Britain’s plan to submit a claim to the United Nations to extend its Antarctic territory by a million square km has infuriated environment protection groups.
The claim is one of five territorial requests planned by Britain ahead of a May 2009 deadline and covers a vast area of the seabed around British Antarctica near the south pole, a spokeswoman said.
She said the four other claims would be for Atlantic seabed territory around South Georgia and the Falkland Islands, around Ascension Island, near the Bay of Biscay in the south-west Atlantic, and in the Hatton-Rockall basin off Scotland's coast.
Environmental groups condemned the British designs on vast tracts of the seabed off the coast of Antarctica, with Greenpeace and WWF expressing dismay that the Foreign Office is contemplating possible oil, gas and mineral exploration in the region.
The Guardian newspaper revealed that the Foreign Office is preparing a rights claim to the UN commission on the limits of the continental shelf (CLCS) for 1 million sq km of seabed off the coast of the British Antarctic Territory.
Any claim, it is alleged, could threaten the stability of the 1959 Antarctic Treaty, which froze territorial disputes on the world's least explored continent. Experts fear drilling for oil or gas will disrupt its fragile marine ecology.
Simon Walmsley, head of WWF-UK's marine program, insisted: "There should be no oil or gas exploitation in Antarctica. It's such a fragile habitat. Some of the sea creatures there are killed by a rise in temperature of merely 1.1 degrees Celsius. It would be a body blow for the whole region."
Charlie Kronick, Greenpeace UK's climate change campaign manager, called the move "hugely irresponsible". He said: "It's astonishing that the government is leading the international charge on climate change but also leading the charge for an oil rush ... Antarctica is the last great wilderness and the poles are going to get the hardest hit by climate change.”
（英语点津 Linda 编辑）
About the broadcaster:
Marc Checkley is a freelance journalist and media producer from Auckland, New Zealand. Marc has an eclectic career in the media/arts, most recently working as a radio journalist for NewstalkZB, New Zealand’s leading news radio network, as a feature writer for Travel Inc, New Nutrition Business (UK) and contributor for Mana Magazine and the Sunday Star Times. Marc is also a passionate arts educator and is involved in various media/theatre projects in his native New Zealand and Singapore where he is currently based. Marc joins the China Daily with support from the Asia New Zealand Foundation.
