We all know that the South China Sea has become a political and military flashpoint. But amidst the talk of territorial and jurisdictional claims and heighted tensions, one thing often overlooked is this: the safety and continuing functioning of marine life systems in the SCS.
This is a common concern for all the coastal states around the sea: the Philippines, China, Vietnam, Malaysia, Brunei, and Taiwan, and even of many states beyond it. These states would want these life systems preserved, conserved, and sustained, because their collapse would cost much to their economies, political and social stability, and ways of life. How so?
First, ecosystem collapse in the SCS would have dire consequences to the food security, health, lifestyles, and livelihoods of the people in the SCS coastal states. It would have an effect as well on environmental stability and security of their agriculture, manufacturing, trade, commerce, and social services. Their people live mostly in coasts or near the coast. They’re among the world’s high consumers of fish and seafoods (~45 kg/yr per capita), which they source mostly from the SCS. Seafoods are their important source of protein and nutritional minerals. Culturally, their emergent and indigenous lifestyles and traditions have defining connections to the SCS in terms of subsistence, cuisine, building materials, trade, commerce, and spaces for recreation and leisure.
Second, their agriculture and industries are mostly located in plains near their coasts, and even those farther away are affected by or are closely dependent on the rainfall, thermal variations, and climatic conditions created by the hydrometeorological and oceanographic dynamics in the SCS. The SCS has reserves of hydrocarbons and many minerals that are important to their economies. Its high marine biodiversity has rich potentials for biotechnology applications in food production, human health, veterinary health, energy development, and industry. This is important because biotechnology is estimated to reach a global value of US$ 244 trillion.
Third, the peoples and productivity of the states and communities around the SCS constitute a big portion of the total productivity of the wider Indo-Pacific region. This region contributes to over 57% of global GDP from 2015-2021. The likelihood is high, or at least considerable, that the disintegration of life systems in the SCS would devastate the social and economic well-being of the nation states around its waters. It would consequently have effects of epic proportion to the world’s economy and well-being.
Life systems in the SCS are already facing serious existential threats. The climate crisis is one. It is global in scale and, unfortunately, is beyond most SCS countries to significantly do something about. It’s an existential threat in that it threatens primary productivity in both land and sea, agricultural and industrial production, and human life and lifestyles.
Another threat is ecologically destructive human behavior. This includes culturing and harvesting fisheries and seafoods beyond sustainable levels; illegal, unreported, and unregulated (IUU) fishing; plastic and other forms of pollution, and the reef- and habitat-harmful and fisher-displacing belligerence attending territorial and jurisdictional conflicts in the SCS. Many states have conflicting claims to areas in the SCS, and unfortunately, some of these claims are being pursued or staked in belligerent ways that cause collateral threats to life systems in the SCS.
The SCS is a highly fragile ecological system. It is a lake-like body of water with narrow and limited connecting channels to the rest of the world’s oceans. Its life systems and ecological dynamics are hardly enriched and sustained by other seas. A threat to its life systems would be serious — to itself, to the region, and to the world.
China can choose to moderate the threats
China plays a big role in both creating and moderating the threats. It is among the world’s biggest emitter of carbon that cause the climate crisis. It can moderate its emissions, and that would help alleviate the crisis. It has the world’s largest fishing fleet, and so is in the best position to ease fishing pressures in the SCS (its most immediate tropical fishing grounds) and surrounding seas.
It is noticeably the most coercive and belligerent in insisting on its expansive territorial claims in the SCS, and it could moderate, if not eliminate, this threat to ecosystems in the SCS. This is the decent thing to do given that the international arbitral tribunal has already formally rejected its claims as being both historically flimsy and legally shaky.
But China is an SCS neighbor that is deserving to be considered a friend. And as a friend, it may choose to wield its immense power to help protect life systems in the SCS that sustains us all.
One option for states around the SCS, including China, is to pool their scientific capabilities to secure and sustain ecological functions and productivity in its waters. Ideally, this is to be divorced from and entirely autonomous of the ongoing disputes in the area. They may opt for science diplomacy, a modality of states engaging in scientific collaborations over a common interest, despite their disagreements over other interests.
Urgency of collaborating on scientific explorations
In the SCS, science diplomacy would be about states collaborating on scientific explorations on how best to strengthen and sustain marine life systems as a common concern, for how they enrich and sustain the economic, social, cultural, and environmental security of peoples around the SCS, and of nations beyond the SCS. This, while territorial and jurisdictional disputes are being resolved.
The urgency and rationale for this are compelling: the loss of life systems in the SCS would be epic; its consequences to all states around it and even beyond, would be irreversibly devastating. This is an ecological fact. But losses and gains in territories and jurisdictions come and go. They are merely epochal. This is an historical fact.
Historically, science diplomacy has been a pedagogy of engagement among states marked by institutionally arranged technical collaboration and goodwill. The design and details of the scientific tasks may differ across the thematic focus of the collaboration. In the past, notable science collaborations included space science and exploration, energy sourcing and development, environmental protection, biodiversity conservation, and arms control. In the SCS, coastal states — individually, in groups, or all together — could collaborate on mobilizing science to better understand, appreciate the value of, secure, and sustain ecological functions and dynamics in this commonly shared and commonly beneficial body of water.
There has been collaborative science done in seas and oceans elsewhere. They take the form of a diplomatic engagement among participating States. Among them, the Arctic Council, the Atlantic Alliance, and the Antarctic Treaty. These are scientific collaborations to advance equitable and conservational access and use of living and non-living resources, improving environmental management and protection, and securing the rights of peoples and Indigenous communities to pursue preferred livelihoods and lifestyles.
While there have been problems in these endeavors, two things are notable: (1) conserving resource systems is a continuing concern and commitment, and (2) despite opposing interests of the parties over many other issues, there have been no open displays of belligerence; the states involved have refrained from habitat-destructive inter-state actions in the areas covered by the collaborations.
So, why not give science diplomacy in the SCS a chance? – Rappler.com
Ben S. Malayang III is Silliman University professor emeritus and USAID Fish Right Program research fellow for West Philippine Sea. The views expressed and opinions contained in this article are those of the author’s and do not necessarily reflect the views of USAID or the Fish Right Program.
The USAID Fish Right Program is a partnership between the governments of the United States and the Philippines to promote fisheries management and marine biodiversity conservation. Fish Right enables sustainable fisheries by reducing threats to biodiversity and improving marine ecosystem governance.