The Antarctic Minerals Convention (CRAMRA)

Resumen

Once the in-principle decision was made that minerals activity in Antarctica was a legitimate activity and would be permitted, debates among the consultative parties in the 1970s had focused on how to define their collective interests. The principles adopted as the basis for a minerals regime were designed to ensure that those collective interests would be met, consultative party authority over Antarctic decision-making reinforced and the regime maintained. However, in spite of agreement on principles, there was little insight into the terms of the constitutional contract that would regulate minerals activity. In other words, as Young describes the process of institutional bargaining, ‘the range of feasible options and the outcomes associated with these options [were not] well-defined at the outset’ (1990b, p. 4). Nevertheless, as Bilder notes (1982, p. 199), the consultative parties had a ‘strong mutual interest in reaching an agreed and orderly solution to the issue of mineral resources’. They were jointly agreed on the outcome they wished to avoid (conflict and the demise of the Treaty system) but there was no common agreement on the outcome they preferred.