Sira Engelbertz
Supervisors:
Daniela Liggett, Gateway Antarctica, University of Canterbury
Gary Steel, Lincoln University
Bryan Storey, Gateway Antarctica, Univesity of Canterbury
Values in Antarctic Policy: Discourse and Decisions
Global change and environmental uncertainty have not only kept scientists busy over the past decades. These phenomena also challenge global policy. Facing inevitable risks in their decisions, decision-makers are more and more relying on scientific data in order to calculate these risks. Understanding the social and psychological implications of global change is as important as understanding the changes of the physical world itself. More recently, especially political scientists are engaging with the concept of value in this context and have emphasised the role of human values in decision-making under uncertainty.
The concept of value is also central to my research project while directing the focus on Antarctica. This project aims at identifying values associated with Antarctica and intends examine the impact these values may have on policy making in the Antarctic. For the purpose of this research, values are understood as internalized codes that shape human behaviour and include the moral element of what is considered as good and right.
As the only continent with no indigenous or permanent population, Antarctica provides unique circumstances to address the human-nature relationship within the context of the value concept. Due to Antarctica’s remote geographical position and extreme climatic conditions, there is a quasi-natural separation between extensive civilization on the one hand, and dominant, wild nature on the other. From a political point of view, Antarctica holds a special status as territory with no unique sovereign; technically it is a global commons. The Antarctic Treaty provides a framework for a global governance system that brings together decision-makers with different cultural backgrounds. At the same time, the Polar Regions are gaining more and more public awareness under the insight of a one world system, which increases political participation. Today, in addition to representatives of the Antarctic Treaty Consultative Parties, a number of representatives of other stakeholders (e.g. NGOs) participate in Antarctic Treaty Consultative Meetings (ATCM). The latter – although without authority for actual decision-making – take part in the Antarctic policy-making process. This results in a group of political actors who not only represent intercultural and but also intracultural diversity. Consequently, the aspect of value differences and diverse value systems becomes apparent, which potentially leads to different assessments of the same situation. Thus, values turn out to be especially interesting in terms of decision-making with uncertain consequences.
Values manifest themselves in human behaviour – and here not only in overt actions but also in the way a person expresses himself or herself verbally. For the study of values in Antarctica, this project undertakes a discourse analysis through the examples of the political discourse on climate change and tourism in Antarctica. Using a combination of an analysis of documents provided by the Secretariat of the Antarctic Treaty and interviews with key players, this study looks for constants and structures in the use of language that indicate respective values.