AUTHOR’S COLUMN

MR. JAMES BORTON

is a veteran foreign correspondent who has been reporting on South Asia for over 30 years. He is a past non-resident fellow at the Stimson Center and is currently a non-resident Senior Fellow at the Foreign Policy Institute of the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS).

DISPATCHES FROM THE SOUTH CHINA SEA

R E V I E W

James Borton, author of Dispatches from the South China Sea: Navigating to Common Ground was interviewed by Tanya Vatsa of the Synergia Foundation.

Q1. You’ve covered Southeast Asia as a writer for over 25 years. What is it that drew you and continues to captivate you as a writer and what are the biggest changes you’ve seen in your time covering the region?

JB I came to Vietnam in 1997 to witness the nation’s renovation or Doi Moi especially following the arrival of the Internet. I was invited by Nguyen Anh Tuan, the founder of Vietnam Net to meet with his energetic young bilingual staff , who expressed interest in speaking with an American journalist and learning more about western reporting methods. I realized that the new generations of educated young Vietnamese consumed news online and that the government was ill prepared for the arrival of social media and its impact on Millennials and Gen Xers. During this time, Internet cafes were quickly opening up throughout the country and the region. The biggest change I have witnessed over the decades in South East Asia is the success of economic reforms that have lifted millions from poverty and prompted a rising optimism about the future. This is especially true in Vietnam. From Hanoi to Ho Chi Minh City, I engaged with the nation’s new entrepreneurs, who were starting businesses from software companies to spas. It was the Viet Kieu (overseas Vietnamese) optimism in Vietnam’s future that brought to me this New Vietnam. So through my lens I had a front row seat in chronicling how this country, one of the poorest in the world, joined the world to become a developmental success story.

Q2. Your book mainly focuses on Vietnam and the South China Sea. Before we get into the details of Vietnam, I’d like to get a little bit of context. Why did you focus on Vietnam for this book and how does Vietnam’s maritime policies, (defense, fisheries, eco-tourism, etc.) compare with other Southeast Asian players like Thailand, the Philippines and Indonesia?

JB Over the course of the past twenty-five years, I developed close friendships with some of Vietnam’s leading writers and journalists. As a result, this led me to examine and gain access to sources, many of them subsequently became close friends. Since I am a sailor and waterman, I was propelled to seek out fishermen to hear their stories taken from the East Sea. Several of my Vietnamese friends encouraged me to travel to the coastal areas to gather stories. The South China Sea (East Sea) is one of the richest fishing grounds in the world. This was initially not part of my rising development story but satisfied a personal desire to learn how the fishing industry was responding to Vietnam’s entry into the global markets. I also knew that industry’s fast paced development often took its toll on the environment. So coastal environment and ecosystems in Vietnam are under pressure from both the rapid industrialization and climate change. The drive from Da Nang to the historic UNESCO recognized Hoi An is lined with resorts and abandoned projects damaged from erosion because they were built too close to the sea. The timing for me to speak with the fishing community reflected a convergence of geopolitics and marine environmental issues. Conversations with both policy experts and marine experts inspired me to better understand the two fold threats they faced - increasing number of Chinese vessels on the sea and the escalation of extreme weather in the form of typhoons and coastal disasters. The rising challenges from the destruction of coral reefs associated with China’s purposeful and reckless transformation of small reefs and rocks into artificial islands with military structures was too big a story to ignore.

The mounting crisis related to sovereignty claims driven largely by the intersection of political and ecological features led me to meet the marginal coastal fishermen. I reached out to the fishers from Haiphong, Da Nang and Can Tho .I was generously invited aboard fishing trawlers and listened to their sad tales of attacks from China’s brutish offensive in the South China Sea, where Beijing’s steel hulled vessels rammed, and sunk Vietnamese wooded fishing boats. Other claimant nations, like Thailand, the Philippines and Indonesian fishers are all responding to the grave threats of attacks, piracy, climate change, including ocean acidification and coral reef loss. Vietnam’s ASEAN leadership role offers a steady hand at the helm to insure peace and stability in the region. Also, Vietnam’s marine scientists are fully engaged in establishing more marine protected areas to ensure that fish habitats are not destroyed. They understand that oceans matter for everyone.

Q3. We hear quite a lot about China’s naval power. It has maximum naval ships. Lesser known is that China has the most fishing vessels too. Could you give us an overview of the evolution of China’s fishing fleet?

JB China has been trying to turn the South China Sea into a Chinese lake for the better part of a decade. Beijing’s naval strategy has brought into the disputed sea a flotilla of coastguard vessels, and maritime militia to insure its control of the once fertile fishing waters. As part of this development, China is the recognized world leader in shipbuilding. China’s enhanced national directive includes at least 3000 reported blue water trawlers and somewhere up to 200,000 fishing boats. The armada of distant fishing vessels enables one boat alone to scoop up as many fish in a week as a local fishing trawler does in a year.

China is the world’s leading seafood exporter and the country’s population also accounts for more than a third of all fish consumption worldwide. Since they have already defined their own coastline, their fishing boats must sail farther into neighboring waters and as a far away as Africa, South America and the Pacific to exploit the waters of island nations. Despite making some reduction in subsidies for their domestic fishery, it has not reduced those for their global fishing fleet. It’s equally important to note that although the South China Sea accounts for 12 percent of the global catches, more than 50 percent of China’s global fishing fleet operates in this region. The predatory nature of Chinese fishing practices continues to destabilize the region and upset the fragile marine ecosystem.

Q4. Let’s look at solutions. You’ve called for Science Diplomacy in the South China Sea. You propose this as a way of reducing threats to both the political and ecological security in Southeast Asia. Could you explain the practicality of this solution?

JB I do believe that protecting marine environments and ensuring the ocean’s sustainability is a global issue, and becomes extremely valuable in the South China Sea. Science-based voices are vital to protect the region’s oceans, as coral reefs decline, industrial run-off continues, plastics pollution circulates, and overfi shing escalates—all this risks irreversible damage. Science diplomacy can establish a useful starting point for regional cooperation to deal with environmental and perhaps geopolitical problems. At the moment, there are increasing science-based conferences and webinars, where marine biologists and policy experts are communicating with one another. What I am witnessing among biologists and oceanographers alike is that the sea must unite rather than divide. Science is a common and apolitical language that brings allies and adversaries together with technology and innovation to address cross-border challenges. We see the need for this in our climate change crisis and in the current pandemic since no one nation can address this alone.

For years, science has been adopted as a diplomatic tool for peace building by many countries. Science can and does inform policy and has been used in scientifi c collaboration. It has been eff ective in the contested Arctic and in Antarctic. For example, the International Geophysical Year in 1957, paved the way for the Antarctic treaty, an accord achieved during the cold war that continues today to reserve an entire continent for peaceful discoveries. So my book argues that science diplomacy through conferences and webinars can and does provide a solid bridge that links science and policy. It provides a mechanism for long-term sustainable scientifi c collaboration for improving ocean governance and avoiding confl ict. More often the marine scientists and oceanographers also built trust and confi dence in shared marine surveys. In the past two years both Hanoi and Beijing have held such science-based conferences to address myriads of environmental challenges in the disputed South China Sea. The Philippines and Vietnam, planning to renew their joint oceanographic marine science surveys in the South China Sea, is a real-time example of science diplomacy.

Q5. Southeast Asia is often thought of as ‘Maritime Southeast Asia’ (The Philippines, Malaysia, Indonesia, Singapore, etc.) and ‘Continental Southeast Asia’ (Thailand, Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos and Myanmar). It seems the major geopolitical contests in both spheres center around water, be it maritime ‘South East South China Sea’ for the maritime sphere or the Mekong Delta for the continental sphere. Your book also examines water issues in the Mekong Delta. What do you think local governments can do to rehabilitate the delta?

JB The Mekong Delta in southwestern Vietnam is home to over 20 million people and has been regarded as the “rice-bowl” for Vietnam. It’s unique natural habitat with its thousands of animal species, plants and rice paddies are challenged by accelerating climate change. In fact, its river ecosystem is on the verge of irreversible collapse due the accumulative impact of climate change with increased droughts, fl oods, saltwater intrusion, and human-made activities like deforestation, pollution, upstream dams, sand mining and disappearing mangroves. This is not just a local or provincial government environmental problem; it must be seen as a multidimensional and multinational crisis.

With these dramatic changes aff ecting the livelihoods of millions, there’s a need to draw upon international and global science cooperation. It’s a problem that cannot be solved any longer by a simple unchallenged government edict or a “top-down” policy declaration. The rising sea level intruding into the rice fi elds continues to cause damage to thousands of hectares especially along the coastal provinces. The problems must be broken down and the fi rst is to take immediate steps to limit sea-level rise, particularly at high tides. The replanting of mangroves and the protection of those already in place must be given priority.

I have witnessed young student volunteers from Can Tho University go out into the provinces with their environmental science backgrounds and set up fi eld workshops in citizen science to better inform locals about the documentation of several environmental or water challenges through free downloadable science apps for measuring water quality. These volunteers are part of the Mekong Environment Forum, a local-based non-government organization (NGO) based in Can Tho that off ers Citizen Science or community-based workshops. I am proud to have co-founded the MEF, along with Nguyen Minh Quang. This grassroots participation to address environmental issues involves an active collaboration between scientists and interested local citizen to broaden the scope of research and to help compile data through community-based monitoring and Internet driven crowdsourcing strategies. While we may not be able to stop the Mekong Delta from sinking, we can slow it down with creative and transparent community-wide participatory environmental actions.

CONCLUDING NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR