MANILA – (UPDATED 6:31 P.M) Because of China’s unbridled reclamation, the South China Sea “is already in an environmental crisis,” the Philippines’ envoy to the United Nations has warned in a forum, where experts estimated that US$280 million in ecosystem products and services have been lost thus far. In another forum in Palawan, National Scientist Angel Alcala said a fishery crisis was a distinct peril, affecting not just the Philippines but China and Southeast Asia.
With at least 800 hectares of ocean filling or reclamation done by China – including areas well within the UNCLOS-mandated exclusive economic zone of countries like the Philippines – the marine environment has been so badly damaged that the biodiversity benefiting at least five nations is in grave peril, the experts stressed.
Ambassador Lourdes O. Yparraguirre, Philippine Permanent Representative to the United Nations, issued her warning before a hundred UN legal experts in a June 10 forum organized by the Philippines that focused on the protection and preservation of the marine environment.
With the theme, “UNCLOS and the Protection of the Marine Environment,” the event was held at the sidelines of the week-long 25th Meeting of States Parties to the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (SPLOS) at the UN Headquarters.
In that meeting of State Parties, the Philippine diplomatic delegation stressed before the UN that China’s expansionist policy claiming almost all of the South China Sea should concern the international community as a whole.
Yparraguirre said China’s increasingly aggressive rhetoric and action in the South China Sea, “threatens the integrity of the Convention, our constitution for the oceans.” Ambassador Yparraguirre said.
UNCLOS, adopted in 1982 and entered into force in 1994, defines the rights and responsibilities of its States Parties with respect to their use of the world’s oceans, establishing guidelines for businesses, the environment, and the management of marine natural resources.
“Today, the Philippines would like to bring focus on one of the most important parts of UNCLOS. As States Parties, we share the duty to protect and preserve the marine environment under Part XII. We also – and this extends to non-States Parties too – need to cooperate on a global and regional basis in formulating rules and standards and adopt measures in order to carry out this duty,” Ambassador Yparraguirre said.
The Philippines is a State Party to UNCLOS, which defines the rights and responsibilities of nations with respect to their use of the world’s oceans, establishing guidelines for businesses, the environment, and the management of marine natural resources.