Can we tow icebergs to recycle them in fresh water?

• Blocks of drifting ice could theoretically be transported from Antarctica to combat the lack of fresh water, according to our partner The Conversation.

• However, the technical feasibility, the economic and legal viability of this type of project remain highly debated.

• This analysis was conducted by Florian Aumond, lecturer in public law at the University of Poitiers.

Our blue planet suffers from a lack of fresh water.

And the latest report from the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) draws up an alarming observation in this regard: 2.3 billion people live in regions facing water stress (quantity of water available less than requested).

Among them, more than 733 million people (about 10% of the world's population) live in countries where this stress has reached a high or critical level.

This situation generally provokes two types of reaction.

Some invite us to reconsider lifestyles that are particularly voracious in water, mainly in the countries of the North.

The others are betting on technical solutions – including the desalination of seawater (which constitutes 98% of the water on Earth) or the exploitation of frozen fresh water (representing two thirds of the total volume of water gentle).

These "solutions" are for example mentioned in a UN publication of May 2022 (in a report entitled

).

In the latter case, this concerns in particular iceberg towing projects;

these blocks of drifting ice, detached from the ice shelves, could be transported by sea from Antarctica (where they are mainly found).

​Iceberg towing, a contested solution

Such projects are old.

If the first to be seriously developed appeared in the 1950s, their golden age was in the 1970s.

The organization in 1977 of the first International Conference on the use of icebergs for the production of fresh water by the University of Iowa, and with the support of Saudi Arabia, constitutes a high point.

Enthusiasm wanes somewhat thereafter, but the idea does not disappear.

The project made public by an emir of Abu Dhabi in 2017 testifies to the interest that the subject continues to arouse.

However, these projects are disputed.

Their technical feasibility (transporting the blocks without stalling or overturning) and their economic viability (costs generated for the transfer of a resource whose volume will be reduced considerably as the journey progresses) are still debated.

The environmental consequences also raise increasingly serious questions.

The transfer of such blocks from polar zones to temperate regions cannot be done without disturbing the ecosystem they constitute or the environment to which they will be transported.

Their legality, finally, questions.

What rights for icebergs?

Icebergs are objects not identified as such by (international) law.

Which, however, abhors a vacuum.

To fill it, he uses various processes tending in particular to bring such objects into existing categories.

Are icebergs made of frozen fresh water?

Let us apply the regime prevailing for fresh water.

They make up an emerged space surrounded by salt water?

Let's align their status with that of the islands.

They move on the seas?

Think of them as ships (or wrecks).

These proposals fail to carry conviction, in particular because they take into consideration only one of the elements, without seizing the singularity of the iceberg.

In the absence of a unified material legal qualification, it is then proposed to index the legal regime of icebergs to a spatial criterion.

As soon as they are in an area under the jurisdiction of a coastal State (territorial sea, exclusive economic zone), they are a "natural resource" liable to exploitation under the (national) law of this coastal State. .

It is through this example that Canada grants operating permits to manufacturers offering vodkas made from iceberg water.

On the other hand, when they are in international spaces (high seas), they constitute

(“things without a master”).

They can therefore be used by anyone (natural or legal person, private or public) who takes possession of them.

The case of Antarctica

This distinction raises several difficulties when one is in the Antarctic region.

The first refers to its particular legal status.

Since the Washington Treaty (1959), laying the foundations for the international governance of the area located south of 60° south latitude, it has been based on a perfectly assumed ambiguity: the claims of "sectors" (portions of conical territories having the South Pole as summit) formulated by the seven "possessed" States (Argentina, Australia, Chile, France, Norway, New Zealand, United Kingdom) are admitted, without being consecrated.

In other words, the possessed can maintain their territorial claims, which the other (non-possessed) States do not recognize, on the other hand, by signing the treaty.

However, the “sea follows the land”: for those possessed, the claims with regard to portions of the Antarctic continent extend towards the maritime areas bordering them.

In other words, the waters bathing their sectors come under their jurisdiction (territorial sea and exclusive economic zone).

The icebergs drifting there could therefore, using the distinction presented above, be exploited (taking into account the regulations of the possessed State concerned).

The principle according to which the "land follows the sea" is also taken up by the non-possessed States, but it is then used with a reversed front: as soon as the white continent (the "land") is completely devoid of any sovereignty (since the “sectors” are not recognised), the Southern Ocean enclosing it (the “sea”) necessarily comes under the high seas (international space).

Therefore, the icebergs in the region would be offered for appropriation by the first comer.

​Icebergs, mineral resources or not?

This consideration comes up against another difficulty, which here relates to the rules governing activities in Antarctica.

The mineral resources of the Deep South began to arouse covetousness from the 1970s. The States participating in Antarctic governance agreed to authorize their exploitation, which they nevertheless enshrined in strict rules, in a first convention (1988).

However, this framework proves to be insufficiently protective, particularly for the French authorities.

The treaty is then buried, stillborn.

In its place is adopted a new text, the Madrid Protocol (in 1991).

This is more comprehensive in its purpose (it relates to “environmental protection”) and restrictive in its regulations: any activity relating to mineral resources (other than scientific) is prohibited (article 7).

But, in the “Final Act”, the States agree that the ice should not be considered as mineral resources of Antarctica.

They therefore do not fall under the prohibition regime provided for in Article 7.

They are then subject to the general rules applicable to all other authorized activities (rules set out in the Madrid Protocol and its annexes).

As such, the towing of icebergs should in particular be preceded by an environmental impact study and follow a procedure that is all the more rigorous as the latter will be affected, in intensity and durability, by this activity.

However, this procedure remains shrouded in uncertainty.

In particular, it would then be essentially supervised by a State: which one will exercise its jurisdiction here?

The one claiming the area off whose coast the iceberg crosses?

We find the ambiguities on the territorial status of Antarctica noted above.

​The 1989 moratorium

This difficulty can however be overcome if it is considered that the moratorium established by a resolution adopted in 1989 by the Antarctic Treaty Consultative Meeting (the intergovernmental body in charge of the governance of Antarctica) in 1989 still prevails. on any ice exploitation.

This moratorium, suspended from the examination of the “problems posed by this activity”, has still not been expressly lifted.

We would then find, for icebergs, a prohibition regime.

It turns out, however, to be much more fragile than that prevailing for (other) mineral resources: it is so by its conditionality (it is valid while awaiting an examination of the impacts, in particular environmental), but also by its foundation (the modification of a "resolution" is much simpler than that of a treaty).

Our "ANTARCTICA" file

And it is all the more so in a context where Antarctic cooperation has been put to the test in recent years, particularly around issues related to the exploitation of its resources.

And it is even more so following the aggression of Ukraine by the Russian Federation, as evidenced by the "icy" welcome reserved for the Russian delegation at the last Consultative Meeting of the Antarctic Treaty, end of May in Berlin.

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This analysis was written by Florian Aumond, lecturer in public law at the University of Poitiers.

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