Organising Polar Science: Canada’s Emerging Antarctic Interests

Summary

Recent concerns over climate change and the politics of conservation in Antarctica have ensured that the continent remains firmly at the centre of global debate over environmental and resource management. From the perspective of international relations and critical geopolitics, this poster reports on research that is examining the development of Canada’s interests in establishing and organizing an Antarctic scientific research program and its efforts to consolidate it on a national scale.The research takes, as a point of departure, the analysis of how governments have responded in organizational terms, through their national Antarctic operating agencies, to the shifting physical, environmental and geopolitical challenges of Antarctica. It considers Canada’s interests in Antarctica with reference to its recent Northern Strategy and political moves to assert and affirm internationally that it is an Arctic nation. In particular, the poster will show how the research places Canada’s emerging polar science interests in comparative perspective and explores how the organisational approaches to polar science taken by Canada and the United Kingdom reflect each country’s levels of scientific sophistication as well as their political and scientific involvement in the continent. It further investigates the proposition that long-term national Antarctic programs need to develop within the broader context of a nation’s science and technology policy.Science, it is argued, is not merely ‘knowledge’ but practical activity, and how science is carried out in practice is not necessarily determined by its own logic of scientific curiosity but by numerous factors, including national priorities and social and political institutions.Yet my research also argues that the display of ‘power’ in Antarctica is increasingly defined by a country’s scientific and technological capabilities. Antarctic science not only supports political ends, like permanent occupation, but is increasingly being used as a ‘knowledge tool’ for the protection of the polar environment.

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