South Africa's environment minister elevates Antarctica as a ‘national priority'

Daily Maverick

7 hours ago

Dion George says he is taking a big, bold step — putting the wild, frigid seventh continent at the heart of the country's agenda: 'It would be extremely short-sighted if we did not pay attention to it.'
South Africa has maintained a presence on Earth's southern frontier since becoming the second country to ratify the Antarctic Treaty — symbolically, it did so during the 1960 winter solstice.
This year, the country celebrates seven decades since the South African meteorologist Hannes la Grange became the first African to set a snow boot on Antarctic ice as part of the seminal Commonwealth Trans-Antarctic Expedition.
In 2028, another date beckons: Seventy years since South Africa, through La Grange, reached the South Pole.
Political leadership has rarely afforded the region more than nominal attention.
That will change under his tenure, says Minister Dion George of the Department of Forestry, Fisheries and the Environment.
'I am the head of the South African National Antarctic Programme,' George told Daily Maverick on a ministerial demonstration cruise aboard the SA Agulhas II from Durban to Cape Town in May.
That is a statement no previous DFFE minister has made.
'I set the tone, I set the direction, I lead the charge,' he says.
Antarctica has been promoted to one of three special projects within his office, alongside carbon credits and anti-poaching. '[Antarctica] has fallen a bit behind, so I thought we need to speed up there,' he says. 'It would be extremely, extremely short-sighted of South Africa if we did not pay attention to it.'
Pretoria's envoy scoops leadership role at treaty talks
In recent years, South Africa's Antarctic diplomatic performance has lacked imagination and leadership.
The Antarctic Treaty Consultative Meeting (ATCM) typically receives hundreds of discussion papers submitted by the 29 consultative (decision-making) states, which are tasked with governing Antarctica for peaceful activities like tourism and science.
Under George's predecessor, Barbara Creecy, the taxpayer-funded South African delegation submitted no independent discussion papers to the 2023 ATCM in Helsinki, Finland, or the 2024 ATCM in Kochi, India.
George received the baton in June 2024 and acknowledges these failures but promises change at the ATCM now underway in Milan, Italy.
The South African delegation already seems to have done something right at the 10-day meeting which ends Thursday, 3 July. Last week, Romi Brammer, a legal adviser in the Department of International Relations and Cooperation, was elected to chair the ATCM's legal negotiations.
The treaty is a benchmark diplomatic and scientific achievement. But this year, the ATCM faces an anniversary it is not likely to mark too publicly: 20 years since adopting an annex to assign responsibility for environmental disasters, which has yet to enter into force.
It is now up to the likes of Brammer to negotiate progress on this matter and others retarded by the glacially turning wheels of Antarctic consensus (everyone must agree before anything becomes policy).
Quick! The office is melting
The DFFE and Birdlife South Africa have spent several years raising funds to tackle what they bill as history's largest mouse-eradication effort on any island — they need to raise at least $30-million to save Marion's albatrosses and other seabirds from all being eaten alive by the invasive rodents.
Donors include South African billionaire Mark Shuttleworth, but anyone can still pitch in.
'Climate change is a sensitive biosecurity issue,' says George, citing deadly avian flu and mouse infestations at Marion Island, South Africa's sub-Antarctic research station, as bellwethers.
Scientists told Daily Maverick that George and his staff had to streamline fragmented Antarctic management across several government departments — a project that Ashley Johnson, South Africa's lead negotiator in Milan, says he has taken on.
And then there are the infrastructure humdingers uncovered by Daily Maverick in April, such as Marion's failed generators, which have since been replaced.
Antarctica is, basically, a giant melting office.
For that reason, George says the fleet of polar tracked vehicles must be replaced and supported by up-to-date scanning technology to avoid 'a whole piece of ice that's going to collapse underneath you'.
But wait — how about the eructing elephant seal in the room?
South Africa may want multilateral cooperation in Antarctica — but not everyone seems to be playing nice.
Russia has been looking for oil and gas at least since the Antarctic mining ban entered into force in 1998 — and it uses Cape Town for logistics.
In February 2020, for instance, it issued a bombshell statement from Table Bay harbour saying that it had found '70 billion tons' of Southern Ocean fossil fuels — enough to power the planet for 15 years.
Russia calls it 'science'. Some experts call it 'prospecting'.
And London might call it shopping.
A recent Westminster inquiry, which released its findings in June, stopped just short of dropping the P-word, but politely raised an eyebrow: Moscow's surveys 'cast doubt on compliance with the Protocol's prohibition and risk undermining its authority', the findings say.
'You're not supposed to go and mine in Antarctica — so why are you looking for oil and gas?' George volunteered. 'When it's cold and you can't go there, it's very easy to say, 'Oh no, we're not going to mine, we're not going to do anything there; we're just going to leave it alone.'
'But when it becomes a commodity, when it becomes a valuable piece of land, for example, the behaviour may well start to change.'
At the Copenhagen-hosted ministerial climate meeting in May, George held discussions with Greenland and was struck by the changes in polar currents and ice caps. The more they melt, the more accessible they become.
'Maybe there will be a mad scramble for Antarctica,' he says, 'but I think there has to be some kind of order. You can't just have absolute chaos … Antarctica is a rich asset. The agreement must hold — that we all agree you don't go mining; the region must remain a non-militarised zone, even when it is accessible.'
What does South Africa actually stand for?
Even cautious commentators have started to fear that the US under Donald Trump may withdraw from the treaty to claim and mine Antarctica.
Russia, like the US, has historically maintained a basis to claim parts or all of Antarctica. They cannot do so as long as the treaty lasts (or if they remain signatories).
In the period between the world wars, the Union of South Africa did attempt to make some sort of half-hearted claim but botched it in a diplomatic comedy of errors.
However, South Africa's 2021 Antarctic strategy rejects the idea of territorial claims — a marked contrast to seven of the treaty's 12 consultative founding parties. Argentina, Australia, Chile, France, New Zealand, Norway and the UK have staked vast territorial claims that are frozen by the treaty and that most of the world does not recognise.
'We did not make a claim because we don't believe you can,' George says. 'That's the position we take…
'South Africa's position is that we're non-aligned,' he says. 'We have South African interests that we must look after — and we don't get told who we befriend. We're friends with everyone.'
This balancing act between BRICS states and the West is what gives South Africa its moral authority in Antarctic diplomacy, he argues.
'When I became a new minister and travelled a lot for the climate, every single country we came across wanted to have a bilateral. The reason is that the voice of South Africa matters…
'When you're looking for the voice of reason, often it's us.'
That may be so, but George's Democratic Alliance opposition party is on record as vocally condemning Russia's full-scale illegal invasion of Ukraine as well as ' Russian energy prospecting in Antarctica '. Now it is walking a tightrope of tenuous moral ambiguity in a coalition government that has taken Israel to court over atrocities in Gaza, but has hardly squared up to Moscow in a similar fashion.
Still, President Cyril Ramaphosa received President Volodymyr Zelensky in April. Both the Russian and Ukrainian fleets use Cape Town as their logistical transit to Antarctica.
In George's view, a collaborative ethos defines the Antarctic community. 'It's harsh, it is cold — and if somebody got into difficulty, of course we're going to help.'
George says he has also opened diplomatic conversations with China about establishing a marine protected area to the north of South Africa's East Antarctic base — an initiative that has stalled for years due to Beijing and Moscow's opposition.
'I have disagreed with China on a number of things,' he reveals. 'We want the marine reserve. We know what we want and we are clear.'
George's Antarctic coup
While Pretoria has maintained an unbroken commitment to its treaty obligations throughout the country's political turmoil, its focus has been operational rather than diplomatic.
If George actually succeeds in shaping a revitalised Antarctic policy — one that reflects both science and statecraft — South Africa may finally claim a seat as a leading voice for the Global South on the coldest continent.
'Antarctica was not on the radar when I stepped into the department. It is now,' says the minister, who inserted Antarctica into the 2024-29 national medium-term development plan during a Cabinet lekgotla in January.
Because we are jaded journalists, we asked his department for proof.
Scrutinising the document sent to us, we found George's coup: there, on page 138, sandwiched between sections called 'Increased feelings of safety of women and children in communities' and 'secured cyber space', we spotted the actual frozen continent.
Together with wildlife trafficking, George had struck a coup for a place that, to many, seems very far from the national agenda. Here, he had managed to nudge 'strengthened protection and sustainable management of Antarctica' as a priority into the section dedicated to 'effective border security'.
In a country of immense social need, South Africa's Antarctic investments may be questioned by some, says George.
'They say, 'Let's rather spend the money on something else. In my opinion, it makes no sense to do that.'
'We are the only African country in Antarctica,' he says.
As geopolitical posturing rises, South Africa has to be ready, he adds — singling out China's plans to build a sixth station, as well as Iran, which last year suggested a desire to join the treaty.
'If you drew the line down from Iran, you would actually bump into Antarctica. There's nothing in between.
'Yup,' he smiles. 'I read up about that.'
George had planned to travel to Sanae IV earlier this year, but scheduling conflicts intervened. 'I do intend to do that as soon as the weather permits.' DM