Asean has merely said what’s necessary to say. In the Chairman’s Statement of the 26th Asean Summit late last month, it says, “We share the serious concerns expressed by some Leaders on the land reclamation being undertaken in the South China Sea, which has eroded trust and confidence and may undermine peace, security and stability in the South China Sea.”

These aren’t fighting words. They’re mild compared to the pugnacious rhetoric that comes out of the mouths of certain leaders. But they express a necessary consensus on an insidious danger.

The alternative is for Asean to roll over and play dead while China carries out plastic surgery on the marine features of the South China Sea.

As expected, China takes umbrage. Its foreign ministry spokesperson says Asean summits have no business discussing the South China Sea, since only four of the group’s members are involved in disputes over islets in the area.

But Asean has said nothing about territorial and sovereignty disputes. It has merely voiced concern at the impact of reclamation activities on the peace, security and stability of the South China Sea.

That, too, argues China, is none of Asean’s business because China can do anything it wants within its own territory. Maybe, if it’s really doing it within its own territory.

But reclamation is being carried out in disputed waters. This is therefore behavior that should be covered by the Code of Conduct of parties in the South China Sea that Asean and China are listlessly negotiating. Thus Asean has every right to discuss it and to reach a common position on the matter.

What the Asean statement fails to mention is an even more urgent concern: the environmental impact of the reclamation.

The China spokesperson insists that “relevant construction is lawful, justified and reasonable and thus beyond reproach.”

I’ll put my money on an article written for the Rajaratnam School of International Studies by researchers Youna Lyons and Wong Hiu Fung that says “large scale reclamation work in the South China Sea using living coral reefs as building material is causing severe environmental damage. It is also against international law.”

The researchers cite high resolution commercial satellite imaging that exposes China’s mechanical dredgers breaking up and raising hard materials from the sea, including coral reefs and all living organisms clinging to them, and then compacting them to create new land territory. Thus coral reefs in the Spratlys are being destroyed on a massive scale.

That is hardly “reasonable and beyond reproach.” Those coral reefs survived the millenniums while nurturing a wealth of biodiversity that has served humankind in good stead. But recently seized from their beds and wrecked by machines, some of them are lost forever. Lose them all and their biodiversity and you’ve lost much of the future.

Lyons and Wong point out that the coastal waters of the littoral states of the South China Sea are stressed and overfished. That there’s still a large fish catch in those waters may be due to larvae and juvenile fish drifting from the South China Sea reefs.

If those reefs were all converted into real estate, there would be much less fish to feed the people of eastern Asean and China itself.

International law obliges China not only to use sustainable management practices but also to consult with other affected states so that the transboundary impact of its reclamation could be prevented or managed. China hasn’t consulted anybody.

The China reclamation and its impact on the environment must therefore be addressed in the Asean-China talks toward a Code of Conduct in the South China Sea.

It should also be taken up in all forums that care about biodiversity as a common heritage and as a large piece of the future of humankind.

Jamil Maidan Flores is a Jakarta-based literary writer whose interests include philosophy and foreign policy. The views expressed here are his own.

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Source: The Jakarta Globe