The South China Morning Post published excepts and analysis today regarding the recent WikiLeaks release of Hillary Clinton`s hacked emails.
The article asserted that the beginning of the US pivot to Asia began in 2010. "Secretary of State Hillary Clinton first brought up the issue of `freedom of navigation` in the South China Sea at an Association of Southeast Asian Nations meeting in Vietnam."
Hillary Clinton gave a speech to Goldman Sachs bankers in October 2013 where she stated that “48 per cent of the world’s trade, obviously that includes energy but includes everything else, goes through the South China Sea."
Clinton went on to say that the Chinese “have a right to assert themselves” in the region, but the US needed to “push back” to keep China from getting a “chokehold over world trade”.
Clinton called the Pacific Ocean the American Sea.
"Clinton said that as the debate became `more technical`, the Chinese said they would claim Hawaii, and that she had countered by saying the US had proof of purchase."
David Rosenberg is Professor Emeritus of Political Science at Middlebury College in Vermont. He maintains an on-line resource for the South China Sea, which includes the map shown here.
There is a political tug-of-war underway to control key parts of the South China Sea (SCS).
The South China Sea, the Spratly Islands and the Coral Triangle, contains some of the most bio-diverse marine resources in the world. The diverse ecosystems exist on the islands, atolls, cays, large reefs, shallow shoals, sandbars, shelfs, platforms, depressions, submerged river valleys, basins, troughs, and deep trenches.
Reed Bank is a sunken island covering 3,423 square miles with a depth varying between 30 and 150 feet. The area is rich in marine biodiversity, and contains large oil and gas deposits. By comparison, the Island of Hawai`i covers 4,028 square miles.
The South China Sea is bounded on the west by the Asian mainland, on the south by a rise in the seabed between Sumatra and Borneo, on the east by Borneo, the Philippines, and Taiwan, and on the north by Taiwan and the Fujian province of China.
A number of geographic sites are claimed by multiple countries including China, Taiwan, the Philippines, Vietnam, Cambodia, Brunei, Indonesia, and Malaysia.
Countries want pieces of the land and sea for strategic control, island-building, oil and gas drilling, fishing rights, shipping lanes, and to establish marine protection areas.
The Permanent Court of Arbitration issued significant rulings in July, in a dispute between the Philippines and China. One ruling rejected Beijing's extensive claim of sovereignty in the South China Sea, while the other asserted that China had caused environmental damage as it constructed artificial islands in the area.
NPR reported, “Kent Carpenter, a professor of biological science at Old Dominion University and an expert witness for the tribunal, says The Hague tribunal's findings were nothing short of damning. ‘The tribunal clearly decided that China had caused severe harm to the coral reef environment,’ he says. China also violated its obligations under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea ‘to preserve and protect fragile eco-systems.’”
Also appearing on NPR was John McManus, a professor of marine ecology at the University of Miami. The Chinese are “using a grinding ball. It's got grooves and teeth, and it spins around and tears up living coral and parts of the coral reef substrate to make more gravel and sand to be sucked up and used for island-building” and the dredgers are creating plumes of sediment which smothers whole marine ecosystems.
The International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) World Conservation Congress has two mechanisms for the introduction of resolutions: one giving months of review, and the other for last-minute resolutions involving recent events.
The Permanent Court of Arbitration rulings in July allowed for a last-minute resolution to be introduced at the IUCN World Conservation Congress, held in Honolulu in September.
The IUCN motion was filed by the Center for Environmental Legal Studies in New York with 11 co-sponsors, including the Ecological Society of the Philippines, the Sierra Club, and organizations from Australia, Bangladesh, Lebanon, and Pakistan.
The South China Sea is a sea because that is its name.
The word “sea” has no acceptable definition. Sea often means a subset of an ocean. Generally, a sea is surrounded by land masses, or self-contained by ocean currents.
In addition to excluding fresh water lakes, the definition usually also excludes salt water lakes like the Aral Sea, Caspian Sea, Dead Sea, and the Salton Sea, some of which were connected to the ocean in ancient times.
The word “sea” has no acceptable definition. Sea often means a subset of an ocean. Generally, a sea is surrounded by land masses, or self-contained by ocean currents.
In addition to excluding fresh water lakes, the definition usually also excludes salt water lakes like the Aral Sea, Caspian Sea, Dead Sea, and the Salton Sea, some of which were connected to the ocean in ancient times.
The definition also excludes extraterrestrial oceans.
The Moon`s Sea of Tranquility, contain no liquids.
“High Seas” means the area beyond national exclusive economic zones (EEZs).
Sea
|
Area
|
Average Depth
|
Deepest Point
|
Square Miles
|
Feet
|
Miles
| |
Mediterranean
|
965,300
|
4,900
|
3.3
|
Caribbean
|
1,063,000
|
7,200
|
4.8
|
South China Sea
|
1,400,000
|
3,976
|
3.1
|
The United Nations' Convention on Biological Diversity set a political target to protect 10 percent of oceans. Subsequently, science-based studies have found that an average of 37 percent of the ocean needs to be protected to keep the global ocean healthy. Currently only 4 percent of the ocean is part of marine protected areas.
The expanded Papahānaumokuākea Marine National Monument represents 0.4 percent of the ocean, while the South China Sea represents 0.96 percent of the ocean.
Meanwhile, the IUCN motion on Protection the South China Sea was forced off the floor through parliamentary procedures.
Antonio M. Claparols wrote a Commentary which appeared in the Philippine Daily Inquirer on September 19th, 2016.
"These are sad times for the conservation movement, with the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) rejecting our proposal to study the possibility of setting up a marine peace park in the disputed South China Sea.
We presented our motion, titled “Conservation in the South China Sea” and supported by 11 cosponsors, during the 6th World Conservation Congress held in Hawaii last Sept. 1-10. But to our dismay, the biggest environmental union in the world rejected it.
We had cited a study made by Dr. John McManus and Dr. Ed Gomez, which was presented during the International Coral Reef Symposium held at the East West Center in Hawaii last June 16-26, and which stated that an ecological study in the South China Sea and the Pacific Ocean is in the making.
The study of McManus and Gomez reported that the coral colonies in the South China Sea are five times more diverse than any other on the planet, and that 80 percent of the coral colonies in the Spratly Islands have been damaged and destroyed by China’s continued dredging and island-building activities.
The Philippines gets over 25 percent of the fish catch from the Spratlys using sustainable fishing methods.
Last July the Permanent Court or Arbitration based in The Hague ruled that China’s claim over almost the entire South China Sea is without basis. It was in view of this development, and in regard for all the studies presented at the International Coral Reef Symposium, that we decided to file a motion to set up a marine peace park in the disputed waters.
With the motion’s rejection, and in accordance with the rule of law and IUCN procedure, we filed a 7-page appeal. But the secretariat rejected it for reasons we do not know. So we decided to take it to the full plenary for a vote.
Before then, we were told by the director-general to withdraw the motion on grounds that the Chinese government had approached her and other officials, and that the motion would supposedly destroy the IUCN. We told her that the motion’s text is purely about conservation and there is nothing political in it.
Pressure was brought to bear on the motion’s principal sponsor, the Center for Environmental Legal Studies at Pace Law School in New York. It was forced to withdraw the motion in plenary, much to the objection of its young lawyers who had helped us during the process.
We had argued: How can one save the whales and make a marine sanctuary for whales—a proposal that was approved—and other marine areas if one does not protect the richest coral colonies, the beginning of the food chain of the marine environment from where all the phytoplankton and zooplankton emanate?
We had also pointed out: The oceans are dying from continued acidification, and gyres and dead zones have increased more than marine protected areas.
But sadly, it seems the Union knows so little of the marine environment. And sadly, it seems to be controlled by China in terms of continued funding (in whatever capacity, it is not mentioned in the Union’s financial plan and audit reports).
We were able to read our statement in plenary, and it earned a thundering ovation from the members. But sadly, it seems that politics and economics now rule the world’s biggest environmental union. It has had its baptism of fire.
And these are indeed sad times for the conservation movement."
Several groups lost an appeal seeking to overturn the IUCN decision not to have the full body vote on the South China Sea motion. The appellees were the Center for Environmental Legal Studies, International Council on Environmental Law, Environmental Law Institute, Ecological Center of the Philippines, Australian Rainforest Conservation Society, Ecological Society of the Philippines, Environmental Law Institute, Green Line, Coastal Area Resource Development and Management Association, Sierra Club, Leipzig Zoo, Frankfurt Zoo, Instituto de Conservacao e Desenvolvimento Sustentavel do Amazonas, Indus Earth Trust, and the Fundacion Biodiversidad.
Several groups lost an appeal seeking to overturn the IUCN decision not to have the full body vote on the South China Sea motion. The appellees were the Center for Environmental Legal Studies, International Council on Environmental Law, Environmental Law Institute, Ecological Center of the Philippines, Australian Rainforest Conservation Society, Ecological Society of the Philippines, Environmental Law Institute, Green Line, Coastal Area Resource Development and Management Association, Sierra Club, Leipzig Zoo, Frankfurt Zoo, Instituto de Conservacao e Desenvolvimento Sustentavel do Amazonas, Indus Earth Trust, and the Fundacion Biodiversidad.
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