Research On The Legal Issues Regarding Antarctic Tourism Under The Framework Of International Law

The Antarctic continent contains rich nature resources with unique natural landscape.The extreme natural environment makes the Antarctic the latest continent on earth that was found and explored by human beings.In recent years,along with the improvement of scientific and technological conditions and the need of citizens' consumption,Antarctic tourism is welcomed by people.More and more tourists choose Antarctic as their destination.The rapid growth in the tourists' number to the Antarctic also motivated the creation of International Association of Antarctica Tour Operators and some relevant international autonomous organizations.Meanwhile,Antarctic tourism is also regulated by the 1959 Antarctic Treaty,the 1991 Protocol on Environmental Protection to the Antarctic Treaty and related Protocols.However,the provisions of these treaties regarding the Antarctic tourism issues are still incomplete which lead to a deficiency of law enforcement rights.Also,those provisions are usually not enforceable by law.Currently,domestic researches are limited to the tourism planning and tourism management.Scholars tend to introduce status and prospects of Antarctic tourism in most cases.Analysis on the construction of the legal norms is still inadequate.Therefore,this research is based on the international legal issues faced by Antarctic tourism.With analysis on the current situation and related legal issues of Antarctic tourism,this research firstly manage to explore the impact of human activities on Antarctic ecology and ways to regulate Antarctic tourism under the current framework of international law.Then this research analyses the legal framework and administrative body of Australia,British and Chile in order to gain experiences for China.All of these three countries are parties to the 1959 Antarctic Treaty and they used propose sovereignty claims over the Antarctic.Therefore,these three countries had built up a commanding lead in the field of Antarctic exploration and Antarctic tourism management.Finally,this research analyses the necessity of developing Antarctic tourism in China and propose suggestions to China'construction of legal system about Antarctic tourism in terms of legal principles,specific law systems,and Antarctic Tourism Law.