Looking South--Australia's Antarctic Agenda.

Taylor, Neil

Looking South--Australia's Antarctic Agenda. Edited by Lorne K. Kriwoken, Julia Jabour and Alan D Hemmings. Annandale, New South Wales: The Federation Press, November 2007, 227 pp. ISBN: 978 186287 6576

Looking South--Australia's Antarctic Agenda represents an extremely comprehensive and well-written overview of Australia's activities and agenda in the Antarctic region since 1933. In that year, Australia laid claim to 42% of the Antarctic continent, a continent that represents 8% of the total landmass of the planet. Furthermore, Australia has claim over a number of sub Antarctic islands (Macquarie, Head and the McDonald Island) each with significant biodiversity and rich offshore fishing grounds. It is, therefore, not surprising that Australia is an active member of the Antarctic Treaty System.

As the book's authors point out, advances in technology now allow humans to reside all year round on the continent. Furthermore, there is increasing interest in exploiting the various resources that the Antarctic continent has to offer, and a significant level of illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing activities all of which put the fragile ecosystem of the continent under increasing pressure. Unfortunately, as Professor Stuart Harris points out in his foreword to this text, there is limited public understanding of Australia's interests and role in the Antarctic, a major concern for those closely associated with the continent. However, this excellent book offers one way to raise public awareness of Australia's agenda in the Antarctic and the complexities of dealing with a remote continent with vast resource potential administered by multiple sovereign states.

Looking South is an edited book of fourteen chapters covering many of the most pressing issues facing the Antarctic continent and analysing Australia's response to these. In most chapters, recommendations of how Australia's role might develop are offered. The book covers an extremely wide range of issues. The initial chapters explore sovereignty and territorial issues specific to Australia's agenda. There are two chapters on Australia's scientific activities in Antarctica, with specific reference to the continent's value as an indicator of climate change. This is followed by a series of chapters on marine resource exploitation through fishing and whaling and the effect this is having on the ecosystem. This section includes an interesting chapter on the impact of fishing, and particularly long-line fishing, on bird populations and the efforts being taken to reduce "bycatch". There is also a chapter on the emerging challenge of tourism, now the largest commercial activity in the Antarctic. The final chapters examine the impact of globalisation on the continent and provide a glimpse of what the future might hold for Antarctica and for Australia's interests there.

All of the chapters are very clearly written and accessible to a range of readers. As the editors point out in the introduction to the book, because of the diversity of the subject matter from different disciplines that often have specific styles and protocols, the chapters have been edited into a common style and this has added to the clarity with which topics are discussed. Most chapters begin by examining the historical context of the topic, and move on to examine the current situation and Australia's role in that, before outlining how Australia's role might develop in the future. For example, the chapter entitled Net Gain or Net Loss? Australia and Southern Ocean Fishing begins with a short history of how fishing has developed in the region and the nearly disastrous impact of overfishing on various fish stocks by the 1990s. The chapter goes on to discuss the problem of illegal fishing, the various conservation measures that have been adopted and Australia's role in these including the resources that the country has provided to assist in surveillance and inspection of fishing activities, particularly for the high value Patagonian toothfish. This section includes an interesting table of recent seizures by the Australian authorities of vessels fishing illegally; the catch values; the flag state of the vessels; and the fate of the vessel, gear and catch after seizure. The chapter ends by summarising a number of recommendations that should be implemented for Australia to adequately address its future Antarctic fisheries agenda.

Most chapters inevitably deal with the legal issues related to the topic under discussion, but these have been presented clearly and are easy to follow. One possible criticism is a plethora of acronyms in almost every chapter. However, this is a minor criticism of what is an excellent and comprehensive text, and given that most chapters deal with a variety of organisations and polices, many with lengthy titles, this may have been hard to avoid.

This book will prove useful to those teaching upper secondary or tertiary courses in geography, social studies or environmental law, as it offers a number of interesting and well-written case studies. It should be of particular interest to the audience of AJEE and anyone with a concern for the fascinating continent of Antarctica.

Neil Taylor

University of New England