Study On The Current Situation And Influencing Factors Of Antarctic Special Protected Areas

"Antarctic Treaty" has frozen the territorial claims of all countries. However, it cannot stop their participation in Antarctic affairs. Since the year of1966, the consultative parties have established specially protected areas there in succession. The Madrid Protocol has brought the system of specially protected areas in Antarctic into a new era of development. Not only the various kinds of protected areas which had been established before were renamed Antarctic Specially Protected Areas, but also the new system set more protection goals, including ecological and environmental values, scientific research values, historic values, aesthetic values, wilderness values, and so on. All these values compose a new Antarctic environmental value system.This thesis will try to analyze the status and effect factors of ASPAs. In regard to the development status, Antarctic Specially Protected Areas have undoubtedly achieved remarkable results. Meanwhile, there are also several essential problems which need to be resolved. For instance, there are large gaps between various countries in terms of establishing special protected areas, and so on.During the development of Antarctic Specially Protected Areas, there have been some favorable factors which put forward the process. They include all the rules that aim at protecting Antarctic environment and resources, development of global governance, active participation of non-government organizations and inter-governmental cooperation. In a word, all these factors mentioned above have greatly accelerated the development of the Antarctic Specially Protected Areas. However, there are also some counterproductive factors. For instance, the defects of rules, the closure of the Antarctic Treaty system, unbalance between scientific exploration and environmental protection, and so on.In order to put forward the development of Antarctic Specially Protected Areas, all governments should try to eliminate the influences of these restriction factors. The last part of this thesis focuses on the future of Antarctic Specially Protected Areas while giving four suggestions on how to improve the system.