Cape Town - The Russian research ship, Akademik Alexander Karpinsky, which departed from Cape Town Harbour in January for Antarctica amid protest action, returned on Monday to more protests by environmental activists opposed to the ship’s entry into port, and its work in building oil and gas maps of the climate-stressed Southern Ocean.
Members of Extinction Rebellion (XR) Cape Town gathered at the docks yesterday morning to object to the oil and gas exploration in the Antarctic region, a globally important marine sanctuary, and the fact that the port of Cape Town had served as Alexander Karpinsky’s launch pad for more than two decades.
The ship has been mapping Antarctica’s warming Southern Ocean for hydrocarbons, the building blocks for oil and gas for the last 25 years and in the process, according to some environmental and eco-justice groups, harmed Antarctica’s vulnerable marine ecosystems through seismic blasting.
When the ship arrived in Cape Town in January, it was met by protest action from XR Cape Town, GreenPeace Cape Town volunteers, the Wildlife and Environment Society of South Africa (Wessa), 350 Africa and others.
A statement by XR Cape Town and Greenpeace Cape Town on the ship’s initial arrival, said: “This constitutes a breach of the 55-nation Antarctic Treaty System to which both Russia and South Africa are signatories, under which resource exploration and extraction in the Antarctic region has been banned since 1998.”
At the protest on Monday, Jacqui Tooke, spokesperson for XR Cape Town said, the organisation sought to bring attention to the fact that the Alexander Karpinsky was returning, and called on the South African government to stay true to the international treaties it was a part of, to honour the integrity of the Antarctic by ensuring that it is only used for science and peace.
“We don’t want the ship to slip back in unnoticed, we want everyone to see and start the conversation on whether ports should be allowing this type of vessel to use this space. It’s an ethical issue… We are against our government allowing foreign ships to use our port as a way to hop, skip and jump down to the Antarctic where they are conducting seismic blasting and other research in the name of science, but are actually searching for fossil fuels,” Tooke said.
Patrick Dowling, chairperson of the environmental governance committee at Wessa, was doubtful about the neutrality of the ship’s exploratory exercise because once a group went for seismic testing, it meant they were looking for something that could potentially be exploited in the future.
Dowling previously said: “We don’t see this as advisable or justifiable with the current science that is showing we need to be making fast departures from fossil fuels and looking more strongly at alternatives.”
350 Africa South African team leader, GlenTyler-Davies, added that they had come to show their opposition to the arrival of the ship.
“We want to link the relationship between fossil fuels and climate change to that of war, and the fact that fossil fuels fuel war and war fuels the use of fossil fuels. Besides the immediate crisis of the war in Ukraine and wars around the world, there is also the issue of climate change which is universal,” Tyler-Davies said.
The activists said as South Africa was the only African country with decision-making powers under the Antarctic Treaty System it had to ensure “sanity prevailed”.
In a statement, the supporting groups said: “We urge the South African government to fulfil its moral duty towards its own citizens, as well as Africa and its future generations, by refusing port entry to the Akademik Alexander Karpinsky and all other vessels engaged in harmful exploration activities in the Antarctic region.”
The groups also supported a proposal by the Polar Research and Policy Initiative that individual states and the decision-making Antarctic Treaty Consultative Parties should explicitly unilaterally commit now to never commence hydrocarbon extraction in Antarctica.
kristin.engel@inl.co.za