Washington’s recent moves to double down on illegal, unregulated and unreported (IUU) fishing through a stronger maritime presence in Asia are welcome, analysts say, though they warn that countries in the region will not want militarised law enforcement that could spark bigger clashes in disputed waters and not just with Beijing.
Their comments are a response to United States National Security Adviser Robert O’Brien’s announcement last month that the US Coast Guard would deploy its newest fast-response cutters in the Indo-Pacific to police illegal fishing by China.
Earlier this week, David Feith, deputy assistant secretary for regional and security policy and multilateral affairs at the US Bureau of East Asian and Pacific Affairs, told journalists Washington would expand the number of shiprider agreements the US Coast Guard has with Pacific countries to help them counter China’s aggressive behaviour on the high seas and in sovereign waters of other nations.
Under a shiprider agreement, one country’s authorities are allowed to board law enforcement vessels or aircraft of another nation while they are on patrol, during which the former can authorise the latter to take law enforcement action on their behalf.
In some areas, such as the Northern Pacific, stateless fishing vessels display characteristics of Chinese registration. In addition, China’s maritime militia estimated to include more than 3,000 vessels actively carries out aggressive behaviour on the high seas and in sovereign waters of other nations to coerce and intimidate legitimate fishers in support of the Chinese Communist Party’s long-term maritime strategic goals, Feith said.
Gilang Kembara, researcher at the Centre for Strategic and International Studies in Indonesia, said Jakarta would not welcome a militaristic approach by the US to clamp down on IUU fishing.
I think it’s a good thing if the US offers Indonesia cooperation with their coastguard, since IUU fishing is a criminal activity, so we need law enforcement to fight it, he said. But if what they offer is cooperation with the US Navy, and this becomes a [military] issue
that approach is overblown because I don’t think IUU fishing is an existential threat to a nation.
Jay L. Batongbacal, director at the University of the Philippines’ Institute for Maritime Affairs and Law of the Sea, said the Philippines under President Rodrigo Duterte would also not welcome joint enforcement.
But [Manila] will probably be satisfied with information sharing on activities at sea, and for at least the last two to three years the government, especially the fisheries bureau, has actually taken advantage of information available from the US on foreign fishing activities in the Philippine exclusive economic zone (EEZ), he said.
According to a 2015 report published by the European Parliament’s in-house think tank, the 10 countries in the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean) account for an estimated one-fifth of global marine fish production, and fish exports from that region were worth US$11 billion that year. By comparison, the global IUU fishing industry is estimated to be worth US$23.5 billion annually, according to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization.
China, which has the world’s largest distant water fishing fleet, is the top perpetrator of IUU fishing. Its vessels are most active in the South China Sea which Beijing claims almost in its entirety though they are also present in other parts of the world, according to the Environmental Justice Foundation, a London-based advocacy group for global fishing sustainability.
The Overseas Deployment Institute think tank, also based in London, estimates that China has nearly 17,000 distant water fishing vessels, and at least 183 vessels in this fleet are suspected of involvement in IUU fishing.
Beijing has dismissed Washington’s efforts to rein in the practice as politically motivated. It maintained that it was continuing to crack down on illegal fishing activities, with foreign ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin saying in September that it had zero tolerance for IUU fishing.