It's the least hospitable place on Earth with its extreme cold and wind, and sovereign claims have been disputed for decades, yet Antarctica has become a model for international cooperation.

At the center of the collaboration is the Antarctic Treaty System, an international framework developed as the United States and Russia, in the midst of a Cold War, were preparing to lay strategic territorial claims on the continent.

Eschewing a territorial war in 1959, the two countries, joined by other Antarctic claimants -- Argentina, Australia, Chile, France, New Zealand, Norway and the United Kingdom -- and nations with interests in the area -- Belgium, Japan and South Africa -- agreed on a diplomatic solution: The nations would shift focus exclusively to the scientific research that had come to the forefront in the International Geophysical Year of 1957-1958. The countries, freezing their claims, declared that all Antarctic activity would be for peaceful purposes, preventing nuclear testing and militarization; any new establishments would have to be built for scientific research, not enforcement of previous claims.

The U.S. government, as a point of policy, has been clear that military presence only take the form of support for scientific ventures, providing resources such as icebreakers and vehicles to transport the more than 1,000 U.S. researchers that make up the bulk of the Antarctic population. In total, about 4,000 researchers worked on the continent in the 2005-6 summer peak, with groups of more than 200 from Russia, Argentina, Chile, Australia and the United Kingdom, which operate primarily along the coasts.

"Because of the remoteness of the area, any country that's really capable of a major effort in Antarctica is probably a signatory or at least accedes to it," said Mahlon Kennicutt, a professor of oceanography at Texas A&M University and the U.S. representative to the body that coordinates research in Antarctica, the Scientific Committee on Antarctic Research. Any government that wanted to participate could as long as they can adhere to the treaty's basic precepts. To date, 48 have become signatories with major research-conducting nations comprising the 28 Consultative Parties.

With funding of about $300 million, the National Science Foundation carries out U.S. policy that extends from the Antarctic Treaty. The NSF maintains the year-round U.S. facilities at the coastal McMurdo and Palmer stations and the Amundsen-Scott South Pole station, as first mandated by President Nixon in the 1970s and President Reagan in 1982. In the absence of a military presence, the NSF and Department of Justice enforce the U.S. law in the continent, 1978's Antarctic Conservation Act, which imposes fines or jail time for anyone disrupting the Antarctic ecosystem. With no mechanism for enforcement built into the treaty, order is maintained by peer pressure and laws passed by individual member nations, representing two-thirds of the worlds population, to protect Antarctic interests.

Working by unanimous consent, the Antarctic Treaty System has spawned a series of resolutions, regarding plants and animals in 1964, seals in 1972, and marine life in 1980. While discussing a crisis over mining issues in Madrid in 1991, the group drafted its most comprehensive framework, the Protocol on Environmental Protection to the Antarctic Treaty, which comprehensively limited human interaction with the continent, including a ban on any activities related to mining not for scientific research.

The United States updated its Antarctic policy in 1996 for the first time in two decades, incorporating the recommendations from the Madrid Protocol.

Donald Rothwell, a professor of international law at Australian National University, said Antarctic policy develops slowly in the absence of crises, such as the mining concerns that led to the creation of the Madrid Protocol.

"The legal issues have been fairly well identified. What we need is political will on the part of the Antarctic Treaty Parties," Rothwell said.

Evan Bloom, a deputy director for polar affairs at the U.S. Department of State and head of the U.S. delegation to the Antarctic Treaty Consultative Meeting, said the uncertain environmental impact of growing tourism could be a major point of discussion at the April 2007 Consultative Parties meeting.

Colin Summerhayes, the executive director of the Scientific Committee on Antarctic Research, said illegal fishing poses the largest risk to the treaty, but noted that bioprospecting, the search for species whose biology could be exploited for medicinal or other commercial applications, could become an issue.

"It's like an Amazon rainforest under the sea: It's very diverse. So the potential exists for unique chemical compounds," Summerhayes said.

Rothwell said bioprospecting falls in a legal grey area, because it is a combination of scientific research promoted by the treaty and the mining that it prohibits. Should Antarctic species become valuable, Rothwell added, the issue could unravel the treaty, whether by infringement or the reestablishment of claims.

Though the United States continues to disregard claims on Antarctica and reserves the right to lay claims of its own, the State Department doubts any would be made while the treaty was intact.

"I don't think there's any thinking at all, and there hasn't been for decades, about doing that, because there's no need," said Bloom.

Bloom said the treaty remains one of the most successful in promoting international cooperation.

And Rothwell said the treaty could be applied elsewhere, such as the Spratly Islands, a collection of small islands and reefs in the South China Sea, where, like Antarctica, there is no indigenous population, and where multiple nations have laid claim over potential natural resources.

"Letting countries [laying claim in the South China Sea] engage in scientific research, without the tension of sovereignty ... there's some chance of possibly acquiring the type of diplomatic and legal resolution of the issues that have been achieved in Antarctica," he said.

Chris Elfring, the director of the Polar Research Board of the National Research Council Board, which advises government agencies on polar science, talked about the combination of policy and science. "The policy world is slow and subtle, and you have to have faith that your best efforts to have good, fair discussions about [scientific] issues in the end play out and make for better policy."

-- By Adnaan Wasey, Online NewsHour