Convention on the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources Message to the Senate Transmitting the Convention.

To the Senate of the United States:

I transmit herewith, for the advice and consent of the Senate to ratification, the Convention on the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources. I also transmit for the information of the Senate the report of the Department of State with respect to this treaty.

The Convention on the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources will establish international mechanisms and create legal obligations necessary for the protection and conservation of the marine living resources found in the waters surrounding Antarctica. The Convention incorporates an ecosystem approach to the management of those resources, including standards designed to enable mankind to conserve the individual populations and species and to maintain the health of the Antarctic marine ecosystem as a whole. Implementation of this Convention offers a welcome and unusual opportunity to apply to shared resources an effective regulatory framework prior to the emergence of large-scale commercial harvesting of those resources.

The significance of this Convention lies not only in its environmental and resource management provisions and objectives. It also represents an important example of international cooperation among the Consultative Parties of the Antarctic Treaty. The system established by the Antarctic Treaty two decades ago has permitted its Parties, who maintain differences of position concerning claims to territorial sovereignty in Antarctica, to work together to further scientific research and to ensure that Antarctica does not become the scene or object of international discord. This new Convention, which extends this unique pattern of international cooperation into the area of resource management, is thus also important as an international legal and political undertaking.

The United States played a leading role in the negotiation of the Convention on the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources. The Convention reflects our concern for the protection of the Antarctic marine ecosystem—including the whales, penguins and seals which are components of it. It is my hope that the United States will also play a leading role in the effective implementation of the Convention. To this end, it is important that the United States be represented at the first meeting of the Commission which will be held within a year of the entry into force of the Convention following the deposit of the eighth instrument of ratification.

I recommend that the Senate give early and favorable consideration to this treaty and give its advice and consent to ratification.

JIMMY CARTER

The White House,

December 2, 1980.