Environmental Protection in Antarctica: Drawing Lessons from the CCAMLR Model for the Implementation of the Madrid Protocol

The aims of this article are, first, to analyze the institutional and implementation issues of the 1980 Convention on the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources (CCAMLR); and, second, to analyze CCAMLR as a precedent within the Antarctic Treaty System and to draw lessons from the CCAMLR model for the implementation of the 1991 Protocol on Environmental Protection to the Antarctic Treaty (the Madrid Protocol). A comparative analysis of the two regimes suggests the need for the institutional development of the Committee for Environmental Protection created by the Madrid Protocol and considers the relevance of using Geographic Information Systems (GIS) as a decision-support tool in this context.