Legal and political issues in Antarctica: celebrating 80 years since the delimitation of Chilean Antarctic Territory and the New Chilean Antarctic Law

Abstract

implementation of the CCRWP, which in turn is evidence of the importance of communication between scientists and policymakers to identify the governance and management actions needed to prepare for the climate change impacts in the Antarctic region. The final presentation, by Neil Gilbert, started with the idea of a gap existing between the faster-paced issues and volume of research on Antarctica and the slower-paced decisionmaking process, which the Antarctic Environments Portal was designed to fill. It was explained that, while the external face of the Portal is expressed in the website itself, the inner face is a complex process to offer good, reliable and up-to-date information that raises awareness on current and emerging issues, expressed in so-called ‘information summaries’. This is achieved by receiving community-wide suggestions on topics, using peer-reviewed articles by selected experts, having the Editorial Group review them to ensure that the information is expressed in a way that is likely to have a maximum effect and both making it available to the general public and returning to the experts to keep the information updated. The process takes thus a circular, cyclic shape. The speaker further explained that content management plans have been put in place, in order to encourage the engagement of the user community, providing the Editorial Group with valuable feedback. The round of questions and answers largely focused on the views and experiences of the speakers on the role that lawyers play and the nexus that exists (or should exist) between Law, Science and Policy. The speakers gave an account of lawyers’ valuable participation within the ATS, however, mainly on the ‘decision-making end’. In their view, it would be nonetheless desirable for scientists to have the advice from lawyers to have a broader view of the implications of their advice to policy-makers and know what is (legally) feasible, thus using their limited resources more efficiently. Action Group on PoLSciNex will enter its third and final year in 2021 of its three-year research period. It will utilise the opportunity at the biennial academic conference of SCAR SC-HASS to be held at Kobe University, Japan, in November 2021, to organise a final workshop to highlight the project’s achievements.