Against the backdrop of discursive scientific transformation of the Antarctic throughout the decades – the 1950s to 1970s – followed by the intense resource-driven geopolitics of 1980s and the crisis of consensus that preceded the 1991 Madrid Protocol, I argue that the resilience, responsiveness and adaptability shown by the ATS over the past six decades cannot be taken for granted, especially at a time when rivalries and mutual mistrust among some of the major powers, which are also the key players in both polar science and Antarctic geopolitics, seem to be at their zenith. Be it the concerns expressed over the future intentions of China or climate change impacts or possible resumptions of intense resource geopolitics from 2048 – when the Madrid Protocol comes up for a review – onwards, or the prospects of legally frozen territorial claims being more assertively promoted, the following proverbial million/billion-dollar question demands and deserves serious attention: who is fearful/insecure about what/whom, when, where and why? With Antarctic geopolitics and related scenarios oscillating between hope and fear – both at the risk of being unfounded – and posing a challenge to the power of human agency, ‘futures’ are not inevitable and thus avoidable, provided there is a will to seek and follow unconventional pathways.
