Doctoral Dissertation Research: Governance of Antarctic Bioprospecting: Scientific Contribution to the Geopolitics of Property and Territory

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The scientific search for extractable and profitable properties from biota (bioprospecting) in Antarctica challenges long-held assumptions that property rights are nested within territorial states because both conventional state sovereignty and property rights are absent from the continent. The area is instead governed as an international space by the Antarctic Treaty System (ATS), which incorporates scientific input into its governance. The absence of clear regulations regarding intellectual property rights has made a number of bioprospectors nervous about the legitimacy of their claims to research conducted in Antarctica, and has built up pressure for the ATS to provide clear rules for bioprospecting activities. This project asks three primary questions: 1) How do Antarctic scientists engaged in the governance of bioprospecting legitimize it? 2) Are the scientists involved able to reform Antarctic governance or are they more constrained by it? 3) What non-conventional relationships between property and territory does this reveal? To identify the groups involved in this decision-making process, their standpoints, their relative power, and commercial, scientific, and geopolitical goals, data will be collected through archival research, participant observation at meetings involving Antarctic bioprospecting, and semi-structured interviews with involved actors. Utilizing discourse analysis, different articulations of the relationship between property and territory can be observed. To understand the power relations underlying those articulations by scientists, the research will also use methods of regime analysis from science policy studies, including counterfactual analysis and process tracing. Through this analysis of the negotiation of an Antarctic bioprospecting regime, this study will not only identify the dominant relationship established between property and territory, but seek to understand why others proposed along the way were not incorporated.By observing the active pairing of the concepts of property and territory in a new way, this project brings together the intellectual fields of geopolitics and science policy, which have not been carefully integrated. The broader impact of this research is that it provides insight into how the concepts of property and territory, crucial to political control and power around the world, function differently than might have been assumed before. The research will be shared with the scientists who are involved in university instruction, scientific activity, and policy and who therefore are in a position to influence all of these activities. Not only will this contribute to Antarctic policy, but also more generally to policy regarding bioprospecting, property rights, and geopolitical strategy. Analysis of the complexities of negotiating a regime for governing bioprospecting in Antarctica will also raise general public awareness of scientific activity on this unique continent. As a Doctoral Dissertation Research Improvement grant, this award will also provide support to enable a promising student to establish a strong independent research career.