Maritime Disputes

World political leaders have gathered in Paris this week to negotiate a new universal climate change agreement. There is a need for unified commitment from national governments to cut greenhouse emissions to avoid the catastrophic effects of global warming and climate change. According to the Fifth Assessment Report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Southeast Asia is one of the two most vulnerable regions in the world to coastal flooding. The region is also predicted to face increased annual mean precipitation and extreme precipitation. Today, half a billion people live along the coasts of the semi-enclosed South China Sea, which the United Nations Environment Programme has identified as “an area of globally significant biological diversity.” Besides its fishery resources, the South China Sea, which is surrounded by Southeast Asian countries and China, is regarded as a strategic shipping route and also contains seabed hydrocarbon resources.

Coastal systems, such as those surrounding the South China Sea, are particularly sensitive to climate change effects. Many of the low-lying areas in both urban population centers and rural communities are vulnerable to sea level rise and experience submergence, coastal flooding, and coastal erosion. The warming and acidification of coastal waters will also have negative impacts on marine ecosystems, which the human populations rely on for their socio-economic livelihood and as a vital source of food security. Coral reefs, for instance, form critical habitats for marine life, including fish stocks, and serve as natural wave-breakers mitigating erosion along the coasts of the South China Sea littoral states, which are prone to big storms. The degradation of reefs through ocean acidification is bound to affect these developing economies.