Let’s say I’m an eccentric millionaire that wants to retire and spend the rest of my days in Antarctica. Would there be any legal obstacles to me doing so?
Possibly, i dont think you could personally own any land in antarctica to put your house on?
Under the Antarctic Treaty, Antarctica is protected as a scientific preserve. A 1991 protocol to the treaty prioritises the protection of the Antarctic environment as a wilderness, and sets up mechanisms to control development. I doubt that your home-builiding project would receive the necessary approvals.
You could possibly do a deal whereby you get to live at a research station, in return for generous donations to fund the research. But I doubt that you could build your own house.
Be sure to get Thing insurance.
Right. In the parts of Antarctica that are claimed by some country, I’m sure that that country would prevent any private development. Even in the part that is not under claim, the signatories to the treaty would most likely block development.
Hundreds of millions of the world’s population are essentially squatters. In some countries, squatters have established rights and are hard to legally evict, and if that is the case in a country that administers a section of Antarctica, squatters rightst to remain there might actually be protected by the laws of Chile, New Zealand, whatever.
I’m certain none of the countries with Antarctic claims (Chile, Argentina, the UK, Australia, New Zealand, and Norway) would recognize squatter’s rights to government land (which Antarctica would be considered) without a permit and without a long period of occupancy. So that wouldn’t apply.
There is a civilian Chilean town (Villa las Estrellas), with a year-round population of 80, and a school for their children… Tourists can go there, there is a hostel.
Get a Chilean residence visa (or citizenship) and you can go an live there. I have no information about the residents’ houses, whether they own them or lease them.
King George Island isn’t Antarctica proper, though.
Related earlier thread: Would Antarctica be a good place for my evil lair?
Several Counties have claimed land, so presumably, you can make a deal with one of them and build there. You’d be much better off in Greenland.
Note that there’s a large arc of unclaimed territory around Marie Byrd Land.
If you “settle” there and any of the treaty signers try to oust you that would be viewed by the others as a violation since it would be an attempt to extend the claim.
Legalities aside, the logistics of building a home in an environment as hostile as Antarctica’s have to be daunting at best. I did some research and came up with a very interesting article on that very subject: **In the Antarctic most structures are erected on concrete plinths built on rock. **
The entire article is worth the read.
The US and Russia both have a position regarding the Antarctic treaty that they are making no claims, but reserve the right to do so. Marie Byrd Land is the potential US claim, which was actually in the works when the treaty was negotiated. This, and inaccessibility of the area, are reasons why it is by far the largest area of unclaimed land on the globe.
You will note that the most accessible area, relatively speaking, has massively overlapping claims by Chile, Argentina and the UK.
If you “settle” there, each of the treaty signers will regard it as a treaty violation.
Antarctica is like the worst property you could imagine buying for your house: the conveyancing will never settle, you will never get a clear title, it’s all tied up with court orders (treaties) until settlement, the competing interests don’t recognize the court orders, you aren’t dealing with one government/owner, you’re dealing with three, none of them will approve anything, any of them may put a road through your house at anytime…
it’s one of those vacant lots in town where the financing fell through and now nobody knows who owns it, but half a dozen people think they do, so it just stays vacant for the next 27 years.
He’s not asking about owning, buying or acquiring title to a site in Antarctica; he just proposes to build a house there and live in it.
Legally, he has no right to do so, and there are several parties who would have a colorable justification for intervening to stop him. Whether they would intervene is, I suppose, a practical question, but my guess is that they would.
It is suggested above that he might build in Marie Byrd Land, and hope that (a) the US would not intervene, lest this be taken as a revival of its suspended claim to the territory, and so destablising, and (b) other states would not intervene, since if they did so the US would be strongly motivated to reassert its claim. But of course if the US didn’t intervene, that might be taken as an abandonment of its claim, and the US wouldn’t want that. So the US would almost certainly intervene, either with the authority of the co-signatories, for the purposes of enforcing the Antarctic Treaty rather than asserting any exclusive claim, or as part of an intervention mounted jointly by two or more of the signatories.
Read this article about a research team in antarctica. The girl making this report is an avid cross fitter and would run half marathons most weekends just to warm up and still she struggled there.
It’s one thing to object to settling in Marie Byrd Land. It’s another thing to do something. I don’t think a state would consider taking action there because of the diplomatic mess it would cause. They’d figure eventually the half-frozen idiot would either die or leave.
If you organize your expedition to Antarctica in a country that is a signatory to the Antarctic Treaty System, or your last point of departure before getting to Antarctica is from such a country, then you need the permission of that government just to travel there (never mind settling there). Here’s the UK government’s page on how to apply for a permit, for example. See this StackExchange answer for more details.
Here’s a list of the 53 countries who are parties to the Antarctic Treaty. If you’re based in one of these countries, or departing from one of them, my guess is that you’d be out of luck; that government would probably deny you a permit to live there absent some particularly compelling reason to do so.
Nobody would cover the property damage liabilities.