CNN South China Sea News: Hague Tribunal Decision for Philippines Over China; Diplomat: China Ignore
South China Sea: Court rules in favor of Philippines over China
By Katie Hunt, CNN
Updated 2324 GMT (0724 HKT) July 12, 2016
Hong Kong (CNN) - An international tribunal in The Hague ruled in favor of the Philippines in a maritime dispute Tuesday, concluding China has no legal basis to claim historic rights to the bulk of the South China Sea. Chinese President Xi Jinping rejected the decision by the Permanent Court of Arbitration, which is likely to have lasting implications for the resource-rich hot spot, which sees $5 trillion worth of shipborne trade pass through each year. "China will never accept any claim or action based on those awards," Xi said. China had boycotted the proceedings.
The tribunal concluded that China doesn't have the right to resources within its "nine-dash line," which extends hundreds of miles to the south and east of its island province of Hainan and covers some 90% of the disputed waters.
China's Ambassador to the United States, Cui Tiankai, accused the tribunal of "professional incompetence" and "questionable integrity." Speaking at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, he accused the United States of engaging in military exercises that constituted "military coercion."
State Department spokesman John Kirby asserted that the United States, and the world, expect China to commit to nonmilitarization. "The world is watching to see if China is really the global power it professes itself to be, and the responsible power that it professes itself to be," Kirby said.
Viewed as a decisive win for the Philippines, the ruling could heighten friction in a region already bristling with tension, especially if it unleashes a defiant reaction from China.
The United States, which has been at odds with China over freedom of navigation in the South China Sea, urged all parties "to avoid provocative statements and actions."
Other countries could be emboldened
The ruling doesn't just affect China and the Philippines, but other countries that have competing claims with the nation over large areas of the sea. Malaysia, Vietnam and Indonesia have also taken exception to China's growing presence in the region and could now be emboldened to take further action. "If China's nine-dash line is invalid as to the Philippines, it is equally invalid to those States and, indeed, the rest of the international community," the lawyers who led the Philippines' legal team said in a statement.
Vietnam, which like China claims the Paracel and Spratly islands, strongly supports Tuesday's ruling, the country's foreign affairs ministry said. The Spratlys in particular are heavily contested, with China, Taiwan and Vietnam claiming all of them, and parts claimed by the Philippines, Malaysia and Brunei. "Vietnam strongly supports the resolution of the disputes ... by peaceful means, including diplomatic and legal processes and refraining from the use or threats to use force, in accordance with international law," ministry representative Le Hai Bình said.
Japan, a key U.S. ally and China's neighbor, issued a statement saying it "strongly expects that the parties' compliance with this ruling will eventually lead to the peaceful settlement of disputes in the South China Sea."
What's the U.S. role in all of this?
The United States is a major player in the region and has sent warships and military aircraft around the South China Sea, including near disputed reefs and shoals, citing international law and freedom of movement but triggering harsh warnings from China. Washington takes no position on the territorial disputes in the South China Sea but has called for an immediate end to land reclamation. President Barack Obama has urged a peaceful resolution to the dispute and while visiting Vietnam in May said that big nations shouldn't bully small ones.
But as China has been at pains to point out, the United States isn't among the 180 countries that have ratified the U.N. Convention on the Law of the Sea -- potentially undermining its clout on this issue. "This decision can and should serve as a new opportunity to renew efforts to address maritime disputes peacefully," the U.S. State Department said in a statement.
http://edition.cnn.com/2016/07/12/asia/china-philippines-south-china-sea/
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Of Course China, Like All Great Powers, Will Ignore an International Legal Verdict
In ignoring an upcoming verdict on the South China Sea, Beijing is following well-established precedent by great powers.
By Graham Allison
July 11, 2016
This week the Permanent Court of Arbitration (PCA) will deliver its award in the Philippines’ case against China over maritime disputes in the South China Sea. In a bid to thwart Beijing’s attempt to turn the South China Sea into its own virtual lake, Manila contends that China’s claim to exclusive sovereignty over all the islands and shoals within the nine-dashed line - which encompasses 86 percent of the Sea - has no basis in international law. There is not much suspense about what the tribunal will decide: it will almost certainly side with the Philippines. The United States and its allies have already started criticizing China for signaling in advance that it will ignore the court’s ruling, which one Chinese official derided last week as “nothing more than a piece of paper.”
It may seem un-American to ask whether China should do as we say, or, by contrast, as we do. But suppose someone were bold enough to pose that question. The first thing they would discover is that no permanent member of the UN Security Council has ever complied with a ruling by the PCA on an issue involving the Law of the Sea. In fact, none of the five permanent members of the UN Security Council have ever accepted any international court’s ruling when (in their view) it infringed their sovereignty or national security interests. Thus, when China rejects the Court’s decision in this case, it will be doing just what the other great powers have repeatedly done for decades.
From the day the Philippines went to court, China has argued that the PCA has no legitimate jurisdiction on this issue since it concerns “sovereignty” - which the text of the Law of the Sea treaty explicitly prohibits tribunals from addressing. When the Court rejected China’s objection, Beijing refused to participate in its hearings and made it clear that it will ignore the PCA’s ruling. The United States and others have criticized Beijing for taking this stance. But again, if we ask how other permanent members of the Security Council have acted in similar circumstances, the answer will not be one we like.
When the Netherlands sued Russia after the latter’s navy boarded and detained the crew of a Dutch vessel in waters off of the Russian coast in 2013, Moscow asserted that the court had no jurisdiction in the matter and refused to participate in the hearings. It also ignored a tribunal’s order that the crew be released while the dispute was being resolved. After the PCA ruled that Russia had violated the Law of the Sea and ordered Moscow to pay the Netherlands compensation, Russia refused.
Anticipating the Court’s ruling in the case brought by the Philippines, UK Prime Minister David Cameron proclaimed: “We want to encourage China to be part of that rules-based world. We want to encourage everyone to abide by these adjudications.” Perhaps he had forgotten that just last year the PCA ruled that the UK had violated the Law of the Sea by unilaterally establishing a Marine Protected Area in the Chagos Islands. The British government disregarded the ruling, and the Marine Protected Area remains in place today.
The United States has never been sued under the Law of the Sea because - unlike China - Washington has not ratified the international agreement and is thus not bound by its rules. Expect Chinese commentators to emphasize this point in the mutual recriminations that will follow the Court’s announcement.
The closest analogue to the Philippines case involving the United States arose in the 1980s when Nicaragua sued Washington for mining its harbors. Like China, the United States argued that the International Court of Justice did not have the authority to hear Nicaragua’s case. When the court rejected that claim, the United States not only refused to participate in subsequent proceedings, but also denied the Court’s jurisdiction on any future case involving the United States, unless Washington explicitly made an exception and asked the Court to hear a case. If China followed that precedent, it could withdraw from the Law of the Sea Treaty altogether - joining the United States as one of the world’s only nations not party to the agreement.
In the Nicaragua case, when the Court found in favor of Nicaragua and ordered the United States to pay reparations, the U.S. refused, and vetoed six UN Security Council resolutions ordering it to comply with the court’s ruling. U.S. Ambassador to the UN Jeane Kirkpatrick aptly summed up Washington’s view of the matter when she dismissed the court as a “semi-legal, semi-juridical, semi-political body, which nations sometimes accept and sometimes don’t.”
Observing what permanent members of the Security Council do, as opposed to what they say, it is hard to disagree with realist’s claim that the PCA and its siblings in The Hague - the International Courts of Justice and the International Criminal Court - are only for small powers. Great powers do not recognize the jurisdiction of these courts - except in particular cases where they believe it is in their interest to do so. Thucydides’ summary of the Melian mantra - “the strong do as they will; the weak suffer as they must” - may exaggerate. But this week, when the Court finds against China, expect Beijing to do as great powers have traditionally done.
Graham Allison is director of Harvard Kennedy School’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs and author of the forthcoming book, “Destined for War: America, China, and Thucydides’s Trap.”
http://thediplomat.com/2016/07/of-course-china-like-all-great-powers-will-ignore-an-international-legal-verdict/?utm_content=bufferd4b70&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=buffer
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China has been killing turtles, coral and giant clams in the South China Sea, tribunal finds
South China Sea environment
A May 11, 2015, aerial view of artificial islands built by China in disputed waters in the South China Sea, west of Palawan, Philippines.
Julie Makinen
China struck back loudly and forcefully Wednesday after an international tribunal invalidated many of its claims in the South China Sea. But Beijing has largely been silent about some of the tribunal’s most damning findings: that its activities there have “caused devastating and long-lasting damage to the environment.”
The Permanent Court of Arbitration investigated The Philippines’ claims that China has been doing grave harm to the region’s ecology, in violation of its commitments under the U.N. Convention on the Law of the Sea.
The panel of five judges consulted numerous experts, and what they found shocked even them, the tribunal wrote in its final ruling of more than 500 pages. Damage to the coral reefs in the Greater Spratly Islands spread for 48 square miles, and China was responsible for 99% of that, they said.
The tribunal found that China not only failed to prevent Chinese fishing boats from harvesting endangered species - including sea turtles - but also provided armed protection for those vessels. And it concluded that China was “fully aware of” and “actively tolerated” a practice called propeller chopping to harvest endangered giant clams - an activity that basically kills coral reefs.
China's claims in South China Sea are invalid, tribunal rules, in victory for the Philippines
The South China Sea is one of the most biodiverse regions in the world - home to 76% of the world’s coral species and 37% of the world’s reef fish. Because coral reefs provide crucial habitats for fish and fish larvae, widespread loss can have a major economic and social effect.
Professor John McManus of the National Center for Coral Reef Research at the University of Miami, one of the experts the panel referred to, called on China and other countries in the region that have been fighting for years over territory in the South China Sea to set aside their differences and declare the region an international protected zone, the way Antarctica is managed.
“If we don’t do this, we are headed toward a major, major fisheries collapse in a part of the world where [that] will lead to mass starvation,” he warned in remarks Tuesday to a panel in Washington organized by the Center for Strategic and International Studies. He noted that such a collapse would hurt not just China but many countries in the region. “Talk about military instability,” he said.
Although some of the damage was caused by dredging and island-building, the majority was blamed on the giant-clam harvesting using propellers. McManus called the practice “more thoroughly damaging to marine life than anything he had seen in four decades of investigating coral reef degradation,” the tribunal noted. Many of the clam shells are taken to the Chinese island of Hainan, where they are carved into decorative items and sold to tourists.
“There is no hope for many of these reefs to recover in the coming decades or centuries,” Kent Carpenter, a professor at Old Dominion University in Virginia and another coral expert consulted by the tribunal, said Wednesday from the Philippines, where he’s on a research trip. “China is trying to solidify its claims, and they obviously have decided not to worry about the environmental aspects. … The environment there is now just written off.”
China issued a white paper Wednesday in response to the tribunal’s ruling, but it did almost nothing to rebut the tribunal’s findings on the environmental issues.
Before the court’s ruling, the state-run China Daily newspaper ran a commentary Tuesday saying that “some countries slander that China developing the South China Sea islands and reefs has caused extensive damage of coral reefs. On the contrary, the truth is, China insisted on developing ‘green engineering and ecology reefs’ as the concept of environmental protection.”
International court's ruling in South China Sea case won't end the fight
The newspaper claimed that China had “conducted thorough in-depth research” and “applied dynamic protective measures during the whole process, to complete projects as well as achieve environment protection, to accomplish sustainable development” in the area. “After China completes the construction activities, it will greatly enhance the reefs environmental protection capability,” the paper added. “These practices can stand the test of time.”
China refused to participate in the tribunal’s proceedings, and did not respond to requests from the court to provide evidence of its efforts to protect the environment in the South China Sea or proof that it had conducted an environmental impact assessment - as required not only by UNCLOS but China’s own laws.
Dan Liu, a researcher at the Center for Polar and Deep Ocean Development at Shanghai Communications University, told the CSIS panel that the Philippine claims were “some kind of political mask” and questioned how the experts could evaluate the reefs unless they visited them personally - something nearly impossible given China’s non-cooperation with the tribunal.
But Carpenter said that satellite imagery and other available data made assessments relatively straightforward. The tribunal said that it and the experts it consulted found many of China’s public statements about its environmental stewardship in the South China Sea to be “contradicted by the facts” and that Beijing’s assessments of the effect of its construction was “largely in disagreement with the available information.”
Ashley Townsend, a visiting fellow at the Asia-Pacific Center at Fudan University in Shanghai, said the tribunal’s strong language on the environmental effect of China’s activities could shift the political dynamics, which until now have been dominated by strategic, military and economic concerns.
“Environmental degradation and depletion of endangered species by Chinese activities and island construction… essentially has been a background story to what’s been happening in the South China Sea,” he said. “Now there is a strong legal grounding” to criticize China on its environmental stewardship and open a “second front.”
“There’s a capacity to ... leverage global environmental activist networks to make this not just an issue about sovereignty and geopolitics but about the health and well-being of the global commons,” he said. “That’s more likely under the ruling.”
Nicole Liu in The Times’ Beijing bureau contributed to this report.
http://www.latimes.com/world/asia/la-fg-south-china-sea-environment-20160713-snap-story.html
By Katie Hunt, CNN
Updated 2324 GMT (0724 HKT) July 12, 2016
Hong Kong (CNN) - An international tribunal in The Hague ruled in favor of the Philippines in a maritime dispute Tuesday, concluding China has no legal basis to claim historic rights to the bulk of the South China Sea. Chinese President Xi Jinping rejected the decision by the Permanent Court of Arbitration, which is likely to have lasting implications for the resource-rich hot spot, which sees $5 trillion worth of shipborne trade pass through each year. "China will never accept any claim or action based on those awards," Xi said. China had boycotted the proceedings.
The tribunal concluded that China doesn't have the right to resources within its "nine-dash line," which extends hundreds of miles to the south and east of its island province of Hainan and covers some 90% of the disputed waters.
China's Ambassador to the United States, Cui Tiankai, accused the tribunal of "professional incompetence" and "questionable integrity." Speaking at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, he accused the United States of engaging in military exercises that constituted "military coercion."
State Department spokesman John Kirby asserted that the United States, and the world, expect China to commit to nonmilitarization. "The world is watching to see if China is really the global power it professes itself to be, and the responsible power that it professes itself to be," Kirby said.
Viewed as a decisive win for the Philippines, the ruling could heighten friction in a region already bristling with tension, especially if it unleashes a defiant reaction from China.
The United States, which has been at odds with China over freedom of navigation in the South China Sea, urged all parties "to avoid provocative statements and actions."
Other countries could be emboldened
The ruling doesn't just affect China and the Philippines, but other countries that have competing claims with the nation over large areas of the sea. Malaysia, Vietnam and Indonesia have also taken exception to China's growing presence in the region and could now be emboldened to take further action. "If China's nine-dash line is invalid as to the Philippines, it is equally invalid to those States and, indeed, the rest of the international community," the lawyers who led the Philippines' legal team said in a statement.
Vietnam, which like China claims the Paracel and Spratly islands, strongly supports Tuesday's ruling, the country's foreign affairs ministry said. The Spratlys in particular are heavily contested, with China, Taiwan and Vietnam claiming all of them, and parts claimed by the Philippines, Malaysia and Brunei. "Vietnam strongly supports the resolution of the disputes ... by peaceful means, including diplomatic and legal processes and refraining from the use or threats to use force, in accordance with international law," ministry representative Le Hai Bình said.
Japan, a key U.S. ally and China's neighbor, issued a statement saying it "strongly expects that the parties' compliance with this ruling will eventually lead to the peaceful settlement of disputes in the South China Sea."
What's the U.S. role in all of this?
The United States is a major player in the region and has sent warships and military aircraft around the South China Sea, including near disputed reefs and shoals, citing international law and freedom of movement but triggering harsh warnings from China. Washington takes no position on the territorial disputes in the South China Sea but has called for an immediate end to land reclamation. President Barack Obama has urged a peaceful resolution to the dispute and while visiting Vietnam in May said that big nations shouldn't bully small ones.
But as China has been at pains to point out, the United States isn't among the 180 countries that have ratified the U.N. Convention on the Law of the Sea -- potentially undermining its clout on this issue. "This decision can and should serve as a new opportunity to renew efforts to address maritime disputes peacefully," the U.S. State Department said in a statement.
http://edition.cnn.com/2016/07/12/asia/china-philippines-south-china-sea/
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Of Course China, Like All Great Powers, Will Ignore an International Legal Verdict
In ignoring an upcoming verdict on the South China Sea, Beijing is following well-established precedent by great powers.
By Graham Allison
July 11, 2016
This week the Permanent Court of Arbitration (PCA) will deliver its award in the Philippines’ case against China over maritime disputes in the South China Sea. In a bid to thwart Beijing’s attempt to turn the South China Sea into its own virtual lake, Manila contends that China’s claim to exclusive sovereignty over all the islands and shoals within the nine-dashed line - which encompasses 86 percent of the Sea - has no basis in international law. There is not much suspense about what the tribunal will decide: it will almost certainly side with the Philippines. The United States and its allies have already started criticizing China for signaling in advance that it will ignore the court’s ruling, which one Chinese official derided last week as “nothing more than a piece of paper.”
It may seem un-American to ask whether China should do as we say, or, by contrast, as we do. But suppose someone were bold enough to pose that question. The first thing they would discover is that no permanent member of the UN Security Council has ever complied with a ruling by the PCA on an issue involving the Law of the Sea. In fact, none of the five permanent members of the UN Security Council have ever accepted any international court’s ruling when (in their view) it infringed their sovereignty or national security interests. Thus, when China rejects the Court’s decision in this case, it will be doing just what the other great powers have repeatedly done for decades.
From the day the Philippines went to court, China has argued that the PCA has no legitimate jurisdiction on this issue since it concerns “sovereignty” - which the text of the Law of the Sea treaty explicitly prohibits tribunals from addressing. When the Court rejected China’s objection, Beijing refused to participate in its hearings and made it clear that it will ignore the PCA’s ruling. The United States and others have criticized Beijing for taking this stance. But again, if we ask how other permanent members of the Security Council have acted in similar circumstances, the answer will not be one we like.
When the Netherlands sued Russia after the latter’s navy boarded and detained the crew of a Dutch vessel in waters off of the Russian coast in 2013, Moscow asserted that the court had no jurisdiction in the matter and refused to participate in the hearings. It also ignored a tribunal’s order that the crew be released while the dispute was being resolved. After the PCA ruled that Russia had violated the Law of the Sea and ordered Moscow to pay the Netherlands compensation, Russia refused.
Anticipating the Court’s ruling in the case brought by the Philippines, UK Prime Minister David Cameron proclaimed: “We want to encourage China to be part of that rules-based world. We want to encourage everyone to abide by these adjudications.” Perhaps he had forgotten that just last year the PCA ruled that the UK had violated the Law of the Sea by unilaterally establishing a Marine Protected Area in the Chagos Islands. The British government disregarded the ruling, and the Marine Protected Area remains in place today.
The United States has never been sued under the Law of the Sea because - unlike China - Washington has not ratified the international agreement and is thus not bound by its rules. Expect Chinese commentators to emphasize this point in the mutual recriminations that will follow the Court’s announcement.
The closest analogue to the Philippines case involving the United States arose in the 1980s when Nicaragua sued Washington for mining its harbors. Like China, the United States argued that the International Court of Justice did not have the authority to hear Nicaragua’s case. When the court rejected that claim, the United States not only refused to participate in subsequent proceedings, but also denied the Court’s jurisdiction on any future case involving the United States, unless Washington explicitly made an exception and asked the Court to hear a case. If China followed that precedent, it could withdraw from the Law of the Sea Treaty altogether - joining the United States as one of the world’s only nations not party to the agreement.
In the Nicaragua case, when the Court found in favor of Nicaragua and ordered the United States to pay reparations, the U.S. refused, and vetoed six UN Security Council resolutions ordering it to comply with the court’s ruling. U.S. Ambassador to the UN Jeane Kirkpatrick aptly summed up Washington’s view of the matter when she dismissed the court as a “semi-legal, semi-juridical, semi-political body, which nations sometimes accept and sometimes don’t.”
Observing what permanent members of the Security Council do, as opposed to what they say, it is hard to disagree with realist’s claim that the PCA and its siblings in The Hague - the International Courts of Justice and the International Criminal Court - are only for small powers. Great powers do not recognize the jurisdiction of these courts - except in particular cases where they believe it is in their interest to do so. Thucydides’ summary of the Melian mantra - “the strong do as they will; the weak suffer as they must” - may exaggerate. But this week, when the Court finds against China, expect Beijing to do as great powers have traditionally done.
Graham Allison is director of Harvard Kennedy School’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs and author of the forthcoming book, “Destined for War: America, China, and Thucydides’s Trap.”
http://thediplomat.com/2016/07/of-course-china-like-all-great-powers-will-ignore-an-international-legal-verdict/?utm_content=bufferd4b70&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=buffer
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China has been killing turtles, coral and giant clams in the South China Sea, tribunal finds
South China Sea environment
A May 11, 2015, aerial view of artificial islands built by China in disputed waters in the South China Sea, west of Palawan, Philippines.
Julie Makinen
China struck back loudly and forcefully Wednesday after an international tribunal invalidated many of its claims in the South China Sea. But Beijing has largely been silent about some of the tribunal’s most damning findings: that its activities there have “caused devastating and long-lasting damage to the environment.”
The Permanent Court of Arbitration investigated The Philippines’ claims that China has been doing grave harm to the region’s ecology, in violation of its commitments under the U.N. Convention on the Law of the Sea.
The panel of five judges consulted numerous experts, and what they found shocked even them, the tribunal wrote in its final ruling of more than 500 pages. Damage to the coral reefs in the Greater Spratly Islands spread for 48 square miles, and China was responsible for 99% of that, they said.
The tribunal found that China not only failed to prevent Chinese fishing boats from harvesting endangered species - including sea turtles - but also provided armed protection for those vessels. And it concluded that China was “fully aware of” and “actively tolerated” a practice called propeller chopping to harvest endangered giant clams - an activity that basically kills coral reefs.
China's claims in South China Sea are invalid, tribunal rules, in victory for the Philippines
The South China Sea is one of the most biodiverse regions in the world - home to 76% of the world’s coral species and 37% of the world’s reef fish. Because coral reefs provide crucial habitats for fish and fish larvae, widespread loss can have a major economic and social effect.
Professor John McManus of the National Center for Coral Reef Research at the University of Miami, one of the experts the panel referred to, called on China and other countries in the region that have been fighting for years over territory in the South China Sea to set aside their differences and declare the region an international protected zone, the way Antarctica is managed.
“If we don’t do this, we are headed toward a major, major fisheries collapse in a part of the world where [that] will lead to mass starvation,” he warned in remarks Tuesday to a panel in Washington organized by the Center for Strategic and International Studies. He noted that such a collapse would hurt not just China but many countries in the region. “Talk about military instability,” he said.
Although some of the damage was caused by dredging and island-building, the majority was blamed on the giant-clam harvesting using propellers. McManus called the practice “more thoroughly damaging to marine life than anything he had seen in four decades of investigating coral reef degradation,” the tribunal noted. Many of the clam shells are taken to the Chinese island of Hainan, where they are carved into decorative items and sold to tourists.
“There is no hope for many of these reefs to recover in the coming decades or centuries,” Kent Carpenter, a professor at Old Dominion University in Virginia and another coral expert consulted by the tribunal, said Wednesday from the Philippines, where he’s on a research trip. “China is trying to solidify its claims, and they obviously have decided not to worry about the environmental aspects. … The environment there is now just written off.”
China issued a white paper Wednesday in response to the tribunal’s ruling, but it did almost nothing to rebut the tribunal’s findings on the environmental issues.
Before the court’s ruling, the state-run China Daily newspaper ran a commentary Tuesday saying that “some countries slander that China developing the South China Sea islands and reefs has caused extensive damage of coral reefs. On the contrary, the truth is, China insisted on developing ‘green engineering and ecology reefs’ as the concept of environmental protection.”
International court's ruling in South China Sea case won't end the fight
The newspaper claimed that China had “conducted thorough in-depth research” and “applied dynamic protective measures during the whole process, to complete projects as well as achieve environment protection, to accomplish sustainable development” in the area. “After China completes the construction activities, it will greatly enhance the reefs environmental protection capability,” the paper added. “These practices can stand the test of time.”
China refused to participate in the tribunal’s proceedings, and did not respond to requests from the court to provide evidence of its efforts to protect the environment in the South China Sea or proof that it had conducted an environmental impact assessment - as required not only by UNCLOS but China’s own laws.
Dan Liu, a researcher at the Center for Polar and Deep Ocean Development at Shanghai Communications University, told the CSIS panel that the Philippine claims were “some kind of political mask” and questioned how the experts could evaluate the reefs unless they visited them personally - something nearly impossible given China’s non-cooperation with the tribunal.
But Carpenter said that satellite imagery and other available data made assessments relatively straightforward. The tribunal said that it and the experts it consulted found many of China’s public statements about its environmental stewardship in the South China Sea to be “contradicted by the facts” and that Beijing’s assessments of the effect of its construction was “largely in disagreement with the available information.”
Ashley Townsend, a visiting fellow at the Asia-Pacific Center at Fudan University in Shanghai, said the tribunal’s strong language on the environmental effect of China’s activities could shift the political dynamics, which until now have been dominated by strategic, military and economic concerns.
“Environmental degradation and depletion of endangered species by Chinese activities and island construction… essentially has been a background story to what’s been happening in the South China Sea,” he said. “Now there is a strong legal grounding” to criticize China on its environmental stewardship and open a “second front.”
“There’s a capacity to ... leverage global environmental activist networks to make this not just an issue about sovereignty and geopolitics but about the health and well-being of the global commons,” he said. “That’s more likely under the ruling.”
Nicole Liu in The Times’ Beijing bureau contributed to this report.
http://www.latimes.com/world/asia/la-fg-south-china-sea-environment-20160713-snap-story.html