The Southern Claims

The Austral League has held most of Antarctica since the Southern Claims of the 2160s, as the heir to the Chilean, Argentine and New Zealand claims. Australia's old claim, 42% of the continent, and the old British claim overlap the League's hold, and both are Settlement too, so most of that quarrel runs inside one bloc, and the Settlement has never settled it. The Pacific third of the old continent is the Mandate's: from 120°E to 90°W, Adélie Land and the eastern end of Australia's old claim, the Victoria Land coast, the Ross Sea and Marie Byrd Land, the one sector no state claimed in 2026. It grew from China's Qinling station, opened in 2024 on Inexpressible Island, and Korea's Jang Bogo station across Terra Nova Bay, which came with the Korean Reunion. In the Southern Claims the League gave up the Ross Sea, New Zealand's old claim, and the coast west of it to 120°E, as the price of the Mandate recognising the rest. Australia, whose old claim ran to 160°E, never accepted it, so part of its quarrel over the ice is with the Mandate, between blocs. Much of the Mandate's third is sea and islands the lost West Antarctic sheet left. The Ice Law does not reach those islands: the Mandate mined them at first, then closed them as protected ground. About 3 million people live in Antarctica, most of them on the League's Peninsula, its ice-free coastal oases and its ports, on krill, kelp and the Southern Ocean trade. The East Antarctic ice sheet is untouchable: the mining ban of 1991, reviewable from 2048, hardened into the League's Ice Law, which the Mandate signed for its own part of the plateau in the Southern Claims, because disturbing the sheet risks tens of metres of sea rise on top of the loss of West Antarctica (see Cities).