Antarctica, the sanctuary continent

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The scientific research vessel “Tara” in the Weddell Sea. Tara Ocean for Figaro Magazine

THE VICTORIES OF ECOLOGY (6/6) – In 1961, in the midst of the Cold War and well before the awakening of Western ecological consciousness, the unprecedented geopolitical treaty on Antarctica laid the foundations for a sanctuarization of the sixth continent – the environmental aspect of which would be reinforced thirty years later thanks to the protocol from Madrid.

“That’s the Russians.” The driver of our minibus points to the small wooden Orthodox church next to the Bellingshausen scientific base. “And there are the Chinese. And opposite, over there, the Koreans. And then there are also the Brazilians, the Colombians, the Peruvians… and the Poles.” A strange diplomatic Spanish inn awaiting the visitor on King George Island, in South Shetland. We set foot on the black and rocky ground of this piece of rock piercing the waves of the Southern Ocean after a short flight from Punta Arenas, Chile. The Chileans, too, have a base on this landmass that delineates Drake’s Passage to the south.

The atmosphere that reigns on King George Island, or KGI for short, is more or less that which one would imagine for the future and first human colony on Mars: a desert horizon bristling with large antennas, a few radomes, and dotted with buildings rudimentary with walls painted in bright colors…

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