WP4: PhD Groningen

Objectives

This WP focuses on the identification of possible response strategies, including spatial strategies, to prevent or minimise future cumulative impacts on biodiversity and wilderness values by human visitation. Such strategies may include improvement of cumulative impact assessment in Environmental Impact Assessment, open access in combination with the closure of areas, closure of regions and allow only access to certain areas, open access with regional or site-specific caps of visitor numbers, as well as combinations of these options. During the first two years of the project, these strategies will be developed theoretically (Leung 1999, 2016), using inspiration from spatial planning of tourism in the Svalbard (Norway). During the third and fourth years of the project, these strategies will be interconnected with work in progress and outcomes of WP1, WP2 and WP3 to try to identify the most promising strategies for the Antarctic, including the option to combine components of various strategies and applying different strategies for different regions or sites. In the fourth year of the project, attention will focus on the identification and development of legal tools to implement the most promising strategies. These legal tools may be soft- and/or hard law instruments of the ATCM, tools applied by the tourism sector (IAATO) or a combination of tools in both regulatory systems. In developing these tools and designing possible promising combinations of instruments, the stronger and weaker characteristics of the ATCM and self-regulatory systems will be taken into account (e.g., the risk of not reaching consensus in the ATCM, the risk of driving operators out of IAATO if strategies are considered too restrictive and ‘free-rider’ problems in both systems (activities from non-Party states and/or non-IAATO members).

Methodology

The theoretical elaboration of strategies (year 1 and 2) is based on desk-study and a case study relating to Svalbard. Support for the case study will be established by cooperation with the Norwegian Polar Institute (Birgit Njastad). The connection of this theory with findings from the previous WPs and the translation to legal tools is partly based on desk study (Antarctic Treaty System and IAATO) and partly on co-production with cooperation partners and stakeholders (see below).

Productive interactions (co-design and co-creation)

Consortium partners and stakeholders are important for this WP to contribute ideas about theoretical strategies and the translation of insights from WP1,2 and 3 into (legal) tools in ATS and IAATO. The direct and long-standing contacts between the applicants and the consortium partners make regular informal coordination the most suitable approach. The co-production on this issue is of relevance for most partners, but particularly for IAATO, SCAR Ant-TAG and the Ministry of IenW.

To strengthen the research-policy interface, apart from regular bilateral meetings an annual meeting prior to the CEP and ATCM and an annual meeting after the CEP and ATCM will be organised to discuss outcomes and possible alignments between the program and policy discussions. In the last year of the program, an international symposium with researchers, stakeholders and policymakers will be organised to discuss outcomes of the program, with the aim to translate results of the program into concrete proposals for consideration by the CEP and ATCM. The Ministry of IenW is particularly keen to enable this as the Netherlands will chair the ATCM in 2028, which is a realistic target timing for making concrete steps in policy making. Cooperation with the Ministry, IAATO and SCAR is therefore of particular important throughout the implementation of WP4 and particularly in the last two years.