Climate Change, Environment, Global, Global Geopolitics, Headlines, Latin America & the Caribbean

ENVIRONMENT-ARGENTINA: At the Gates of the Polar Year

Marcela Valente* - Tierramérica

USHUAIA, Argentina, Oct 13 2006 (IPS) - On the threshold of the International Polar Year, a global scientific meet has been convened in the southern Argentine province of Tierra del Fuego to raise awareness about the Earth’s polar regions. The capital, Ushuaia, is getting ready to serve as the main gateway to Antarctica.

Since Feb. 28, a virtual clock in Ushuaia has been marking the countdown to the International Polar Year – really a two-year period beginning Mar. 1, 2007 – a global effort to bring the neglected polar regions to centre stage.

In this coastal city, the Andes Mountains seem to fall into the sea, shrinking into small islands until they disappear beneath the Atlantic Ocean.

“Ushuaia’s slogan, ‘the end of the world’, is good for tourism, but in truth we are part of the circumpolar community and the main gateway to Antarctica,” said Daniel Leguizamón, executive secretary of the organising committee for International Polar Year in Tierra del Fuego, financed exclusively by the provincial government.

“With a population of 54,000 residents – migrants from the rest of the country – it is difficult to think that there is anything further south, but we are 3,000 kilometres from Buenos Aires, and Antarctica is just 1,000 kilometres away,” he said in a Tierramérica interview.

“Ninety-two percent of the world’s tourists who go to Antarctica leave from here,” he said. The tour guides aboard the cruise ships that make the trip to the icy continent have received training to disseminate information about the importance of the Polar Year.


The commission Leguizamón heads is made up of government officials, business leaders, scientists, environmentalists, teachers and tour operators. They have been working for months to promote the Polar Year events.

International Polar Year is a global campaign of research and observation at the North and South Poles organised by the International Council for Science and the World Meteorological Organisation. There are some 10,000 researchers from 50 countries involved, including from Argentina, Australia, Brazil, China, New Zealand and Uruguay.

The aim is to determine the current environmental state of the polar regions, measure changes in these areas that are sensitive to global warming, improve the scientific observatories, raise awareness about the interaction of the poles and the rest of the planet, and investigate sustainable traditional processes in circumpolar societies.

The organisers hope to multiply knowledge about these regions and raise public and decision-makers’ awareness about how important their ecosystems are for the life of the entire planet.

“We hope to expand what we know with new and original projects, and leave as a legacy the new observation bases,” Sergio Santillana, science coordinator at the Argentine Antarctic Institute, told Tierramérica.

According to the Institute, Argentina is the Latin American country with most projects presented to the international commission and the most projects accepted.

One of them, to be carried out in cooperation with the United States, is to monitor an ice floe in the Larsen ice shelf. A camera and a weather station were installed, and ultimately will be lost as the floe breaks away and melts as it floats north.

“That simulation will allow us to create models of what could happen in Antarctica if the global temperature keeps rising,” Santillana added. “Argentina is the closest country to the [southern] polar region and it is here where the first consequences of climate change are felt.”

The expert said the changes will not necessarily be disastrous, but he emphasised that the world will have to adapt.

“In the North Pole, with a complete melt predicted for within 50 years, new trade routes could emerge. In the South, the currents will change, and will be less salty with the melted ice, and that will bring changes to the food chain,” he said.

The local scientists with CADIC, the southern science research centre, and the Antarctic Institute are conducting several studies in Antarctica and are involved in at least 30 Polar Year programmes, most in cooperation with other countries.

In addition to the projects Santillana mentioned, there will be monitoring of the ozone layer, censuses to measure the impact of rising temperatures on marine wildlife, and studies of whether ice floes serve to capture climate-changing carbon from the atmosphere.

This Polar Year is the fourth since the late 19th century. The first was between 1882 and 1883. The world had to wait until 1932-1933 for the second. The third, in 1957-1958, was known as the International Geophysical Year and gave rise to the drafting of the 1959 Antarctic Treaty, which halted claims of sovereignty over the continent and committed all nations to its preservation.

“We don’t know what consequences this new Polar Year might have, but undoubtedly there will be some,” said Santillana, venturing the possibility that the treaty, to which Argentina is party, could be revised by the signatory nations.

Ushuaia hopes to serve as the antechamber of the campaigns, which for now tend to be concentrated in the Chilean port of Punta Arenas, even though it is farther away from Antarctica.

“We want to be a nexus for scientists from around the world,” said Leguizamón. That means facilitating logistics for the researchers: airport, seaports, storage, icebreaker ships, fuel, snow equipment, tools, cold-weather apparel and food supplies.

“The Polar Year needs a point of support in Ushuaia, and we want to be part of it. It is an endeavor that reinforces our identity as a polar community,” said Leguizamón.

(*Marcela Valente is an IPS correspondent. Originally published Sep. 23 by Latin American newspapers that are part of the Tierramérica network. Tierramérica is a specialised news service produced by IPS with the backing of the United Nations Development Programme and the United Nations Environment Programme.)

 
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