News Stories
Antarctica could be granted legal personhood for protection, giving the continent legal standing in a world that only listens to those with legal rights. However, environmental lawyer Lesai Seema, who serves as a working group member of the Antarctic Rights initiative, interestingly argues that personhood is not an end in itself but rather a tool attached to something much bigger - the need for structural reform. Antarctica's current governance system uses reactive governance that treats the continent as a static political space rather than the dynamic physical system it actually is.
The Antarctic Treaty System has historically worked by waiting for problems to emerge like overfishing or unregulated sealing, then creating new regulations, but this approach is too slow for Antarctica's rapid transformations. The real issue is the governance gap between identifying crises and implementing responses.
Protecting Antarctica requires adaptive governance structures that can incorporate new scientific understanding and respond in real-time to the continent's changes, rather than constantly dismantling and rebuilding regulatory frameworks.
Access the article HERE and find additional information on the topic in the two press articles on legal personhood of Antarctica and Antarctica having rights.
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