Environnementaliste • Australie
Il faut d’urgence inscrire le continent antarctique sur la liste du Patrimoine mondial de l’Unesco
Dr. Geoff Mosley is a conservationist who served as CEO of the Australian Conservation Foundation (ACF) from 1973 to 1986 and Regional Councillor of IUCN from 1981 to 1988. He has been the Coordinator of People for an Antarctic World Park since 1987. He is the author of several books on Antarctica including Antarctica Our Last Great Wilderness (1986) and Saving the Antarctic Wilderness (2009). Honours received in recognition of his conservation work include membership of the Order of Australia and the 2008 World Environment Day Award of the United Nations Association of Australia.
I first became involved with Antarctica’s future when in 1974 a number of Antarctic scientists asked me as Director of the Australian Conservation Foundation (ACF) for our help in protecting Antarctica. This was a personal ‘natural’ since I had long ago developed an interest in polar areas through travel in northern Noway, Finland and Alaska. With Australia having a major interest in Antarctica it seemed that there was a lot we could do. The outcome was two major policy decisions taken by the ACF. The first (in August, 1975) was that Antarctica should be preserved as wilderness free of all mineral activity and the second (in March, 1979) was to urge the Antarctic Treaty powers to give effect to this aim by supporting a course of action which would lead to the inclusion of the entire Antarctic continent on the World Heritage List. These have two policy objectives have guided our actions ever since. ACF with the help of a mobilised Australian public played a pivotal role in persuading the Australian Government to veto the Minerals Convention and then work for an indefinite ban on mining instead of the moratorium which some nations were supporting. The outcome was of course the first step of the Madrid Protocol of October, 1991. The achievement of World Heritage listing remains our main goal. The exclusion from consideration of what is arguably the single most important part of the world’s natural heritage is a huge and totally unjustifiable hole in the Convention and must be fixed. It remains our duty to not only explain the importance of the Antarctic natural systems to the whole world but to also show the great potential that this step would have for inspiring other significant and much needed forms of international cooperation in environmental protection.
Geoff Mosley, Décembre 2011