You Can't Own The Desert

There is a scene in the English Patient, where Almasy and his best-friend Madox discuss the urgency of securing the Saharan desert.

"What do we find in the desert?" Asks Madox "Arrowheads, spears. In a war if you own the desert, you own North Africa."

Almasy scoffs disdainfully "Own the desert?"

The idea of property and ownership - of land, of people - was a central theme of Anthony Minghella's award-winning film The English Patient.

Almasy - played by an on-form Ralph Fiennes, alongside an otherwordly Kristin Scott-Thomas (pictured) - abhorred the notion that reserves of nature could be owned for martial, strategic, financial or Imperial gain.

It is our turn to scoff disdainfully as Britain divulges its plan to carve a piece of the Antarctic desert for itself.

The claim for propriety of a slice of the Atlantic would give Britain exploratory rights for gas, oil and minerals.

Mining and drilling for oil would disrupt the fragile eco-system of the Antarctic, one of the few remaining wildernesses of our planet.

Many of the fascinating creatures that belong to the Antarctic eco-system would be killed by such human endeavours.

This is an exercise in greed and shamefaces Britain who, in 1959 became a signatory of the Antarctic treaty that no new claims should be made upon the Antarctic.

The Antarctic, as with many other parts of our natural world, needs to have its status asserted as an exclusively protected area. What this means is that no form of human expansion, construction, mining etc. may take place in such regions.

Whatever UN treaties currently exist to that effect - and these will be too few - they are evidently not sacrosanct so that nations like Britain dare not violate them.

Own the ice desert?