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THE
Coral-Triangle Initiative, as reported on in this
issue’s front and Environment pages, is a classic
example of how initiatives to save the planet must take
a multilateral approach, or people sink together.
In
Singapore, where the leaders of the BIMP-Eaga (that’s
Brunei,
Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines East Asia Growth Area)
are meeting on the sidelines of the Asean Summit,
officials have recognized the urgency of a proposal to
create a high-level council composed of leaders from
Southeast Asian states bordered by the Coral Triangle.
The mission: to save, according to the office of
Agriculture Secretary Arthur Yap, this
5.7-million-square-kilometer area of the world’s richest
source of marine resources from environmental
destruction spawned by global warming and other forms of
ecological degradation.
Part of
the Philippine proposal also involves the formation of a
parallel group of experts and scientists to study the
impact of climate change, specifically on fisheries, and
determine the best mitigation and adaptation measures
for the Coral Triangle—that vast area within the
Indo-Pacific that contains the highest levels of coral
diversity and the richest marine life in the world.
Beyond
the BIMP-Eaga, the
Philippines
is pushing for a bigger multilateral partnership in the
form of a Coral-Triangle Council at the ministerial
level. Manila thinks this is necessary to mobilize
support among six Asian states bordered by this marine
area. The other countries that have a stake in saving
the area are Papua New Guinea, Timor Leste and the
Solomon Islands.
Secretary Yap estimates the combined fisherfolk
population of the six countries to be at least 120
million.
On
Monday, BIMP-Eaga members agreed to set in motion an
initiative to protect the Coral-Triangle initiative; the
remarkable thing about this one is that it involves not
just the countries that host the rich fishing areas, but
also the world’s largest tuna consumer-countries like
Japan and the European Union. Presidential adviser Jesus
Dureza quite clearly explains the need for a
multilateral approach: tuna, for example, are spawned in
the BIMP-Eaga seas in Sulu-Sulawesi, but after spawning,
the tuna go around the world and are caught outside the
subregion.
“The
initiative is really to have some kind of protocols that
will see to it that while we preserve the biodiversity
here because it is where they spawn, the countries that
benefit from what we are doing must also contribute
somehow. So these are going to be worked out,” Mr.
Dureza was quoted as saying.
As
things stand, the
Philippines
and Indonesia already have existing databases on tuna
caught in the area, which will be shown to experts to
determine if there is “overcatching” in the area.
An
interesting footnote is the report by Mr. Dureza that
China has signaled its interest to be a BIMP-Eaga
development partner next year.
Now
China, as the world’s most populous nation, certainly
needs to be engaged at all times and at all levels on
the issue of resources, because as Philippine experience
has shown in past tensions over fishing grounds in the
South China Sea area, one can’t avoid reckoning with a big neighbor
with a giant appetite. Members of a top-level Senate
delegation to China in the 1990s still recall how
Chinese officials smilingly delivered an ominous
reminder to the Filipinos: don’t whine that we’re
setting up fishermen’s shelters in disputed areas;
remember we have a billion mouths to feed, and we’re not
invading other countries to feed them.
Make
that “not yet invading.” For unless countries and
neighbors work together to save one of the last rich
multiboundary marine areas as the Coral Triangle, soon
every country desperate to look for fishing grounds—as
China’s wrangling with the Philippines in the ’90s has
shown—will be tempted to stray into others’ territory
and spark conflict.
The home
of 50 percent of tuna-spawning areas for yellowfin,
bigeye and skipjack and the world’s most valuable fish,
the bluefin tuna, the Triangle also contains 75 percent
of all coral species known to science; 75 percent of the
world’s mangrove species; 45 percent of the world’s
seagrass species; 58 percent of tropical marine
mollusks; six out of eight species of marine turtles; 22
species of marine mammals and migrating populations
of whale sharks and manta rays; and more than 3,000
species of fishes.
All that
wealth, as expected, is steadily being laid to waste by
overfishing and destructive fishing methods; burgeoning
seafood markets; sedimentation and pollution; and
development and tourism activities, according to the
Philippine government experts. Worse, the phenomenon
called coral bleaching—one of the effects of global
warming—has combined with reckless consumption to
imperil the Coral Triangle.
How
exactly can creating a council help such a sensitively
balanced ecological zone, and not spark any more useless
talking?
According to Secretary Yap, a council allows the
Philippines and neighboring states that surround the
Coral Triangle to exchange technologies; share
their knowledge on conservation and management; conduct
joint monitoring and surveillance activities; and build
an effective database of information that will guide
future planners and decision-makers in saving the
world’s richest source of marine life.
The
Philippines has a big stake in protecting the area: it
has at least 1.6 million fisherfolk and is the
eighth-largest fish producer in the world, with an
output of close to 4.5 million metric tons a year valued
at P146 billion.
But the
five other concerned neighbors feel their stake is just
as important. The irony of their collective situation is
this: each one has a life-and-death issue at stake in
the Triangle, but if any one of them goes on its own in
a bid to salvage purely its own people’s interest, the
whole Triangle could be destroyed sooner than feared,
even now. |
