” regulation, Lazen explained.
Experts and operators consider that such regulation should be based on scientific studies, many of which are conducted by cruise ships, which host researchers for a fee.
According to Lazen, the greatest challenge in developing this regulation is the “political and economic issues” that arise at Antarctic Treaty meetings, where decisions are subject to “complex” consensus among “states with very different legal traditions, political systems, and interests.”
“By signing the treaty, these countries took on the responsibility to supervise and protect Antarctica. It may be difficult to regulate, but tourism is one of the main impacts on its ecosystem,” the ASOC director concluded.
“It is good news that they are talking about it, yet we need them to act and to act now,” he added. EFE
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