Dialogue Recording & Synthesis: Antarctica, Planetary Commons at the Heart of our Shared Future

Understanding the world’s most important place through the lens of governance, consciousness, and planetary stewardship

From Passive to Proactive Peace: Antarctica as a site for pre-emptive peace

This Open Dialogue was convened as a direct continuation of last month’s exploration of Indy Johar’s concept of “pre-emptive planetary peace strikes: reframing security”. It explored why Antarctica is a test case for understanding the need for pre-emptive peace efforts at planetary scale. It reflected on new governance tools and legal frameworks and grappled with fundamental questions about consciousness, disenchantment and whether our species can develop the wisdom to steward these commons that sustain all life.

Why Antarctica Matters More Than You Know

The Planet’s Refrigerator and Heartbeat

Andrew Kelly, former CEO of the Antarctic Science Foundation, opened with startling insights into Antarctica as a continent hidden from view. He noted that at “Man’s Role in Changing The Face of the Earth” a week-long conference held at Princeton in 1955 , Antarctica was mentioned exactly once in 1,200 pages of proceedings. Today, The Economist calls it “Earth’s largest refrigerator” and reports that it is “defrosting” – and with it, the stability of our entire planetary system. The numbers are staggering:

• Antarctica is twice the size of Australia, or the size of India and China combined
• It contains 75% of the Earth’s fresh water
• It doubles in size each winter as surrounding seas freeze in what is the largest annual natural process on Earth
• The Southern Ocean around Antarctica absorbs 12% of all human carbon emissions
• Antarctic krill, the foundation species of the entire ecosystem, supports marine life globally

“The Circumpolar Current around the continent represents the heartbeat of our Earth and drives our climate and global ocean systems. When you drop a molecule of water into the Southern Ocean today, it will circulate through every ocean on Earth before returning—a journey that takes 1,000 years”. Andrew Kelly

The Warning Signs Are Accelerating

Kelly highlights the “very straightforward messages” of change happening in Antarctica now that aren’t gradual climate shifts – they are rapid-fire warning shots:

• Sea ice has reached record lows, “reducing that parasol effect of reflecting heat and light back into space.”
• Catastrophic breeding failures occurred in 2023 when ice gave way beneath traditional Emperor penguin breeding grounds, killing 20,000 chicks and eggs in a single season – “a total generation lost across five colonies.”
• The Southern Ocean’s overturning circulation, the Southern Hemisphere’s AMOC, has slowed by about 30% over the last 30 years with knock-on effects for the global climate, populations of fish, and the breeding of krill.
• Most ominously, warm water is now reaching the “grounding line” of major glaciers, including the Thwaites “doomsday glacier.” The Thwaites Glacier is held in place by a plug of ice. Warm water getting underneath the grounding line could release that glacier into the ocean via fracture. Losing just one major ice shelf could raise sea levels by 65 centimetres this century—enough to make vast inhabited coastal areas uninhabitable when combined with storm surges and tides.

These are not just environmental signals—they are early warnings of systemic risk that demand pre-emptive responses at a planetary scale.

The Geopolitical Storm

From Scientific Cooperation to Strategic Competition

Antarctica was supposed to be different. The 1959 Antarctic Treaty was “one of the great achievements of humanity,” setting the continent aside “for peace, science and cooperation.”

“The Treaty can only be changed by unanimous vote… Ever since it was signed, the currency of Antarctica has been science, cooperation, and consensus, and that has created ‘peace’ on the continent. That has been its strength and that has been its weakness.”

For over 60 years, it ‘largely’ worked. Antarctica remains the only continent that has never seen armed conflict. But the pressures are mounting. Kelly surfaced some of the tensions that threaten to unravel Antarctica’s peace:

• Krill fishing: China is rapidly expanding its krill harvesting fleet, partly to feed fish farms necessitated by depleted fish stocks elsewhere. Peter Waring introduced the medical concept of “iatrogenic” – when treatment causes worse problems than the original disease = describing this as an attempt to solve fish stock depletion that creates worse problems for the Antarctic ecosystem. Kely pointed out that even as China was expanding fishing, it should be noted that the majority of krill fishing is currently done by Norway, Korea, China, and Chile. .
• Resource extraction: China, despite not being an original signatory, now operates five research bases. Russia runs ten bases, five year-round. Both nations consistently block marine protection efforts in Antarctic waters. Most concerning, there are growing suspicions that research stations are being used for dual-purpose military surveillance.
• Russia recently completed a “prospecting trawl” and found “significant deposits of oil and gas” despite the well-recognised fact that “there is no good time in human history to start extracting hydrocarbons from Antarctica.”
• Power vacuum: The Trump administration has slashed $60 million in funding for U.S. Antarctic operations, creating a power vacuum just as other nations expand their presence. The only research station at the South Pole is American-run—but for how much longer? “Since Trump’s election, trust in the US has plummeted… combined with aggressive expansion by Russia and China, this is creating tension at the Antarctica treaty consultative meetings.”

These tensions will be on full display at the next Annual Meeting of the Antarctic Treaty parties in Milan, June 23rd through July 3rd, 2025, where signatories and interested parties will “discuss results from the previous year, plans for the upcoming year, and wrestle through issues of protection, governance, and all manner of pressures” facing the continent.

The Failure of Traditional Approaches

Beyond the Rule of Law

Indy Johar, architect, designer, and advocate for “pre-emptive planetary peace strikes,” introduced a disturbing reality: we may have moved beyond the world where international law and treaties can solve planetary-scale problems.

“We’re now reaching locations and geographies in the world which are systemically in a period of accelerated degeneration… and those sites also have a propensity to trigger… a vulnerability to go into a runaway cascade.” (Indy Johar)

At a time where nations operate from “existential theories of survival,” the rule of law only applies when it doesn’t threaten a country’s perceived existence. If a superpower believes accessing Antarctic resources is essential to its survival, what treaty will stop it?

“Once you see that landscape of war and the democratisation of weapons of mass destruction that we’re seeing, they open us up to a future which is not rooted in micro violences, but in runaway violences” (Johar).

From Conservation to Regeneration

Perhaps most sobering. Johar noted that we may already be past the point where simply protecting Antarctica is not enough: “Unfortunately, we may be in a route where we are no longer able to conserve the Antarctic, but we would have to regenerate it and to stabilise it, more than just conserve it.”  This represents a fundamental shift from environmental protection to active planetary life support—requiring not just international cooperation but coordinated intervention to restore damaged systems.

Why We Don’t Act: The Consciousness Dimension

The Fascination-Action Gap

Before exploring new approaches, the conversation grappled with a fundamental question: why do existing frameworks fail to generate sustained action, even when people understand the stakes? Kelly shared a telling observation from his work promoting Antarctic awareness:

“Everybody is interested in Antarctica and fascinated by it, but the fascination is… a mile wide, while the actual technical understanding and know-how of its importance is just barely an inch deep.”

But even deep understanding often fails to translate into action. Kelly identified what he called “modal confusion“—the gap between recognising something as important and knowing how to respond effectively. He noted that often he heard people say “this sounds really important, but why haven’t I heard about this? And then what can I do? Seems like I need to do something, but what exactly?”

Alexis Niki, approaching the issue through narrative and story, described the emotional dimension of this paralysis: “I felt grief, I felt anger, I felt fear, I felt a bit of hope, not a lot, right? I felt like we have to do something. I felt that there’s nothing we can do. And it’s like all the soup that’s churning in me.” She identified the core challenge as

“how do we awaken something in people in small ways… how do we get people a little bit on board with some of the things that we’re talking about, people of all walks of life, people who are not experts, but just how do we tap into how vital this is on a very day to day basis?”

The Attention Crisis as Governance Crisis

Kelly suggests the core problem underlying both individual paralysis and institutional failure:

“We don’t act because we’re distracted, and our attention is all over the place… Beyond that, we’ve got limited capacity to take in anything else….”

This attention crisis isn’t just personal—it affects how institutions and governments prioritise planetary issues. When Kelly explained Antarctica’s importance to Australian ministers, he watched them do “the calculus”:

“This shouldn’t be at 23, this should be right up near the top. And then the political calculus comes in… because they go, ‘Well, there’s no votes down in Antarctica.'”

From Single-Point to Relational Consciousness

The conversation evolved toward profound questions about different modes of consciousness and their implications for planetary stewardship. Johar posed a critical challenge:

“Is there a different way of being, which isn’t about being able to attention on a thing but being able to be behaviourally generative in our relationality with the world in every component? It’s a way of being or becoming, rather than an attention question.”

Kelly, drawing on quantum mechanics, agreed:

“As soon as you get to a single point, as the observer, all meaning falls away. So, quantum mechanics is based on fields of meaning… We are fields of meaning. We make meaning through our relationships and connections.”

Barry Knight contributed research showing that children naturally think in “relational consciousness”—perceiving systems and connections without reducing everything to discrete, measurable components. “They saw everything, and they felt everything, and they were okay with that, because they did not need to go into cognition… We lose it. We have it and we lose it because we are forced into categories.”

This suggests that effective planetary stewardship might require recovering capacities for systemic perception that formal education often diminishes in favour of analytical decomposition.

New Approaches Emerging from Different Ways of Being

Understanding why traditional approaches fail opens space for fundamentally different strategies. The conversation explored three interconnected pathways that embody relational rather than extractive consciousness:

Giving Antarctica Legal Standing and Voice

Apolline Roger from ClientEarth introduced one of the most innovative approaches being developed: giving Antarctica legal personhood. She highlighted that

“We need to move beyond the economic model that sees Antarctica as a resource to be exploited and instead recognise it as a planetary commons essential for human flourishing and survival.”

The Antarctica Rights Coalition, led by figures like Cormac Cullinan, proposes recognising Antarctica as a legal entity capable of representation in international forums.

“The idea is to give personhood to Antarctica, personhood that is close to state personhood… to allow a presence of Antarctica into those international forums which are handling topics other than Antarctica [which affect and are affected by Antarctica].”

This isn’t just symbolic. It could enable:

• Direct litigation against harmful activities
• Standing to participate in climate negotiations
• Legal frameworks for shared international investment in Antarctic regeneration
• A model for governing other planetary commons like the deep seabed and space

Antarctica’s lack of indigenous population makes it unique among rights-of-nature cases, avoiding the complex sovereignty issues that arise elsewhere.

This approach embodies relational consciousness by recognising Antarctica as an active participant in planetary systems rather than a passive resource to be managed by human institutions.

Jean de Pomereu, researcher at the Scott Polar Research Institute and member of the Antarctica Rights working group, offered an important caution about the relationship between rights of nature approaches and existing governance structures:

“The Antarctic Treaty remains the only vehicle through which the international community actually converses and tries to agree on Antarctica, even if it doesn’t always or sufficiently. It is the place where Western nations, European, North American nations, are able to speak about Antarctica, to Russia, China, South Asian nations, etc.”

He emphasised that rights of nature approaches “should not be put in opposition to the Antarctic Treaty but rather be thought of as something that should inform the treaty, or that should feed the treaty, rather than be in opposition to it.” His warning was stark: “In trying to reach something better, you might throw out the baby with the bath water.”

Linda Sheehan, representing a California-based philanthropy and working in rights of nature for 15 years, emphasised the broader strategic potential of the Antarctica case:

“I think all of this does create a really wonderful opportunity… to create new models of diplomacy that we might be able to then extend to other areas.” She sees Antarctica as part of a larger category of “shared areas like the deep seabed, space, the high seas, Antarctica, areas where we can create new models of diplomacy that we might be able to then extend to other areas.”

The Strategic Role of Middle Powers

One of the most intriguing insights involved recognising how global power dynamics are shifting away from superpower dominance. As Johar noted:

“Maybe planetary leadership will come from the middle powers… their ability to do third party interventions is greater than it’s ever been.”

Middle powers—countries like Canada, Australia, Norway, South Korea, or Brazil—have significant influence but lack the hegemonic ambitions of superpowers. They also face substantial risks from Antarctic collapse without having the military or economic power to simply seize resources unilaterally.

“How do we convene an alliance of middle powers, which don’t have the autocracy to rule the world, but do have the risks and liabilities of entanglements? [This coalition could potentially] hold the three Superpowers in check and invite them to be their better selves.”

Kelly provided concrete evidence for this shift:

“A trivia quiz question… who is the most recent addition to the Antarctic Treaty System… Saudi Arabia.” When regional powers like Saudi Arabia join Antarctic governance, “you can then start to move other geopolitical tiles.”

Middle powers may be more capable of the relational thinking necessary for planetary stewardship because they’re embedded in webs of interdependence rather than driven by dreams of total control.

Antarctica as Planetary Parliament

Perhaps most visionary was Johar’s suggestion that Antarctica itself could become “the location of the new planetary parliament, a landscape for planetary conversations” precisely because of its neutral, planetary-scale significance.

“Maybe Antarctica is where the new UN will be born. It won’t be born in New York or in London… they’ll be born somewhere where it has a planetary scale inference.”

This embodies the deep time perspective that Antarctica naturally evokes—governance oriented toward geological rather than electoral timescales.

From Disenchantment to Planetary Stewardship

Learning from Antarctica’s Deep Time

Kelly shared a transformative insight from his Antarctic experience that connects consciousness to governance:

“When one goes to Antarctica, one is left with a sense of deep time… the glaciers… move at 200 meters per year. Everything moves slow, but it moves with intention. That deep time is not part of our model.”

Yet we urgently need that perspective:

“We live in an age now of consequences. We live in a moment where our elites do understand, though they may not outwardly admit, that our economic model is at war with life on Earth.”

The “age of consequences” means “all of these bad cheques are starting to bounce and fall due.” But deep time perspective offers a different framework—one where “human flourishing has got to be the end game.”

The Disenchanted Elite and Re-enchantment

Kelly shared a disturbing insight about current leadership:

“It’s a big mistake we make, as a society, to think that politicians, business leaders or public figures offer solutions to the problems we face that are designed to end in widespread human flourishing.” [Worse], “part of the narrative, certainly from the tech bro arena in the US, is that they have largely given up on the world… These ideas of terraforming Mars are just like where we’re dealing with Earth as a second-hand car, and we’ll go and get something new.”

This represents “a total disenchantment with the world,” treating Earth as disposable rather than irreplaceable.

But Johar offered hope about our current moment:

“Maybe that disenchantment is a function of the Copernicus revolution, that we disenchanted ourselves with our own selves to the point that we… became marginal to our own selves. We might be approaching a fundamental shift: I think it’s something beautiful starting to happen where we shift the Copernican problem and de-Copernicise our worldview as we put consciousness at the centre of the universe, as opposed to at the periphery of everything else. Instead of seeing ourselves as insignificant observers of a mechanical universe, we could recognise that “we have 8.5 billion plus… trillions more of micro consciousnesses that have beat fuels to make the planet self-aware, and now we’re able to create synthetic quasi consciousnesses.”

The Intimacy of Distance: What This Means for All of Us

Beyond Individual Action

The conversation revealed why individual actions like recycling or buying electric cars, while important, miss the scale of what’s needed. As Kelly bluntly stated: “When people said, ‘Well, how do we save Antarctica?’… oh, well, we need to recycle, and we need renewables. We need electric cars. I mean that none of that is going to save Antarctica.” Instead, what’s needed includes:

• New forms of legal standing and representation for planetary systems
• Middle power coalitions that can constrain superpower competition
• Civic litigation funds that can challenge harmful activities legally
• Consciousness practices that develop relational rather than extractive ways of being
• Deep time perspectives that prioritise human flourishing over short-term optimisation
• Story and narrative work that helps people understand their intimate connection to planetary systems

The Hidden Intimacy

Perhaps most importantly, the conversation revealed that Antarctica isn’t actually distant from our daily lives. As Kelly explained about Australia:

“When it’s hot in Antarctica, we get driving rains and floods in Australia. When it’s cold in Antarctica, we get bush fires and droughts. Because we live on a fulcrum with Antarctica, a symbiotic relationship.”

This intimate connection exists globally – we just don’t see it in Australia. The krill that feed Antarctic whales also support fish populations worldwide. The ocean circulation that begins in Antarctica delivers nutrients and regulates temperatures everywhere. The carbon absorbed by the Southern Ocean affects atmospheric composition globally.

“It’s a big globe, but it’s actually a very, very small world.”

The Path Forward: Immediate Actions, Deeper Transformations

Concrete Next Steps

The participants identified several possibilities for immediate actions:

• Legal Innovation: Advance Antarctica rights recognition through willing nations
• Coalition Building: Convene middle powers around Antarctic protection
• Civic Engagement: Create litigation funds and awareness campaigns
• Narrative Work: Bridge the gap between fascination and deep understanding
• Governance Innovation: Explore Antarctica as a model for planetary governance

Louis Klein emphasised that beneath all these institutional innovations lies a fundamental need for “a resilient and regenerative civil society.” He asked: “How can we in civil society support each other in an existential [way]… how can we be with each other in this, to strengthen, to connect, co-reflect, grow resilience and regeneration?” This points to the importance of civil society networks that can sustain long-term engagement with planetary-scale challenges.

The Consciousness Shifts Required

But perhaps more important are the deeper transformations the conversation pointed toward:

• Moving from single-point optimisation to relational thinking
• Developing comfort with “not knowing” as a foundation for care and tenderness
• Recovering deep time perspectives that prioritise long-term flourishing
• Recognising consciousness as central rather than peripheral to the universe
• Treating planetary systems as entities with rights and agency

The Urgency of Creative Doubt

As the conversation drew to a close, Indy Johar reflected on the value of the uncertainty they had collectively explored:

“I appreciate these are not certainties, but I really like the fact that we are creating our own doubts, and maybe the doubts and breaking some of the world views that we’ve all lived in and thereby opening up space for new forms of exploration in that pathway of the future.”

Barry Knight built on this insight, noting: “Doubts actually are precondition of creativity, because if you’re not doubting anything, you’re never going to be creative.”

The conversation created space for productive doubt about current approaches while opening new possibilities. As Linda Sheehan noted, quoting Milton Friedman: “Only a crisis—actual or perceived—produces real change.” We are certainly in such a crisis.

But as Alexis Niki observed: “It feels like we have to do something. I felt that there’s nothing we can do.” The challenge is moving through that paralysis to action through what Knight called “greater confidence in our ability and moral imaginations to take these issues further.”

Conclusion: Antarctica as Mirror

What emerged from this remarkable conversation was recognition that Antarctica is more than a continent – it’s a mirror reflecting our capacity for planetary stewardship, international cooperation, and species-wide consciousness.

The Antarctic crisis reveals the bankruptcy of approaches based on extractive thinking, nationalist competition, and short-term optimisation. But it also points toward possibilities: rights-based governance, middle-power coalitions, relational consciousness, and deep-time perspectives that prioritise human flourishing as an endgame.

Antarctica may be the world’s most remote continent, but it’s also our shared planetary commons—and perhaps our last best hope for developing the consciousness and institutions needed to thrive in the age of consequences.

The question isn’t whether we can save Antarctica. The question is whether Antarctica can teach us to save ourselves.

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This narrative is based on the “Open Dialogue: Antarctica – Forgotten Planetary Commons” conversation held May 29, 2025, featuring Andrew Kelly, Indy Johar, Apolline Roger, and other participants from around the world and facilitated by Barry Knight . The full audio recording is available for those seeking deeper engagement with these critical issues.

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