Pacific Islands’ Perspectives on Maritime Security Issues and Their Implications for Regional Ocean Governance in the Pacific

Introduction

Although Pacific Island nations and territories are diverse in culture, policymaking, and economic structure, there are socio-ecological concerns informed by general trends of regional and global development in the framework of environmental challenges that affect peoples’ livelihoods in Oceania to varying yet overall significant degrees. Maritime security issues are thereby at the foreground of the region’s policymaking discourse as the island states’ economies, societies and cultures are inherently intertwined with and highly dependent on the ocean’s resources. Contemporary approaches to counter and adapt to consequences of climate change and detrimental interference of human activities in the marine ecosystem of the Pacific Ocean are overshadowed or often marginalized due to rising geopolitical competition and the general prioritization of geostrategic and commercial interests in the regional political landscape. In this context, Pacific Island countries and territories’ perspectives on maritime security reveal the complex and intersectional nature of it while giving useful insights into incentives for a socio-ecological paradigm shift in Pacific regional ocean governance. I focus my analysis on the issues of deep-sea mining (DSM) and Illegal, Unreported, and Unregulated (IUU) fishing as they are examples in which aspects of maritime security considerations at the intersection of socio-ecological, geostrategic, and economic concerns are particularly salient in this context.

The Cases of DSM & IUU Fishing in Oceania

The discourse about deep-sea mining entails various security aspects at the intersection of socio-ecological, commercial, and geostrategic concerns and has gradually come to affect Oceania’s policymaking. For some countries in the region like Nauru, Kiribati, or Tonga, DSM holds promises of much-needed additional revenue. Additionally, for private and state-owned enterprises outside of Oceania that hold exploration contracts with the International Seabed Authority, DSM provides opportunities to explore and, eventually, commercially exploit minerals like manganese or cobalt which are essential to support trends in emerging green technology industries. Critics point out that there is yet too little knowledge about the deep sea and how the vast network of marine ecosystems is being impacted by DSM.[1] However, there is general agreement in the scientific community that too hasty mining efforts would have detrimental effects on the overall health of the oceans. The high dependency of Pacific Island states on Blue Economy industries like fishing, tourism, or renewable energy, makes them particularly vulnerable to environmental consequences derived from interferences in marine ecosystems. A study from 2019 that evaluated various data from the Clarion-Clipperton-Zone (CCZ) – one of the major areas in which large amounts of deep-sea minerals occur – confirms that DSM has an evidently significant detrimental effect on its marine biodiversity and concludes with a recommendation to assure more efficient protection through the warranty of additional Areas of Particular Environmental Interest (APEI) in which mining is prohibited. More recent findings also revealed discoveries of oxygen-building capacities by polymetallic nodules in the deep sea that challenge current understandings of marine biodiversity mechanisms and scientific assumptions about the development of life itself. Under consideration of on-going environmental concerns impacted by climate change such as erosion, sea-level rise, and damages to coral reef biodiversity, mining in the Pacific without actual knowledge about its long-lasting ecological effects implicates significant consequences for Pacific Islanders livelihoods.

One of those consequences involves increasing concerns about Pacific Island countries’ high dependency on various sectors in fishing industries that are closely tied to issues of food and labor security. With the deterioration of marine biodiversity, and especially the reduction of diversity formation of coral reefs, migratory patterns of fish stocks that are crucial for the regional fishing industry, like various species of tuna, change and are likely to move further into areas that are outside of the countries’ exclusive economic zones (EEZ) and, with that, out of their maritime jurisdiction. Coastal reefs are providers of major food supplies for local communities, and simultaneously an essential part of the blue economies in Oceania. Their sensitive ecosystems are particularly vulnerable to activities that interfere with their environment such as DSM. Aside from ecological concerns, the further migration of crucial food and economic resources such as tuna into the high seas additionally aggravates existing challenges at the intersection of geostrategic and economic security concerns. Considering this, societies and economies that are heavily dependent on marine resources become more vulnerable to activities of exploitation and overfishing as the question of maritime jurisdiction is less clear under the broad and open formulation of high sea regulations in the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS). The execution of unilateral monitoring of overfishing activities and, more importantly, the application of legal consequences that hold actors accountable, is less feasible on the high seas due to its open nature of legal regulations, and also holds the potential to increase tensions in, or close to, disputed maritime territories. At the same time, this facilitates activities of Illegal, Unreported, and Unregulated (IUU) fishing. For Pacific Island nations specifically the lack of technological and personnel capacities for monitoring provides an additional challenge in this regard.

The Intersectional Nature of Ecological Maritime Security Challenges

The transboundary and intersectional nature that informs aspects of fishing and the marine ecosystem tied to maritime security challenges demonstrates an increasingly significant challenge not only for Pacific Island nations and territories, but also for other nations bordering the Pacific; especially those with industries in sectors such as fishing, manufacturing and energy. In this context, international cooperation in protecting the health of the oceans from various security aspects is crucial. This requires enhanced commitment by regional parties to formulate regulations that encompass a shared understanding of maritime domain awareness (MDA) in the Pacific. However, expanding regional strategic competition, especially between the U.S. and China, that is informed by contesting ideological visions and interpretations of the rules-based international order (RBIO) forces other regional parties to take firmer positions in this regard and focus on geostrategic concerns. While Indo-Pacific strategies as pronounced by Japan, the U.S. and Australia, or China’s Maritime Silk Road agenda under the Belt and Road Initiative are highly imbued with a rhetoric that emphasizes geostrategic concerns backed by commercial interests, the Pacific Island Forum’s (PIF) leading regional guidelines like the 2050 Strategy for the Blue Pacific Continent and the Boe Declaration Action Plan (2019) first and foremost prioritizes socio-ecological security concerns. Moreover, the guidelines relate to principles of interconnectivity and reciprocity. This has the effect that the interdependence between people and ecosystems are highlighted and interpret aspects of peace and prosperity in direct interrelation with a healthy community-environment relationship.  Even though non-Pacific countries like the U.S., Australia, or China increasingly acknowledge climate change as major security concern and integrate it into official strategies and policymaking, the rhetoric and general trend in Pacific regional policymaking ultimately reveals a prioritization of geostrategic concerns over socio-ecological ones. Only more recently there have been more visible trends in regional policymaking to engage closer and more actively with Pacific Island perspectives on par with geostrategic and economic concerns, as becomes evident through the launch of the Partners in the Blue Pacific (PBP) in 2022 or South Korea’s Action Plan for Freedom, Peace and Prosperity in the Pacific resulting from the 2023 Korea-Pacific Islands Summit. This is a significant step as Pacific Island leaders are both regionally and globally at the forefront of the discourse on multilayered maritime security concerns and promote an interpretation of regional order that favors socio-ecological concerns within policymaking strategies that consider a healthy balance between social, economic, and geostrategic interests.

Conclusion

The consideration of Pacific Island countries’ perspectives on maritime security reveals the complex nature of environmental challenges that affect food, health, and economic security of the people in the region. In addition, the primarily socio-ecological lens they apply to regional and global visions of a Blue Pacific Continent has the potential to enhance international cooperation in ocean governance of the wider Pacific region. Further issues that are implicit in concerns of maritime security for Pacific Island nations and territories, yet due to the format of this article were not further elaborated on, are climate-induced migration in the context of food and labor security, and questions of sovereignty in terms of ocean governance due to sea level rise and erosion that transform Pacific Islands’ boundaries of maritime jurisdiction.

Major challenges to such attempts are contesting ideological interpretations of international law and order in the framework of increasing geopolitical competition that demand more attention on geostrategic concerns as well as the multilayered nature of maritime security challenges that affect nations and territories in the region in different ways. Considering this, the active integration of Blue Pacific perspectives into regional policymaking of ocean governance has the potential to incite a gradual paradigm shift toward the prioritization of a healthy marine ecosystem in the wider Pacific region. To support this trend, the following points are crucial:

• Enhanced acknowledgment and exploration of the intersectional nature of maritime security challenges by non-Pacific Island countries,
• Support of Pacific Island leaders’ regional and global role as promoters for a Blue Pacific Continent through enhanced diplomatic, socio-cultural, and economic engagement,
• The creation of a program that supports the exploration of possibilities to establish a regional framework for Pacific regional ocean governance with the objectives to define a more coherent and collective understanding of maritime domain awareness in the Pacific, fill loopholes of maritime jurisdiction on high seas, and enhance international cooperation to counter activities that operate in gray-zone areas like IUU fishing.

To facilitate the application of these points, existing strategies and action plans with overlapping agendas and based on similar approaches to the principles of peace and prosperity can serve as a starting point, like the Indo-Pacific Partnership for Maritime Domain Awareness (IP MDA) launched in 2023 as a Quad initiative. Moreover, diplomatic actions that strengthen cooperation and political as well as socio-cultural engagement with Pacific Island countries like the Pacific Island Leaders Meeting (PALM) with Japan, or the ROK’s recent efforts of the 2023 Korea-Pacific Island Summit can serve as valuable discourse platforms. Finally, to create a more unified awareness among the wider Pacific region, the formulation of policies and legislations should be discussed based on aspects of shared responsibility, collective resilience, and contributive diplomacy, as it facilitates the flexible adaptation to individual nations needs and capacities.