Antarctic diplomacy in plain English: The MAGA edition

The Antarctic Treaty Consultative Meeting (ATCM) is where 29 world powers should unite every year to defend what many call Earth’s last great wilderness.

But the new report from ATCM 2025, staged in scorching Milan from 23 June to 3 July, spans 200 pages of such enigmatic jargon that anyone hoping to follow Antarctic geopolitics should think about getting a degree in bureaucrat speak (BS). 

You can’t get into these closed meetings because they’re held behind a drawbridge. And the good, the bad and the ugly of Antarctic governance have so effectively shielded themselves from the great unwashed that only a degree in BS would help you decipher who the meeting’s “some members”, “some parties” and “many parties” are. 

The report’s wording may feel as thrilling as ATCM-flavoured gelato melting in the Italian summer. But the near-apocalyptic stuff between the lines is actually quite interesting — in the way the approaching light at the end of the tunnel generally is. 

That’s why Daily Maverick is prying open the Ice Curtain. We’re going to decode the BS with “Diplomacy in Plain English: Make Antarctica Great Again”. 

Pretoria to the rescue

Yes, Pretoria. After the UK, South Africa was the second country in the world to ratify the 1959 treaty devoting Antarctica to peace and science. 

As the mercury climbed past 35°C, South Africa’s top negotiator, Ashley Johnson, surveyed the wilting room. In their home countries, many of his peers hadn’t bothered to pass a law to clean up any future Antarctic disasters — oil spills, chemical leaks, you name it. There was no agreement on who’d pick up the tab. 

It was a grim anniversary. Adopted in Stockholm in 2005, the so-called liability annex on environmental emergencies (Annex VI) still wasn’t in force 20 years later. 

That was the year Mariah Carey’s We Belong Together spent 14 weeks on the Billboard Hot 100. It could almost be a theme song for Antarctic diplomatic teamwork if only Argentina, Belgium, Brazil, Bulgaria, China, India, Japan, South Korea and the US had actually approved the annex. The US, it may be noted at this point, is the depositary and architect of the 1959 Antarctic Treaty. (The whole thing was its idea.)

Approved by Pretoria in 2013, the annex finally became domestic law in 2022 and was now being upgraded, Johnson told the Milan floor. The only African state with treaty decision-making powers was not just turning up for the gelato — but going back for round two of refinement to respond to “significant” environmental changes.

While claiming credit for the “overwhelming majority” of marine surveys on East Antarctica’s potential 70 billion tons of oil and gas, none other than the Kremlin also approved the annex in 2013, 12 years ahead of Capitol Hill and counting. 

Then the South Africans hauled the eructing elephant seal in the room into the, well, room. 

“Recalling Decision 2 (2022) Liability arising from environmental emergencies, in which the Parties had agreed ‘to take a decision in 2025 on the establishment of a timeframe for the resumptio…”

Oh, never mind. Here’s a BS translation sans paywall: In 2022, everyone had pinky-promised to set a new deadline in 2025 to drag the derelict liability losers on to the accountability boat. 

Or set deadlines to set deadlines. Which, the South Africans continued, was it going to be? 

Twenty years of no action … and proud of it?

The Trump delegation then piped up with this gem: “Observing that this would already be the fifth decision of its kind while [the liability annex on environmental emergencies] was still not in force, the US suggested that it might not be a very effective use of the meeting’s time.”

Led by Ona Hahs, a State Department lawyer, the US envoys’ point might have landed with more polish had Congress actually approved and enacted the law back home. 

An X tweet screenshot showing Ona Hahs, Washington’s top negotiator, receiving a children’s card at ATCM 2024 in Kochi, India. (Photo: X / @AntarcticaSouth)

To an official from South Africa, two-time reigning champs of possibly the world’s most brutal ball sport, one might suggest the MAGA cosplay was the diplomatic equal of faking an injury in shoulder pads.

Hahs’s squad was basically saying: Stop wasting time on this; we’re just going to lie here.

So, how did Milan mark the 20-year anniversary since the annex was crowned the bridesmaid of Antarctic inertia? 

We give you “Decision 6”, a masterpiece of BS, which booted the real thrill half a decade away. 

Since we refuse to always suffer alone, here’s the proof from the report: “Most parties … agreed to prioritise the implementation of Annex VI in the next five years and renew their commitment to establish a timeframe for the resumption of negotiations on liability by the year 2030.”

Translation? Don’t call us about any Antarctic oil spills right now. We’ll call you — after 2030, possibly. 

Make Antarctic stations great again

Perhaps this meeting’s biggest reveal was not only how climate change was twisting the knife into the life expectancy of tax-funded Antarctic stations, but Washington’s reaction to it.

Already braving Earth’s most extreme weather, Antarctica’s 74 research stations were now grappling with a “changing Antarctica”, reported the 33 managers from the council for National Antarctic Programmes. (Colombia became the 34th addition in August.)

In other words, climate change was making it harder to study climate change. This was reportedly because of phenomena such as “snow accumulation, a forecast increase in strong wind episodes, humidity and precipitation, as well as unpredictable sea ice conditions that impacted the resupply of coastal stations”.

So, the council did something genuinely laudable: tabling an “early assessment” of how climate change could rip apart research infrastructure and what to do about it. Meant to keep real humans secure — scientists, engineers, support staff — each new station had to be built to withstand whatever Antarctic meteorology could throw at it. 

“Some parties” also welcomed updating the “Antarctic Clean-Up Manual”. The Australian government says there is “between 1 and 10 million cubic metres of contaminated material in Antarctica”, so melting ice can turn waste sites into fresh disasters.

Washington, for its part, opposed updating the “already burdensome” manual. Any international environmental deal shouldn’t saddle it with unfair or excessive obligations, it added.

Given Donald Trump’s anti-science fireworks at the UN in New York this week, Washington’s polar stance looks set to flip on a dime — hardly the steady hand Hahs seemed to wield as Biden’s incoming top Antarctic official. 

“We need increased international co-operation to protect the region’s vulnerable ecosystems and to address the impacts of climate change that are threatening Antarctica,” Hahs noted on a now-“retired” State Department Instagram account on 17 May 2024. 

 

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Meanwhile, in Milan, most countries also agreed that slashing emissions was a safer ecological path than “geoengineering” — using big machines to stop the ice from melting.

The Trump delegation said it opposed any uniform international process to manage geoengineering proposals — in effect preventing clear rules from being set.

Washington to Beijing: Now you CEE it, now you don’t 

But did we tell you the Trump administration showed up in Milan with … no discussion papers? An extraordinary break from Washington’s 30-a-year paper average. Seemingly with little else to do, the MAGA envoys placed Beijing’s new station plan in Marie Byrd Land firmly in their crosshairs.

This time, they may have had a point. 

Wrapped in the language of public good, Beijing’s pitch sounded reassuring: a shiny new research station at Cox Point, one of Antarctica’s least studied sectors. Moscow is also planning to revive and build new facilities here, as broken by Daily Maverick in April. 

Beijing’s station would come complete with renewable energy, green materials and advanced waste management. It would deliver long-term data on ice sheet stability.

The polite verdict of the Committee for Environmental Protection, the ATCM’s advisory body? “Generally clear, well structured and well presented” — except for a laundry list they wanted more details on:  

How would the station go up and operate day to day? Which other sites and designs were on the table before they picked Cox Point, in the relatively pristine heart of St Nowhere? Was this it? Or the next step in a bigger Antarctic empire?

Washington said Beijing’s impact assessment was “inconsistent with what had been seen in comprehensive environmental evaluations [CEEs] from other parties”. 

It wanted to “see the work in person”.

The proposed site, Cox Point, is at 74°57′S, 136°41′W. Facing the Pacific, it’s Antarctica’s answer to the far side of the moon. 

If you aimed a bit of — say — morainic gravel at the nearest landmass north of Cox Point, and catapulted it along the 136th meridian west, it would streak past:

• A petrel;
• The Antarctic Circle; and miss …
• The 305 inhabitants of French Polynesia’s Reao atoll by a solid 25km. 

After hurtling across about 14,800km of open ocean, your morainic pebble would finally hit the “Polka Peninsula” in Alaska’s Glacier Bay National Park and Preserve — a rocky finger so obscure it may have no recorded history beyond a 1929 US Geodetic Survey cartographer’s fondness for naming triangulation stations after Russian bookshelves. 

Washington to Beijing: We’re coming. With our one Antarctic icebreaker and possibly zero backup, which may be busy dropping pemmican for America’s last climate scientists on the other side of the world.

Beijing to Washington: Good luck. May the wind be at your back.  

Roulette with the penguin that lays the golden egg

The US State Department; House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform; as well as various Senate committees on armed services, appropriations and foreign relations did not respond to detailed repeat questions within 72 hours.  

But this month, lawmakers told US President Donald Trump’s number-crunchers that science equals power at the South Pole, so they’re rethinking 2026 polar cuts. Having now assumed the reins in Antarctic science, Beijing may be running victory laps in the world’s coldest lab, yet it’s still unclear if Congress will reverse plans to gut polar field research funds by 70% and sink the contract of its only support icebreaker, the National B. Palmer.

At least Washington — if those abstruse minutes are anything to go by — didn’t block emperor penguin protections. 

Beijing — followed by Moscow — had hatched the blueprint back in 2022, once again scrambling any hopes in Milan of protecting Antarctica’s most iconic tourism ambassadors by consensus. 

And, so, another year ticked by in which some parties tried doing good things for Antarctica. 

Others — such as Beijing, Moscow and Washington — apparently less so. 

There may now be a light at the end of the tunnel in the form of a new “transparency” campaign led by The Hague, supported by Canberra and Seoul. 

The idea is to hold press conferences and broaden the ATCM’s tight circle of invitation-only guests. Pretoria says it backs this. 

But as Daily Maverick revealed this month, the ATCM’s opening “spotlight” sessions may have been illegally shuttered since 1961. Despite the transparency campaign, no state seems willing to admit it may have broken the meeting’s most basic transparency law. 

“Some parties also observed that the current rules of procedure already ensure transparency,” the report insisted — even if “many parties” feared the “unintended impact of increased publicity”. DM