The latest news says China has stopped reclaiming areas around atolls to create artificial land in the West Philippine Sea. But it is suspected that it has, in fact, completed its reclamation plan before that announcement, and proceeds to continue with the next step, which is building infrastructures on the reclaimed land.
According to Philippine news sources, about 500 hectares were reclaimed in April and May 2015, and the total area reclaimed could run into thousands of hectares.
Pictures of atolls affected show rings of land around deeper central portions of atolls, and only small openings that would allow water exchange between the lagoons inside, and the sea outside of atolls.
As I said in an earlier column, this restriction of water exchange will make the water inside relatively stagnant, and affect the transport of nutrients as well as larval and adult marine organisms from one atoll to another or to other large land areas such as Vietnam and western Philippines.
Put another way, the connectivity between reclaimed atolls and other areas in the West Philippine Sea is practically lost.
This lost connection would be felt in the long run in terms of reduced biodiversity including fishery species.
I repeat what I said earlier that lagoons of atolls concentrate nutrients and biodiversity (e.g. fish), which are released to the environment surrounding atolls (the West Philippine Sea) during high tides and are then transported by ocean currents to other areas.
I can appreciate the concern of fishermen in Palawan and Luzon if things do not change; their livelihoods will be severely affected by reduced volume of fish available to them.
Under the present situation, it would benefit Filipino fishers if the Chinese would agree to close to fishing in most areas in West Philippine Sea.
This would allow biodiversity to build up to the extent that increased biomass of fish will spread to coastal areas of the Philippines.
But what is happening is that the Chinese themselves are collecting and exploiting the marine biodiversity, including corals, giant clams, and fish, and preventing Filipino fishermen from fishing in many areas of the West Philippines Sea.
The idea of no-take marine protected area stated above could probably be a potential solution to the issue at hand if both the Chinese and the Philippine governments can agree.
Instead of quarreling about ownership, both countries can agree to establishing the contested area, consisting of atolls, islands, coral reefs along with the deeper areas surrounding them, as a marine protected area jointly protected by the two countries.
This way, all nations that surround the Sea would benefit from spillover from a transborder marine park (a kind of marine protected area) in terms of increased and abundant biodiversity in their own coastal areas.
The Philippines and Vietnam actually came to the idea of marine protected area way back in 2007. But the first to suggest this was a professor at the University of the Philippines, Diliman.
There are of course other aspects that need to be considered such as overflights, freedom of navigation, etc. which will need separate agreements.
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