While it had achieved renown—or notoriety—for the protracted political tug-of-war, the South China Sea is, first and foremost, one of the most diverse and productive marine ecosystems in the world. The area covers some 3.5 million square kilometers of rich waters, responsible for an estimated 10 million to 16 million tons of fisheries landings, or about 12 to 15 percent of the total global catch.
As the plot thickens, Ma. Carmen Ablan Lagman of the Biology Department and Center for Natural Resource and Environment Research of De La Salle University tackled a spectrum of issues in a special paper “Converging on the Fisheries in the South China Sea” as part of Stratbase ADRi series of commissioned studies. These are salient points of the paper.
In the region, this translates to some three-million jobs associated with fisheries and some $66.7 billion in total economic activity supported by fishing. Because it is bounded by some of the fastest-growing economies in the world, this means about two-billion inhabitants in this region rely on fishing in terms of food security, livelihood, or export.
And because fish stocks in the Yellow Sea, Gulf of Tonkin, East China Sea, all the way to the Gulf of Thailand are fully fished or depleted, this puts additional pressure on the South China Sea, whose stocks harbor healthy coral reef habitats and abundant fish.
The Philippines in its arbitration case against China appropriately sought to clarify national fisheries jurisdiction. Tracing back to 1982, the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, or Unclos, resulted in competing claims from countries based on their definitions of their Exclusive Economic Zones, or EEZ. More recently, China’s contentious nine-dash line territorial claim in 2009 highlighted the economic value of the marine resources in the region.
Thus, beyond the undoubtedly many political ramifications of the tribunal’s decision, it brought to fore something more visceral for the Philippines. After all, the most common type of encounter between the two countries in the disputed waters were between fishers and national coast guards. The country asserted—and the tribunal agreed—that Chinese forces had prevented Filipino fishers from accessing traditional fishing grounds.
Media and other observers have noted that beyond the implication of this ruling on resources, asserting fisheries interests signal national sovereignty, especially vis-à-vis what many see as relentless and unstoppable Chinese aggression in the region.
It is thus no coincidence that the tribunal has highlighted the small-scale fisheries sector in its decision. Unlike oil and gas, fish are mobile, dynamic, and hardly uniformly distributed. They traverse jurisdictions and boundaries and are particularly volatile, as their abundance depends on the balance of harvest and recovery.
The arbitration court resolution is a clear occasion to explore means for the states to reinforce this ruling by improving both the national and regional fisheries management agenda through follow-up action. As the Philippines possesses the moral high ground on the issue, it must take the opportunity to lead this advocacy while advancing its own fisheries management policy.
How can this be achieved? One way is to broker bilateral cooperation agreements to establish trans-boundary marine parks of joint protection. The few remaining healthy, resource-rich areas and habitats, such as the Spratly Islands and Scarborough Shoals, should be declared “no-take zones.” Doing this will preserve the living resources and replenish adjacent habitats. The Spratly island group can be declared an international marine park based on ecological considerations such as the duration of pelagic larvae, surface circulation patterns, seasonality in abundance of adults and larvae, and reproductive strategies, among others.
There are other international ocean policy instruments that can be used to encourage regional cooperation. These include the FAO Reykjavik Declaration (2001), which called for taking the ecosystem approach to the management of fisheries, the introduction of management plans, and the systematic monitoring of resources, among others. More existing instruments, like the FAO Code of Conduct for Responsible Fisheries (1995) and the World Summit on Sustainable Development (2002), should also be studied.
Finally, the decision presents a good opportunity to develop regional-level policies targeted toward small-scale fisheries. While this sector’s contribution to food security and poverty alleviation has been established, the vagueness in what constitutes “small-scale fisheries” has contributed to the lack of policy instruments directed to it. Taking its cue from the European Parliament 2016 resolution toward innovation and diversification in the sector, small-scale fisheries should be seen as a solution, rather than a contributor, to the problem of overfishing.
Thus, the Philippines’ unique profile as an archipelago and its recent achievement in bringing China to task in the South China Sea demands that it take a more active role in advancing its own fisheries management policy and, more crucially, connecting this to a broader platform in the region.