The Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague, Netherlands, on July 12 ruled in favor of the Philippines in a maritime dispute with China, concluding that China’s claims of historical rights over the bulk of the South China Sea were invalid.
So far commentaries have largely put emphasis on military, strategic and economic concerns. In fact, this arbitration award is not just an issue of geopolitics and sovereignty, but about the sustainability and wellbeing of our international commons.
The South China Sea is one of the most biodiverse areas on the planet — home to nearly 76 percent of the world’s coral species and 37 percent of the world’s reef fish. After consulting numerous experts and examining satellite imagery, the arbitral tribunal found that China’s recent large-scale land reclamation and construction of artificial islands in the Spratly Islands (Nansha Islands, 南沙群島) had caused grave harm to the coral reef environment and fragile ecosystems.
In addition, the final ruling clearly said that Chinese authorities were “fully aware of” and “actively tolerated” Chinese fishermen using propellers to harvest endangered giant clams — a method that damages marine life. These activities violate China’s obligations under the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea.
University of Miami, Florida, marine biology professor John McManus has called upon China and other nations in the region to end their conflicting views over territory and declare the South China Sea a special protection zone, like the Antarctic Specially Protected Area.
This proposal is morally appreciated and theoretically possible under international law, but it might face practical difficulties in this case. In particular, the disputed area is strategically important for military forces, the transport of international trade and hydrocarbon drilling.
However, we should not overlook the role of environmental peace-building in post-conflict settings. More specifically, internationalized management of natural resources can provide a useful opportunity to build trust between nations. International environmental law could mainstream sustainable considerations into the post-conflict activities of nations and international organizations.
Successful examples include environmental cooperation on water resources as specifically addressed in Annex IV of the October 1994 peace agreement between Israel and Jordan. Peru and Ecuador jointly created and manage “peace parks” — ecological protection zones in the Cordillera del Condor, Ecuador — as part of efforts to end long-standing border disputes.
At the multinational level, the World Bank has established a Post-Conflict Fund to finance projects with environmental sustainability elements, such as the 2012 recovery plan of Mindanao in the Philippines. Furthermore, since 1999, the UN Environment Program’s Post Conflict and Disaster Management Branch has managed several post-crisis environmental assessments in Afghanistan, Nigeria, Congo, Syria and the Balkans. These types of environmental assessments are sometimes explicitly featured in international litigation documents.
Overall, these efforts suggest that environmental considerations are continuously affecting peacemaking activities worldwide. Today, although Beijing has not addressed any environmental issue in its public statements, a multilateral action plan for South China Sea regional assessment and ecological restoration should be included in the post-arbitration negotiation agenda. Ultimately, international lawyers might not only defend the political interests of their nations, but also the beauty of our environment.
Yang Chung-han is a doctoral candidate researching international environmental law at the University of Cambridge and a member of the Taipei Bar Association.
Chinese agents often target Taiwanese officials who are motivated by financial gain rather than ideology, while people who are found guilty of spying face lenient punishments in Taiwan, a researcher said on Tuesday. While the law says that foreign agents can be sentenced to death, people who are convicted of spying for Beijing often serve less than nine months in prison because Taiwan does not formally recognize China as a foreign nation, Institute for National Defense and Security Research fellow Su Tzu-yun (蘇紫雲) said. Many officials and military personnel sell information to China believing it to be of little value, unaware that
Before 1945, the most widely spoken language in Taiwan was Tai-gi (also known as Taiwanese, Taiwanese Hokkien or Hoklo). However, due to almost a century of language repression policies, many Taiwanese believe that Tai-gi is at risk of disappearing. To understand this crisis, I interviewed academics and activists about Taiwan’s history of language repression, the major challenges of revitalizing Tai-gi and their policy recommendations. Although Taiwanese were pressured to speak Japanese when Taiwan became a Japanese colony in 1895, most managed to keep their heritage languages alive in their homes. However, starting in 1949, when the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) enacted martial law
“Si ambulat loquitur tetrissitatque sicut anas, anas est” is, in customary international law, the three-part test of anatine ambulation, articulation and tetrissitation. And it is essential to Taiwan’s existence. Apocryphally, it can be traced as far back as Suetonius (蘇埃托尼烏斯) in late first-century Rome. Alas, Suetonius was only talking about ducks (anas). But this self-evident principle was codified as a four-part test at the Montevideo Convention in 1934, to which the United States is a party. Article One: “The state as a person of international law should possess the following qualifications: a) a permanent population; b) a defined territory; c) government;
The central bank and the US Department of the Treasury on Friday issued a joint statement that both sides agreed to avoid currency manipulation and the use of exchange rates to gain a competitive advantage, and would only intervene in foreign-exchange markets to combat excess volatility and disorderly movements. The central bank also agreed to disclose its foreign-exchange intervention amounts quarterly rather than every six months, starting from next month. It emphasized that the joint statement is unrelated to tariff negotiations between Taipei and Washington, and that the US never requested the appreciation of the New Taiwan dollar during the
RSS