Pacific, Climate & Environment Profile Series: Anaïs Rémont

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As AFRAN celebrates 10 years of connecting people, knowledge and expertise across France, Australia and the Pacific, our Pacific, Climate & Environment Profile Series continues to showcase the diversity of perspectives that make international research collaboration stronger.

Today, we are pleased to feature Anaïs Rémont, a PhD researcher at the Australian National Centre for Ocean Resources and Security (ANCORS), University of Wollongong, whose work brings a legal and social sciences perspective to one of the world’s most unique systems of international cooperation: Antarctic governance. Her research explores transparency and capacity-building within the Antarctic Treaty System, asking an important question that extends well beyond Antarctica: how can international environmental governance enable more countries to participate meaningfully in the decisions that affect our shared future?

Where law, science and diplomacy meet

Anaïs’s journey sits at the intersection of international environmental law, science and diplomacy. A specialist in international and European environmental law, she previously worked on international negotiations at the French Ministry for Ecological Transition and has developed extensive experience in multilateral environmental negotiations. More recently, she completed intensive training in the international law of the sea and maritime dispute settlement at the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea. Today, her PhD research focuses on the Antarctic Treaty System, examining how its governance mechanisms can become more transparent and inclusive. Antarctica is often approached primarily through the natural sciences—and understandably so. Yet decisions about its future also raise fundamental legal, political and geopolitical questions.

Who participates in those decisions? Whose scientific contributions are recognised? And how can countries with fewer financial or technical resources make their voices heard?

These questions lie at the heart of Anaïs’s work.

Rethinking what scientific participation means

Science occupies a particularly important place within Antarctic governance. But contributing to Antarctic science can require considerable financial, technical and logistical resources—from research vessels and polar expeditions to permanent infrastructure. This can create significant barriers for countries that do not have the same resources or established presence in Antarctica. Anaïs’s research therefore encourages a broader understanding of what scientific participation can look like. Contributing to Antarctic knowledge does not necessarily have to mean maintaining a research station or regularly sending scientific expeditions to the continent. Sharing data, making scientific knowledge accessible and conducting relevant research from home countries can also provide meaningful ways to contribute. This broader approach raises important possibilities for making international environmental governance more inclusive, particularly for countries whose perspectives may be relevant to Antarctic and Southern Ocean discussions but whose resources are more limited.

As Anaïs puts it:

“Law can provide tools to challenge existing rules and make environmental governance more inclusive.”

Antarctica and the Pacific: more connected than they may seem

At first glance, research on Antarctic governance may seem distant from a series focused on the Pacific. In reality, the two regions are deeply connected. The Southern Ocean links the Pacific, Indian and Atlantic Oceans, with ocean circulation connecting ecosystems, resources and climate processes across these vast regions. What happens around Antarctica can therefore have implications far beyond the polar continent, including for climate and food systems. But Anaïs’s work points to another connection—one related to participation. For Pacific countries, many of which have fewer financial and technical resources than larger states, questions about access to scientific knowledge, representation and meaningful participation in international decision-making are particularly relevant. Thinking about inclusion in Antarctic governance can therefore contribute to a much wider conversation about how international environmental institutions recognise different forms of expertise and enable countries to contribute.

Bringing another perspective to climate and environmental conversations

Anaïs began connecting with AFRAN around 2023, while looking to strengthen links within the France–Australia research community. Her involvement brings a distinctive social sciences and governance perspective to a network where many climate, environmental and Pacific conversations naturally involve researchers from the physical and natural sciences. That diversity matters. Responding to environmental change requires understanding ecosystems and climate processes, but it also requires examining the rules, institutions and decision-making structures through which societies choose to act. Anaïs’s work reminds us that scientific cooperation is therefore not only about producing more knowledge. It is also about considering who can access that knowledge, who can contribute to it and who has a seat at the table when decisions are made. As AFRAN celebrates its first ten years, her story illustrates the value of bringing different disciplines into conversation—from law and diplomacy to ocean and climate science—and of creating connections that can help make international cooperation more open, diverse and inclusive.