POLAR POLITICS: China’s Antarctic marine protected area has a Soviet name, with more Russian fingerprints emerging

Alongside Russia, China has spent some 15 years thwarting most proposed marine protected areas (MPAs) in Antarctica.

Now a dossier attributed to Beijing wants to forge its own in the Soviet-named “Cosmonauts Sea”, under a protection model it is trying to embed in the Southern Ocean’s governing rules.

Credited to the “delegation of China”, the 105-page dossier comprises three documents: the marine reserve pitch; the science motivation backing it; and a proposal seeking to reorder Antarctica’s official MPA rule book. The documents note being “submitted” to the premier MPA and fisheries talks on 3 and 4 September - reflecting the annual deadline for the negotiations now underway behind closed doors in Hobart, Tasmania.

A Daily Maverick examination of the Commission for the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources’ (CCAMLR) negotiating records has linked key elements of the Beijing-credited rule changes to technical hurdles repeatedly advanced by Moscow. These hurdles feature ever-tighter data demands and other criteria that could further retard four long-delayed MPA proposals.

There is a catch: the “127,000km²” Cosmonauts Sea MPA trumpets krill closures where - anti-fishing advocates say - no krill is actually being caught. Unless each of the consensus-based Commission’s current 27 members renewed or amended it - or adopted a replacement - the mooted MPA would expire after just 20 years.

Based on the Cosmonauts Sea proposal, a sole member could veto the renewal of an entire MPA allowing it to sink without a vote to abolish it.

One document in the dossier aims to delete foundational conservation objectives, including climate resilience, from the MPA rule book - known as “Conservation Measure 91-04”.

All Commission states, including fellow BRICS member South Africa, would first have to agree before the proposed rules could have any effect.

Dr Matthew Savoca, a Stanford University research associate with a special interest in the impacts of krill fishing, told Daily Maverick that he could not comment on the documents as he had not seen them.

But he said he “would ask that China start” by finally approving another MPA proposal “covering portions of the Antarctic Peninsula and South Orkney Islands”, which has been “on the table in various forms for a decade”.

Savoca said: “Once that is in place, we can move on to other regions; there’s no shortage of spectacular and important places in Antarctica that need safeguarding.”

Russia’s earlier proposals

In 2022, Moscow proposed amending the Commission’s MPA rule book, first adopted in 2011. Similar to the latest Cosmonauts Sea campaign of 2026, the Russian delegation aimed to impose new criteria on MPA proposals - including the East Antarctic MPA advanced by Australia, the EU and France back in 2012.

Paragraphs “5.60” to “5.63” of the Commission’s 2022 annual meeting report record the Moscow-led propositions as well as Beijing’s response. Moscow’s ideas, Beijing said, “could contribute to a roadmap for MPA establishment”.

At the Commission’s October 2023 meeting in Hobart, paragraphs 5.30 to 5.33 show that the Russian diplomats again pursued sweeping changes to the rule book - insisting on suspending MPA talks until their demands had been met.

At the special meeting convened in Santiago a few months before, the delegation of China had complained that the two approved MPAs - the 2009 South Orkney and 2016 Ross Sea marine parks - were “not demonstrably contributing to the mitigation and adaptation to climate change impacts since their establishment many years ago”.

“Most” Commission members hit back, saying the “precautionary approach requires it to act despite uncertainties and knowledge gaps”. They said Russian attempts to rewrite the rules “presented unachievable barriers to adopting MPAs”.

“Many” members would continue the battle in Hobart that same year.

“The best available science,” they argued, “is sufficient to establish MPAs.” They described the rule book as “fit for purpose” and compared the Russian approach to “constraints and inconsistencies” that would pile on “more obstacles to the adoption of MPAs”.

Given this heated negotiating record, Moscow’s proposals failed to secure consensus.

The overlaps between Moscow’s earlier demands and Beijing’s latest proposals help explain why.

Where, in 2022 and 2023, the Russian delegation had demanded “sufficient” evidence as a higher standard for “best available science”, the 2026 proposed rules call for “multi-year systematic oceanographic surveys” - without saying how many years would be “multi”.

Where Moscow demanded a “mandatory” checklist, the proposed rules from the Chinese delegation envisage a “standardised procedure”. And where Moscow called for talks to be suspended until the rules were rewritten, the Chinese delegation has devised its own obstacle course: rewrite the rules, revise existing proposals, then consider approving them.

Neither Beijing nor Moscow has backed any other MPA since agreeing to the 2 million km² Ross Sea MPA a decade ago. If ever approved, the four lagging South American and Europe-led MPA proposals would make up about 4.5 million km² - a Southern Ocean area larger than the EU.

The East Antarctic MPA would span about 1 million km² – about eight times the size of the Cosmonauts’ Greece-sized pitch, which carries the historic name of a Soviet Sea that has not been adopted by the International Hydrographic Organisation.

A “fresh” approach? What “some” members actually backed

In Beijing’s telling, “some” members have described its ongoing campaign for a so-called “step-by-step” approach as a “fresh outlook”.

China’s delegation recalls this narrative in the proposed rule-book changes, arguing each step is designed to build out details that would end the fish fight and nail the consensus member states long for. As shown by the minutes of the 2024 talks, the delegation’s account is correct.

But in CCAMLR-speak, “some members” are not the same as “many” or even “most”.

Indeed, the envoys from South Africa - a major krill gateway through the port of Cape Town - seemed to feel anything but fresh at the 2025 talks. Flagging a “continued deadlock” on how to combat concentrating fishing, they suggested they could smell something rotten - and that it was undermining the Commission’s “credibility”.

A longtime supporter of the four MPA proposals, Pretoria stressed it was “optimistic that the members will continue to engage in insatiable efforts on the margin to move CCAMLR [to] overcome these untenable circumstances”. It urged the Commission to “continue progress as a global leader in conservation and fisheries management”.

China’s guiding principle: “Understanding, protection and use of Antarctica”

Daily Maverick asked Professor Nengye Liu, a specialist in China’s engagement with the Antarctic Treaty System (ATS), to explain Beijing’s approach to MPAs.

“The guiding principle of China’s Antarctic activities is understanding, protection and use of Antarctica. This has been repeatedly mentioned by senior Chinese officials and is also going to be integrated into China’s forthcoming Antarctic Activities and Environmental Protection Law,” said Liu, who is based at Singapore Management University’s Yong Pung How School of Law.

Liu observed that “China’s latest Cosmonauts Sea MPA proposal to CCAMLR, which may be seen as a surprise move at first glance, actually follows and operationalises the guiding principle.

“There is a Chinese saying: ‘All variations stem from the same underlying principle - 万变不离其宗 - that captures this move well. The MPA as a last resort, seasonal protection, limited tenure, these all clearly reflect the Chinese government’s belief about what an MPA should look like and where exactly to draw the line between protection and use of Antarctica in the foreseeable future.”

Liu saw diplomatic advantages in the initiative.

“From a diplomatic point of view, this is a smart move. It not only helps shift China’s negative image in Western media as a rising power who is obstructing marine conservation, but also enhances China’s bargaining power in CCAMLR meetings.”

A ‘very small’ protected area with an expiry date

Karen Scott, an ATS specialist and law professor at the University of Canterbury, argued that time limits were not fresh MPA concepts.

For instance, the Ross Sea MPA has a 35-year duration and requires active renewal. Limited krill and toothfish harvesting is permitted.

“All of these compromises have been subject to critique with questions being asked as to whether they are genuinely marine protected areas,” said Professor Scott.

“The fact that they have occurred before does not mean that we want to replicate them again and the very small area apparently proposed by China also raises significant questions,” added Scott, who could not comment on the documents as she had not reviewed them.

“China has argued over the last few years that CCAMLR needs to amend the MPA framework within which proposals are developed although its papers proposing amendments have yet to gain traction. It will be interesting to see how this proposal sits with the existing CCAMLR MPA framework or whether it departs from previously agreed principles.”

Climate objectives marked for deletion

As first reported by Daily Maverick, Beijing’s amendments would strike two conservation objectives from the MPA rule book: “The protection of features critical to the function of local ecosystems” and “the protection of areas to maintain resilience or the ability to adapt to the effects of climate change”.

The rule book’s sole remaining climate change reference would no longer be an objective. It would merely “recognise” that MPAs “maintain the ability to adapt in the face of climate change”, which contradicts China’s earlier argument.

Dr Ally Kristan, a research associate at Duke University Marine Lab, said that krill vessels spend “the vast majority of active fishing hours in penguin foraging ranges during both the summer and winter’.

Kristan pointed to “collapsing penguin colonies” and plummeting fur seal populations as krill became less available during Antarctic warming: “It’s difficult scientifically to disentangle the impacts of climate change versus fisheries, but MPAs with continuous, year-round commercial fishing prohibitions are one of the best tools we have to decipher that difference.”

Kristan urged approval of the Antarctic Peninsula and South Orkney Islands MPA, plus the reinstatement of rules to stop industrial krill fishing from concentrating its catches in vulnerable waters.

“The Antarctic krill fishery is completely unnecessary,” she told Daily Maverick. “It will always be an inherent danger to wildlife.”

Fears of a krill catch-limit bargain

In commentary published on 15 October, Sea Shepherd’s Peter Hammarstedt called the Cosmonauts Sea proposal a conservation “smokescreen”, saying it covered waters where krill fishing did not take place.

The Antarctic Peninsula MPA, where industrial krill fishing was rife, needed urgent priority by consensus, Hammarstedt said.

But the NGO’s global chief campaigns officer said he expected a possible trade-off. He told Daily Maverick: “If the MPA is adopted at this year’s meeting, I fear it may come at the expense of geopolitical horse-trading: an MPA in exchange for a near-doubling of the krill catch limit.

“How such a trade-off could even be contemplated is difficult to comprehend, particularly when the industrial krill fleet has triggered an automatic closure of the fishery for the second consecutive year since the failure to renew Conservation Measure 51-07, which required the spatial distribution of catches,” he explained.

Hammarstedt accused Russia of weaponising CCAMLR’s consensus rules to pursue geopolitics stemming from its war against Ukraine, a fellow Commission member.

“Russia’s war against Ukraine is playing out across multiple fronts, including the distant waters of Antarctica. A form of proxy war is being waged against Ukraine’s supporters, extending into some of the most unexpected arenas, including CCAMLR.”

Long-standing Ukraine Commission diplomat Leonid Pshenichnov, according to a report by ABC Australia, was still in pretrial detention as the Hobart gathering kicked off this week.

As first reported by ABC Australia, and a Daily Maverick investigative series, Pshenichnov was detained on high treason charges involving threats to Russia’s krill and “hydrocarbon” interests.

Hammarstedt, in his commentary, argued that the 20-year expiry date for the Cosmonauts Sea “would fall close to 2048”. This is when the Antarctic Treaty’s Madrid Protocol “becomes eligible for review under a special procedure, including provisions governing the prohibition on Antarctic mining”.

Still, hopes for a ‘breakthrough’

Geneviève Pons-Deladrière, a French Antarctic conservation advocate with Antarctica2030, earlier this month suggested that China’s proposed MPA might encourage Beijing to lift its opposition to the other proposals, potentially boosting protected waters to nearly 30% of the Southern Ocean.

Asked if her assessment reflected diplomatic discussions or optimism, she declined to elaborate.

“I strongly hope that the negotiations will see a breakthrough this year. That is what I tried to convey,” she said. “Given that the negotiations are just beginning, it is now better to refrain from any comments that might hinder them.”

The Antarctic and Southern Ocean Coalition, the NGO group with access to CCAMLR’s closed-door meeting, declined to comment on the proposals.

No responses were received from Chinese and Russian authorities.

Australia declined to respond to specific questions about the Cosmonauts Sea, citing ongoing negotiations. Also citing the current negotiations as its reason for being “unable to respond at this time”, South Africa’s Department of Forestry, Fisheries and the Environment noted: “We hope to be able to provide comment at a later date.”

The proposals are before the Commission’s members until 30 October. DM