ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the prospects of realizing a post-colonial geography of Antarctica, in the realm of biological prospecting, by bringing about a radical transformation in the ways in which the science-geopolitics interface has been conceived, constructed and deployed over the past fifty years by the Antarctic Treaty Consultative Parties (ATCP) within the Antarctic Treaty System (ATS) through the mechanism of Antarctic Treaty Consultative Meetings (ATCM). In common parlance, bioprospecting is the evaluation of biological materials for the purposes of assessing their potential utility to the biotechnology industry. The ultimate goal is to develop marketable biotechnological inventions generally under the protection of patents. The bioprospecting represents a market-driven search for bioactive components in such living organisms as animals, plants, microorganisms or fungi to develop new commercial products. Bioprospecting comprises the following phases: sample collection; isolation, characterization, and culture; and screening for pharmaceutical activity.
