India 'race' to Antarctica

At a conference on the Antarctic Treaty that took place in New Delhi earlier this month, India announced plans to establish a third research station in Antarctica and receive support from other countries. The station is expected to be located in Larsemann Hill area, East Antarctica. This is the only place without ice covered in this cold continent.

Antarctica is not owned by any nation. However, seven countries - Argentina, Australia, England, Chile, France, Norway and New Zealand - formally claim sovereignty in Antarctica. This goes against the Antarctic Treaty that many countries signed in Washington in 1959, including provisions prohibiting mining until 2048.

Fresh environment, pristine and beautiful landscape in Antarctica attracts many scientists and visitors to admire, study and discover. This land is rich in natural resources such as coal, fish and especially oil. The US Department of Energy estimates oil reserves in the Wddell and Ross seas of about 50 billion barrels. Therefore, research activities in Antarctica in addition to exploring the wild environment and climate on the earth millions of years ago are also looking for energy resources.

Highway on Antarctic ice. (Photo: MSNBC)

To date, about 30 countries set up research stations in Antarctica, including Russia, China, Australia. India signed the Antarctic Treaty in 1983, but discovered this snow continent two years earlier. Indian geologists surveyed Antarctica once linked the Mahanadi region in the eastern part of the country. India's new research station will investigate geological structures and climate conditions in ancient times, geophysics, spatial temperatures, meteorology, oceans, marine biology, microbiology, environment . .

In addition, India is promoting the expansion of the Maitri research station set up 20 years ago in preparation for putting the satellite station on Earth into operation. This satellite station has the function to communicate and provide data between Antarctica and the Indian subcontinent. In the next 5 years, according to Kapil Sibal, Minister of Science and Technology, India will be equipped with the first ocean-going snow research ship and this will facilitate scientists to explore and research one. Full way of all areas and waters of Antarctica.

The addition of India to a new research station is not approved by environmentalists because they believe it will negatively affect the ecology and environment of the Antarctic. However, the scientific community said that the number of people who come here to study and the impact of the research on the environment is impervious if comparing the wave of visitors to visit. While the number of scientists present in Antarctica is only a few thousand, the number of tourists coming here annually increases from 5,000 in 1990 to about 37,000 today. However, a separate investigation at the US McMurdo Research Station showed that every summer there were 2,000 scientists from the country coming to Antarctica and each of them " discharged " more than a ton of garbage per year and every day ' dump ' into the Ross Sea 250,000 liters of waste water. The fact that the US built a 1,600-kilometer high-speed highway from McMurdo station to Antarctica also broke the continent's wild landscape.

PHUC NGUYEN