Protocol on Environmental Protection to the Antarctic Treaty (Madrid Protocol, 1991)

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Signed at Madrid on 4 October 1991 and in force from January 1998, it designates Antarctica a natural reserve devoted to peace and science and prohibits any activity relating to mineral resources other than scientific research. It replaced a different answer: a convention regulating Antarctic mineral resource activity had been negotiated through the 1980s and was abandoned when Australia and France declined to sign it, so the prohibition exists because a regulatory scheme failed rather than because one was never attempted. The prohibition has no expiry, but the Protocol provides that after fifty years from entry into force any consultative party may call a review conference - which puts a date around 2048 in every discussion of Antarctic minerals, usually described inaccurately as the year the ban lapses. It does not lapse; it becomes possible to convene a conference about it, and modifying the mining prohibition would additionally require a binding legal regime to be in force.