As global great power competition intensifies, there is growing concern about the geopolitical future of Antarctica. This book delves into the question of how can we anticipate, prepare for, and potentially even shape that future? Now in its 60^th year, the Antarctic Treaty System has been comparatively resilient and successful in governing the Antarctic region. This book assesses how our ability to make accurate predictions about the future of the Antarctic Treaty System reduces rapidly in the face of political and biophysical complexity, uncertainty, and the passage of time. This poses a critical risk for organisations making long-range decisions about their policy, strategy, and investments in the frozen south.

Scenarios are useful planning tools for considering futures beyond the limits of standard prediction. This book explores how a multi-disciplinary focus of classical geopolitics might be applied systematically to create scenarios on Antarctic futures that are plausible, rigorous, and robust. This book illustrates a pragmatic, nine-step scenario development process, using the topical issue of military activities in Antarctica. Along the way, the authors make suggestions to augment current theory and practice of geopolitical scenario planning. In doing so, this book seeks to rediscover the importance of a classical (primarily state-centric) lens on Antarctic geopolitics, which in recent decades has been overshadowed by more critical perspectives.

This book is written for anyone with an interest in the rigorous assessment of geopolitical futures - in Antarctica and beyond.

“This timely and readable volume is social science at its best insofar as its authors make an original and valuable contribution to our understanding both of the subject at hand and to methodology. Applying scenario analysis to the issue of the militarization of the continent, the authors engage critically with the logic of the approach to yield methodological insights that will be helpful to organizations and educators who use scenario-based methodologies. The policy conclusions will be of interest to all those committed to a peaceful future for the Antarctic continent.” (Professor Shirley Scott, Head, School of Humanities and Social Sciences, UNSW Canberra at the Australian Defence Force Academy) 
“This volume provides an outstanding contribution to the understanding of present and future Antarctic politics. By using scenario analysis, McGee, Edmiston and Haward give us a careful and thought provoking vision of Antarctica’s next decade, where climate change, balance of power and technological development might make the region a critical component of world politics. This book’s strength lies in aligning classic geopolitics with robust methodological frameworks, smoothly describing Antarctica’s realities and key drivers, and providing the reader with plausible consequential scenarios – some of which can be quite surprising. This is a must-read for both academics and policy-makers who seek to understand how Antarctic geopolitics might develop in the near future.”  (Dr. Daniela Portella Sampaio, Faculty of Sociology, Bielefeld University, Germany)

Focuses upon methodology for Antarctic’s geopolitical futures research Shows Antarctic geopolitics that stems from Australian academic context, rather than authors from Europe or New Zealand Provides analysis of how wider geopolitical methodology might be applied to the unique context of Antarctica

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