Masayoshi Nakawo
“Globalization” and the Antarctica
Recently, the phrase “globalization” can be heard everywhere. It’s a word that seems somehow easy to understand, but evidently its use differs from person to person. It has even come to be used when talking of environmental problems that involve the whole planet. So-called global environmental problems.
It was at the start of the 1980s that we first became aware of global environmental problems. At the time, global air temperatures were rising abnormally and, consequently, tales that vast quantities of ice at the poles were melting causing sea levels to rise around the world were picked up frequently in the mass media. If rising sea levels were true, then it is not hard to imagine that the world is on the brink of disaster. This is because not only the small islands floating in the Pacific, but also the majority of major cities around the world are located merely a few meters above sea level. In other words, if the phenomenon called global warming occurs, the majority of islands and cities are in danger of being submerged by rising sea level, and such damage will be a global problem.
The cause of global warming is said to be the vast quantities that we humans consume of energy sources that are buried under the ground, such as coal and oil, which are called fossil fuels. The result has been the discharge at various sites around the world of greenhouse gasses such as CO2, methane, and nitrous oxide, the concentrations of which have increased in the atmosphere, causing global warming.
In other words, both the cause and the effect of the problem are worldwide, exceeding territorial and national borders. To put it another way, global environmental problems as typified by global warming are characterized by the fact that we humans, who control the resources of the planet, are simultaneously both its agent and its victims.
The word “globalization” is often used with regard to the flow of materials and money across national and territorial borders; in other words, with regard to economic activities. Alternatively, it is also used to describe the situation whereby the flow of information and people exceeds national and territorial borders and spreads on a global scale while being codependent.
From another viewpoint, it can also be said to be the unwillingness or inability to perform self-sufficient activities by cutting off contact with the outside world in certain territories or specific locales. Like it or not, we modern-day people have no choice but to rely heavily on the world outside of the region in which we live. It can also be said that we are greatly influenced by the world outside our own territory.
Of course, the extent differs from region to region. It seems that there are still places where life is comparatively close to the self-sufficient lifestyles of old. Even in such places, the extent of the external impact or degree of dependency on the outside world is undoubtedly increasing.
Antarctica was not somewhere people used to live in ages past. It can even be thought of as the place where the impact of human activities on the natural environment has been the smallest. Consequently, it can be considered the optimum site to examine both climate fluctuations on a global scale and fluctuations in the natural environment, and the impact on human activities on these. For this reason, many countries have sent observation teams and continue their investigations. Currently living in Antarctica are a limited number of members of these observation teams. As the human activities are extremely limited, if all the effects are removed away from Antarctica, there will be no environmental problems in the Antarctica.
Considered from the meaning of “globalization”, Antarctica is the most extreme location. This is because, for the people living in the Antarctica, they are dependent for everything on the outside world, and their entire lifestyle is affected by the outside world. The food that supports their lifestyle is imported from the world outside Antarctica. This is the farthest a lifestyle can get from self-sufficiency. The energy that supports their lifestyle is almost entirely imported by ship or plane. There is also a wind turbine that generates power using the local winds, but the majority of the power relies on diesel generation using petrol imported from outside the Continent.
Antarctica, at the same time as being the site least affected by human activities, can also be called the site that most powerfully embodies the wave of “globalization”. When environmental problems are considered at this location, contrary to expectation there might be something to be seen. Here, I would like to consider “garbage”, “energy”, and “water” through my experiences in the Antarctica.
The Japanese South Polar Observatory
On 29 January 1957, the first Japanese South Polar Region Observation Team (hereinafter called the “first team”) successfully landed on the Ongle Islands in Lu¨tzow-Holm Bay, and set up an observatory. It was a brilliant achievement by the small icebreaker “Soya”. This observatory was called Syowa Base. Thereafter, it functioned as the main base for Japanese south polar observations.
The first team left 11 team members at Syowa base. This team spent the winter there. They passed the south polar winter, just the 11 of them, and were there for a full year before the second team arrived the following year. That following year, the second team were able to house the first team, who had spent the winter unscathed, on the observation ship “Soya” instead of Syowa base. Hindered by bad weather and ice in the Antarctic Ocean, however, they were unable to continue to pass the winter there. Further, there was nothing else for it but to return home leaving 15 Sakhalin dogs behind at Syowa Base. The news that two of the 15 dogs, Taro and Jiro, had been found by the third team the following year enveloped Japan in a frenzy of excitement. With absolutely no support from the outside world, the pair had lived through the Antarctic winter on their own resources.
Syowa Base was closed by the 6th team in 1962, but four years later in 1966, the base was reopened by the arrival of a new icebreaker, “Fuji”. At the time of the reopening, there were 18 members of the 7th team who passed the winter, but this gradually increased later, and for a time from the 9th team onwards, approximately 30 team members spent the winter at the Base.
Syowa Base was located on the Ongle Islands, rather than on the main Antarctic continent. Consequently, it was poorly sited to investigate south polar ice. This is because the ice is on the Antarctic continent itself. For this reason, it was decided to create a new, separate base on the continent.
In 1970, the 11th expeditionary team selected a site on the continent approximately 300km from Syowa base, and decided to build an inland base there. This base later came to be called Mizuho Base. The base was constructed during the midwinter of the following year, 1971, by the 12th team. As a member of the 12th team, I participated in this winter expeditionary force.
300km is approximately the distance from Tokyo to Nagoya. The journey time is approximately 90 minutes by today’s Shinkansen. A journey on the Antarctic ice floes, however, is not that simple. The speed of a snow tractor pulling several sleds weighing two tons each when laden is only 4km to 5km per hour. Consequently, even in the summer when the weather is good, the journey one way takes about two days. A journey in the winter, when the Sun never rises all day and the weather is poor took up to a month one way. This is because we were closed off twice by blizzards (snowstorms with strong winds of over 20m per second.) that continued for about a week.
Investigating Climate Changes Using 1 Million-Year-Old Ice
Upon finally reaching the inland base, I lived there with three other expedition members for approximately four months from October of that year until January of the following year. Communications with Syowa Base were every day, dependent only on wireless communications where a weak link was created on days when radio conditions were good, without interference from the aurora.
Our purpose in living at the inland base was to excavate (bore) the ice on the continental shelf under the base, and to take samples of snow/ice that had fallen going back across the ages. By analyzing the samples taken, we tried to recreate the changes in the climate and environment between then and now.
During the activities over the next two years by both we of the 12th team and our successors, the 13th, we were able only to bore down to a depth of 150m. Consequently, ice samples were later taken once again by the 24th and 25th teams over the two years from 1983 to 1984. At this time, we were able to take samples from depths reaching 700m, which was the objective. These samples are able to stretch back approximately ten thousand years into the past. At the time, I lived at Mizuho Base for one year, participating in the 24th team.
In 1995, it was decided to build a new observatory at a site on the dome near the center of the land mass, some 1,000km distance from Syowa base and even deeper into Antarctica. This later came to be called Dome Base. At Dome Base, about eight members of teams 36 through 38 spent three winters, taking ice samples at a depth of 2,500m, which covers a period back to 300 thousand years in the past. Thereafter, the only personnel who passed the winter in Dome Base were members of the 44th team. Due to our activities mainly in the summer, however, we succeeded in taking samples reaching a depth of 3,030m. That was just the other day, in January 2006. These were the first ice samples able to travel back 700 thousand years into the past. Most hopes are pinned on the analysis results from these.
Petroleum Is Needed to Use Water
Dog sleds were originally used for journeys around Antarctica. The Sakhalin dogs such as Taro and Jiro, about whom I wrote at the start, had to be brought to far-off Antarctica in order to pull the sleds. Meanwhile, show tractors came to replace dogs as the main agent of travel. Initially, however, these were small snow tractors that could only pull one or two sleds.
The expedition members set out riding separately on the snow tractors pulling the sleds. They made progress by digging holes in the hard south polar snow every one or two kilometers to plant flagpoles as markers. Later, they simply ran full-power on the white snowfields as long as they could see. After continuing this monotonous drive, they stopped running when night fell. A camp would then be set up. On journeys with small snow tractors, triangular tents are erected that are designed not to yield to the wind. Meals are taken inside the tents, and when everyone has finished eating, they climb into their sleeping bags and go to sleep.
The water used in cooking is made by melting the snow on the continent, of which there is a limitless supply outside the tent, using a portable stove that mainly uses oil as a fuel. When the meal is over, the cooking equipment and utensils are cleared away, but in many cases, the dishes are washed by being scrubbed with the snow outside. There is an abundance of snow, but oil is needed to make water from this snow, so the lifestyle did not use water except for cooking. This is because using an excess of water would increase considerably the amount of fuel that needing to be carried.
A new large snow tractor was developed for the 9th team, which planned a return trip from Syowa Base to the South Pole and back, because of the scale of the journey. These snow tractors were equipped to enable not only cooking, but also with beds for sleeping. These large snow tractors thereafter were shipped in quick succession to Antarctica, and became the mainstay of future journeys.
Licking Tableware Clean
During the 12th team’s winter voyage, three large snow tractors were used in addition to the two small ones. When closed in by a blizzard, all ten members of the expeditionary force lived in these large snow tractors. They lived only going outside for snow for cooking, to fetch fuel for the vehicles, and to go to the toilet. To urinate, they used beakers in the vehicles which were thrown out of the vehicle windows every day. On some days, they could not take even a single step outside. As for me, I lived for several days at a time by stayed huddled inside my sleeping bag, which was spread across the passenger seat of the vehicle, and when sleeping, I simply lowered the reclining seat.
Consequently, it was a chore even to dismount the vehicle to wash dishes in the snow. After a meal, I nearly always merely licked the dishes clean with my tongue and used them like that, without washing up. There were even some people who wiped their dishes clean using toilet paper. But after wiping, the toilet paper had to be disposed of somewhere. This gave rise to the problem of garbage disposal. At the time, there was no sense that we should reduce our amounts of garbage. It was just because disposing of waste paper was a chore that there were so many people who licked their dishes clean. Washing the dishes in water was out of the question. This was because we were very aware that water, or the fuel with which to make water, was extremely valuable.
Toilets at Mizuho Base
At this time, Mizuho Base was still called an inland base. For us, the four members of the 12th team, spending time at the inland base was like living in a freezer. It was the complete opposite of how things are used in Japan. Even in Antarctica, where the outside is extremely cold, inside the freezer was kept warm by using a paraffin stove. The stove was set so that it warmed the entire room from the center of the freezer. On top of the stove a large pot approximately 50cm in diameter and 40cm tall was placed, and the team member whose turn it was to cook would bring in snow shoveled from the outside and released into the pot to make water. Particularly in the evenings, the amount of fuel supplied was reduced somewhat, but the stove was kept burning all day long.
Consequently, there was no sense of valuable fuel being squandered, as snow was placed in the pot on the stove to make water. This was because fuel was burned for heating regardless. As a result, only the amount of water needed was made. The dishes were also washed after a meal, which was different from the travel party. The water made for the four members of the team at this time was approximately 30l a day on average. We used about 8l a day each.
So, how were the toilets? We dug a cave in the snow and set up a wooden frame within, and then laid a rather large polythene bag inside and used that to go to the toilet. Further, when the bag was full we would take it out to the surface of the snow and simply throw it away. Replacing the toilet bag was one of the major tasks for the person on cooking duty. So-called living waste, such as organic waste from the kitchen, was also placed in a polythene bag and abandoned on the outside ice field in the same way. After a time, snow would cover the bags, hiding them from view. As the snow fields returned to being covered in white, there was no sense of contamination. After a long period of time, snow would pile on snow, so the waste gradually sank deeper and deeper into the snowdrifts, and would be encased by snow that turned to ice. After several thousand or tens of thousands of years, it will be carried to the coast by the flow of ice from the Antarctic land mass, and finally will be washed into the sea.
To burn or bury the waste?
There were people who though that if it takes several tens of thousands of years from discarding the waste until it is washed out to sea, the Antarctica is the optimum site for dumping nuclear waste. Radiation emitted from nuclear waste is extremely harmful to human beings, but the amount of radiation emitted gradually decreases over time. After several tens of thousands of years, it changed to material that is harmless to humans. Consequently, by burying the waste in the ice at the South Pole, it should be fine after enough time has passed.
Actually attempting this idea, however, was not particularly felicitous. It is not fully understood what effects the radiation from nuclear waste may have on the Antarctic ice. It may raise the temperature of the ice, causing the ice from the landmass to flow more rapidly into the sea. If such a thing were to happen, far from recent temperature rises, sea levels around the world might rise suddenly. At any rate, if South Polar ice were to all flow into the oceans, just the ice at the Antarctic would raise sea levels by 60 to 70m globally. If this were to happen, we humans would not have any way of stopping it.
I would now like to return the discussion to waste at Mizuho Base. Waste abandoned on the ice fields becomes invisible, buried under the snow, so there is no sense of contamination. The amount of waste itself, however, is not reduced, and this says only that the visual sense of contamination dissipates. Consequently, the conversation naturally became one of should the amounts of waste be reduced? The quickest and easiest solution would be to burn as much waste as possible, and then bury the remains in the snow. Team members who advocated this burned flammable waste on the snow fields diligently. This, however, became a major point of discussion. There was the counterargument that burning the waste merely scattered the gasses caused by incineration, such as CO2, and flammable gasses such as soot, etc., over the surrounding area, and contrary to the intention, this would further pollute the South Pole. No conclusion was reached, and if the person on cooking duties favored burning, the waste was burned, and if the person favored placing the unburned waste in a polythene bag and dumping it on the snow, that was what they did.
The South Polar Environment and the Problem of Garbage Disposal
Recently, the importance of the environment and the protection of the ecology have come to be called for strongly throughout the world. The environment and ecology of Antarctica are no exception. In 1991, the “Protocol on Environmental Protection to the Antarctic Treaty” was adopted by the parties to the Antarctic Treaty in Madrid, Spain. This protocol was subsequently ratified by all 26 member states of the Antarctic Treaty by 1997, and became valid in January of the following year, 1998.
The protocol also became enforceable, and the Japanese Antarctic survey team started making an effort to bring back to Japan as much as possible, including waste left behind by previous survey teams. By the start of the 1990s, the amount of waste brought back from the Antarctic was approximately 40 tons a year, but reached 100 tons in 1999, and since 2000 about 200 tons a year has been brought back. The returned waste is processed in the same way as all other garbage within Japan.
It is almost impossible, however, to bring back all the waste material. Currently, the returns are limited to cans and bottles, batteries, waste fluids, used oil, and other harmful substances. Flammable materials are burned to reduce the amount of waste brought back, in the same way as at Mizuho Base.
As there is the problem that dioxins are emitted, the burning of flammable materials on the snow around Mizuho Base and Dome Base was stopped, just as before. Instead, the waste is taken to Syowa Base and burned in rigorously prepared facilities. The scattering of gasses created by incineration around the surrounding area, however, remains unchanged.
Bringing Feces Ash Back to Japan
Excrement is a major problem. Since the start of Antarctic expeditions, the travel parties have excreted suitably on the surface of the snow outside the vehicles. In the case of Mizuho Base, as stated earlier, we excreted into a polythene back in a hole in the snow, and then periodically disposed of the bag by discarding it on the snow. Even at Syowa base, the facilities at the time did not include a toilet, and it is said that many people walked outside, mainly to the nearby cracks in the ice floes on the ocean shore. In other words, they were going to the toilet in the sea. Meanwhile, a flush toilet had been built within the base, and when this was full with a set amount of human waste, it was flushed into the sea. This is basically the same.
The sea ingests and breaks down everything, and can be thought of as having a kind of maternal existence that breaks down into not waste, but natural organics. If vast quantities of waste are released at the same location, however, the ocean’s processing abilities are exceeded, and awareness has been raised to the links with ecological destruction. Recently, therefore, a policy has been adopted in which feces are broken down using biotechnology and the water content removed before being burned, and then the ashes brought back to Japan. With the policy adopted by Dome Base as well, a similar process is performed and the ashes taken back to Syowa Base, before being transported on to Japan.
The people living in the Antarctica bring everything they need to live with them from outside the continent. Consequently, if everything brought to Antarctica is returned to its original site, including waste materials, at the very least the Antarctic itself will be unaffected by human activities. Currently, however, this is impossible. Given that the human lifestyle itself is woven complicatedly into the surrounding environment, there is no way to make the environmental impact zero except by not living there.
How Much Water Does a Person Need?
There is a folk tale called “How Much Land Does a Man Need?” by the Russian literary giant Tolstoy. The outline of the story is as follows.
“You just need land to be able to make some money. Anyone able merely to obtain enough land need not fear even the Devil.” This sets the Devil, who overhears a poor farmer talking to himself, to scheming. Through the Devil’s intervention, the farmer obtains land, cultivates the land, sells the harvest and makes money, and then buys more land with the money that he has made, thereby continuously increasing the area of land he owns. The farmer then goes out to where there is a herdsman who has never heard of farming, and tries to obtain an even larger slice of land. The herdsman is generous. He says that if the farmer can leave at daybreak and return to the spot from which he departed before the Sun sets, then the herdsman will sell him all the land encompassed by the path he has taken for a pittance. Instead, if the farmer does not return to the starting point before the Sun sets, he will forfeit all of the money.
The farmer courageously sets out. He continues to walk to obtain the widest land area possible, all the while telling himself that he’s still OK, still OK. When he turns the final corner to return to his starting point, he is in competition with the Sun. As he had tried to greedily obtain too much land, he ended up traveling too far to be able to return to his starting point before the Sun set. At any rate, in the end, he runs, and runs, and runs, and is able to reach his departure point even though he is severely short of breath. Then the herdsman says, “Congratulations for winning such a large area of land.” At this point, however, the farmer drops down dead. The herdsman digs a hole in the ground to bury the body. The size required is about that of a large rug. This is the crux of the story.
Water is an indispensable commodity for human life. Without water, all life, including humans, would die. Scarcely any grasses or trees bloom in the desert, where the amount of precipitation is extremely small. Nor are there hardly any animals.
Precipitation in the Antarctic is also small, with most places receiving less than a few tens of millimeters a year. Viewed from the perspective of the precipitation alone, the Antarctic is almost the same as the desert. It is not rain that falls, but snow. As the temperature is very low, the snow piles up without melting. The piled snow then is further compressed by the snow that falls on top, and gradually becomes ice. It is the lumps of ice compressed from snow that has piled up over thousands and tens of thousands of years that is the Antarctic continent. It is on average 2,000m thick.
The South Pole, which has little precipitation and is covered with white snow, is also sometimes called a white desert. Even with the low precipitation, there is an abundance of the commodity called water. This is because the Antarctic continent is a land mass made from ice. This is true of humans as well, however, and living creatures generally need water in its liquid form. In other words, at the South Pole humans were first able to use water by melting ice.
The melting point latent heat of the commodity of water is an extremely special characteristic, more so than ordinary materials. Consequently, to melt ice massive amounts of energy are needed. The members of the survey team, who have only the limited energy they bring with them from the outside world, must conserve that energy. Consequently, it is also necessary to conserve water. How much water do the survey team members use?
Previously, I said that the water used by the 12th team at Mizuho Base was approximately 8l per person per day. At that time, the water used at Syowa Base was approximately one ton per day. The number of team members who stayed throughout the winter was 29, so this makes about 30l per person.
There are no clear records regarding the amount of water used when Syowa Base was first built. The records from the 4th team, however, state that the amount of water used increased by 11 or 12l per person per day compared to a normal year. In other words, previously smaller amounts in the range of, say, seven or 8l had been used. This amount is unintentionally almost the same as the amount used initially at Mizuho Base. T
he reason why the amount of water used at Mizuho Base increased is greatly related to the installation of a bath. When the amount was 8l―in other words, when I was living at Mizuho Base with the 12th team―during our four-month stay, I only had one bath. We packed snow into a drum used to hold a radiator for cooling the engine that drove the generator, and boiled it. It was the 15th team in 1974 who installed a bath at Mizuho Base. But at the time, the water for the bath was only boiled a handful of times a year. Two years later, however, when a cyclical bath system was introduced that recycled the water twice a week, the water used came to exceed 40l per person per day. At the time, the amount of water used at Syowa Base was around 50l per person per day, so the quality of life at Mizuho Base could possibly be said to have been about the same as that at Syowa Base. The time I lived at Mizuho Base for nearly a year with the 24th team as well, we used almost the same amount of water. With Dome Base, a bath had been installed during the initial construction, and from the first the amount of water used proceeded to be about the same as at Syowa Base, approximately 50l per person per day.
Japan has been called a country of abundant water. The average annual precipitation is 1,700mm, which is almost incomparably wetter than arid regions. The amount of water used for living per person per day in Japan used to be around 200l at one time, but recently this has exceeded 300l and is now approaching 400l. In other words, this is more than 30 times the amount of water used in the early days at the Antarctic bases, and eight times the amount of water used recently at Syowa Base. In spite of which, there are cries that Japan is suffering a water shortage, particularly in the cities. Just how much water does one person need? Just how much water do they need to use to be satisfied? Can’t you see visions of Tolstoy’s Devil?
There Are Major Environmental Impacts Just by Living
At the start, I spoke of how everything needed for living at the South Pole has to be taken there. This is because life in Antarctica depends on the outside world for everything. If everything brought into Antarctica from the outside is returned to where it came from, including waste materials, human activities do not affect the South Polar environment. Considering the current situation for processing human excrement and burning flammable materials, however, it is impossible to live in Antarctica if all impact is excluded. Even merely scattering on the surface of the snow clean water created simply by melting the snow increases the temperature of the snow nearby, causing a type of phenomenon called heat pollution.
Antarctica is a place of almost no human activity. As has been said up till now, even just the lifestyles of the extremely limited number of people on site cannot exclude the impact of human activities, except if we were not to live there. Upon reflection, let us consider a place where many people live―Japan, for example. All around are various people leading various different lives. Consequently, it is not as easy to understand the great impact on the environment that people’s lives have as with Antarctica. Basically, however, the same phenomena most likely occur. In other words, merely by the act of living, we greatly affect the environment.
I said that even if water is consumed, it is still valuable in the Antarctica. But can the same thing not be said of Japan? In the big cities in particular, the lives of numerous people are greatly bound up with the supply of water. Consequently, no matter how you put it, although it is difficult to see, even in Japan, water is a very valuable commodity. Before becoming dissatisfied with the water shortage, don’t people first need to go on thinking about how much water is really necessary?
（ Quoted from『子どもたちに語るこれからの地球』 講談社（2006））