A Decades-Old Idea for the South China Sea Resurfaces: Make a Contested Area a Marine Park, Instead

Jul 20, 2016 | Steve Mollman
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One of the sea’s main areas of contention is the Spratly archipelago, an area the size of Tunisia featuring emerged rocks, tiny islands, and hundreds of coral reefs that various nations claim as their own. (China claims the entire archipelago, and nearly the entire sea and everything in it, as its own.) Back in the early ’90s, marine biologist John McManus proposed turning the area into an international marine reserve, with “a truce to ownership aspirations for a definite period, such as 50 years, with an option for review and indefinite renewal.” This, he argued, would benefit a wide range of nations. He noted the archipelago serves as an important breeding ground for marine life, and that currents move in such a way as to distribute larval fish to the coastal areas of a region that otherwise suffers from severe overfishing. The Spratlys, he wrote, “could be considered a ‘savings bank’ where commercially important fish and invertebrates (as capital) are saved from overharvest (albeit unintentionally for now), and supply a constant flow of larvae (as interest) to areas of depletion.” Antonio Carpio, the senior associate justice on the Supreme Court of the Philippines, revived the idea on Friday (July 15).