October 04, 2026

Bridging Science and Policy: Celebrating 35 Years of the Environmental Protocol with Open Antarctic Biodiversity Data

This year marks a major milestone in polar governance: the 35th Anniversary of the Protocol on Environmental Protection to the Antarctic Treaty (also known as the Madrid Protocol). Signed in 1991, the Protocol established Antarctica as a “natural reserve, devoted to peace and science” and created the Committee for Environmental Protection (CEP) to advise the Antarctic Treaty Consultative Meetings (ATCM) on environmental management, area protection, and biodiversity conservation.

As environmental challenges, climate impacts, and human activity in the region expand, the work of the CEP relies heavily on robust, spatially explicit scientific evidence. The SCAR Antarctic Biodiversity Portal (www.biodiversity.aq) plays a vital role in meeting this need by providing open-access, standardised, and interoperable terrestrial and marine biodiversity data.

Powering Environmental Policy with Open Data

Effective environmental management—from designing Antarctic Specially Protected Areas (ASPAs) to monitoring non-native species and evaluating climate vulnerabilities—requires comprehensive data on where species live and how ecosystems are structured.

Less than 1% of the Antarctic continent is permanently ice-free, yet these isolated land fragments harbor over 99% of its terrestrial life—including mosses, lichens, micro-arthropods, and breeding seabirds.

To directly support conservation and research goals identified by the CEP, researchers compiled and released The Biodiversity of Ice-free Antarctica Database (available on the SCAR Integrated Publishing Toolkit).

Consolidating over 35,000 spatially explicit occurrence records spanning 1,800+ species across all Antarctic Conservation Biogeographic Regions (ACBRs), this dataset provides a baseline for monitoring biodiversity shifts, evaluating environmental risk, and guiding spatial planning.

“Consolidated, open access data supports SCAR in its broad advisory role to the CEP and informs conservation, management and decision-making in the Antarctic Treaty System”, says Dr Aleks Terauds, a Spatial Ecologist and Program Leader at the Australian Antarctic Division.

Map showing the geographic coverage of biological records in ice-free Antarctica

Geographic coverage: the log total number of biological records from the Biodiversity of Ice-free Antarctica Database within raster cells of ice-free Antarctica. Credit: Diversity and Distributions (2024).

Looking Ahead to the Next 35 Years

The 35th anniversary of the Environmental Protocol is a moment to celebrate international cooperation, but also a call to strengthen the scientific foundation supporting it.

Resources & Data Access