Science vs the Environment

Extract

The Environmental Protocol to the Antarctic Treaty is rapidly approaching ratification, and nations which have now signed it see the Protocol as a signal for considerable future debate, if not scrutiny. Everyone has begun to implement, at least in spirit, many of its requirements which are now beginning to have an effect on science on the continent. This is currently evident in at least four different ways:

1. a reallocation of funding from pure science, to �applied� science relating to human impacts,

2. an increase in funding to allow for studies of human impact and the meeting of Protocol obligations,

3. a reassessment by the science community on what can be done with minimal impact, and

4. an imposition on the science community of rules and codes which will restrict many types of scientific work that have been carried out in the past, and will force modifications of future work.

Because all science on the continent (as opposed too remote sensing from space) will have an impactthere will have to be tradeoffs between the benefit to science and the impact of doing the work. We can only evaluate impacts on those areas of science that we know about at present. The problem is that there will be future, presently unknown areas of science that may be compromised by operations currently considered �safe�. Who knows, for instance, what viruses we are inadvertently spreading and what the importance of these will be in future studies? At present the effects of these organisms are difficult to measure but studies on the role of viruses in natural ecosystems are increasing as technology expands.