The Madrid Protocol becomes open to a review conference
Fifty years after entry into force, any consultative party may request a conference to review the Protocol's operation. This is a procedural door opening, not an expiry: the mining prohibition does not lapse, and changing it would require both agreement at such a conference and a binding legal regime in force. It is recorded here as a declared programme date because it is the single most misreported fact about Antarctic governance.
Planned — a programme target or declared plan, from a source that declared it. Never a prediction.
Subjects
- Protocol on Environmental Protection to the Antarctic Treaty (Madrid Protocol, 1991) · treaty · Antarctic Treaty area · not located
- Antarctica · region · Antarctic
Evidence
Partly verified — Core facts are sourced; some optional detail is deliberately absent.
Protocol on Environmental Protection to the Antarctic Treaty
The Protocol designates Antarctica a natural reserve devoted to peace and science and prohibits any activity relating to mineral resources other than scientific research; it provides that a review conference may be requested after fifty years from entry into force, which is the provision commonly and wrongly reported as an expiry of the mining ban in 2048. V55 VERIFICATION BASIS: as above - no source was opened during production. Article numbering is deliberately not quoted in this record because it was not checked.
Secretariat of the Antarctic Treaty · 1991-10-04 (signed); in force January 1998 · Partly verified
Protocol on Environmental Protection to the Antarctic Treaty, Madrid, 4 October 1991; text published by the Secretariat of the Antarctic Treaty at https://www.ats.aq/e/protocol.html
Recorded on Protocol on Environmental Protection to the Antarctic Treaty (Madrid Protocol, 1991)
- The International Geophysical Year puts twelve nations on the ice at once
- The Antarctic Treaty is signed at Washington
- The continuous satellite sea-ice record begins
- Vostok records minus 89.2 degrees Celsius
- The Madrid Protocol prohibits Antarctic mining
- Antarctic sea ice reaches a record low, a year after the previous one
- The Madrid Protocol becomes open to a review conference
Related
Related because they share a subject in the Atlas — never because the text looks similar.
- Antarctic sea ice reaches a record low, a year after the previous one · 2023-02
- The Madrid Protocol prohibits Antarctic mining · 1991-10-04
- Vostok records minus 89.2 degrees Celsius · 1983-07-21
- The continuous satellite sea-ice record begins · 1979
- The Antarctic Treaty is signed at Washington · 1959-12-01
- The International Geophysical Year puts twelve nations on the ice at once · 1957-07 / 1958-12