INTRODUCTION

The Indian Ocean encompasses an enormous maritime space that plays host to considerable marine resources including important marine biodiversity and fisheries resources. Substantial swaths of the Indian Ocean are subject to extensive national claims to maritime jurisdiction. These claims provide coastal states with access to the living and non-living resources of the Indian Ocean through the sovereignty and sovereign rights within their claimed zones of maritime jurisdiction and these claims, therefore, represent tremendous potential maritime opportunities. There are, however, considerable challenges to contend with in terms of realizing these opportunities. Indeed, the resource-related economic benefits that were generally anticipated to flow on from these broad maritime claims made by the predominantly developing Indian Ocean coastal states have largely not lived up to initial expectations.

This chapter explores the complex mosaic of maritime and territorial claims existing in the Indian Ocean. It provides an overview of the baselines and maritime zones claimed by the Indian Ocean littoral states in the context of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (LOSC) (United Nations 1983). Particular reference is made to those claims arguably at odds with the relevant provisions of LOSC, notably arguably inappropriate baseline designations and excessive claims to maritime jurisdiction. Additionally, problematic unilateral and historical claims as well as sovereignty disputes over islands, together with their inevitable maritime jurisdictional implications, are examined. The consequences of these factors for the delimitation of maritime boundaries in the Indian Ocean are then considered.

The chapter then addresses some of the implications of this complex jurisdictional framework for Indian Ocean marine biodiversity and fisheries in the context of these extensive and complex jurisdictional claims. Clearly, the Indian Ocean littoral states benefit from significant maritime opportunities afforded to them through their broad claims to maritime jurisdiction. This is particularly the case in terms of coastal state sovereign rights over biodiversity and living resources within claimed EEZs. There are, however, a number of serious threats to marine biodiversity and fisheries in the Indian Ocean Region related to national claims to maritime jurisdiction, which are highlighted.

This chapter will focus on the institutional aspects of fisheries and biodiversity in the Indian Ocean. It is intended to provide a background to the more specialist discussions that follow in later chapters. It is proposed to deal, first, though only very briefly, with the international legal background to the modern fisheries regime, and its slow recognition of the importance of biodiversity. Unfortunately, many of the provisions in the modern law of the sea that concern fisheries and marine biodiversity are still being implemented only in a piecemeal way.

THE MODERN LEGAL BACKGROUND

The 1982 U.N. Convention on the Law of the Sea (hereafter referred to as the 1982 U.N. Convention) as we know was very short on high seas fisheries issues and biodiversity. The high seas fisheries provisions were so sparse that they had to be supplemented by another Agreement thirteen years later. The closest that the 1982 U.N. Convention came to addressing biodiversity was in the preamble where it called for the “conservation” of marine living resources, as well as the recognition that “the problems of ocean space are interrelated and need to be considered as a whole”. In the substantive articles, Article 61, when dealing with conservation, merely said:

This was backed up by a general obligation to protect and preserve the marine environment set out in Part XII of the 1982 U.N. Convention. However, these provisions did not add up to a substantial contribution or commitment regarding biodiversity.

The principal contribution of the 1982 U.N. Convention was to introduce the Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) regime that to a large extent settled the controversy over the legal character of the EEZ.

The global economy and Asia in particular constantly produce challenges and opportunities for ASEAN and its member states. ASEAN economies must respond to the exigencies of the international marketplace; compete intensively for markets, investments and resources; adapt to the economic rise of China and India; and develop competitiveness and economic vigor sufficient to weather global economic shocks — a need underscored by the current global economic crisis. Greater economic cooperation and integration can help ASEAN Member States meet these challenges and seize opportunities as they emerge. In this regard, the ASEAN Economic Community (AEC) is a bold step in economic reform. As envisaged it is comprised of four parts:

1. A single market and production base, characterized by a free flow of goods, services, investment, and skilled labor, as well as a freer flow of capital.

2. A competitive economic region, characterized by sound competition policy, consumer protection, intellectual property rights protection, infrastructure development, sectoral competition in energy and mining, rationalized taxation, and e-commerce.

3. Equitable economic development, characterized by SME development and enhancement of the Initiative for ASEAN Integration.

4. Integration into the global economy, with ASEAN centrality and participation in global supply networks.

The creation of a single market and production base should allow ASEAN to benefit from efficiency and economies of scale in value-chain processes, while other aspects of the AEC will boost competitiveness, strengthen ASEAN's institutions, and improve the region's socioeconomic environment. ASEAN Member States intend to complete the AEC by 2015; meeting that deadline will require support at all levels and recognition that implementation will face opposition in some quarters. Securing support, assuaging stakeholders’ concerns, and countering opposition, in turn, requires understanding the full implications of the AEC for ASEAN and ASEAN Member States.

ECONOMIC BENEFITS

Applying a computational general equilibrium (CGE) model under several scenarios, we estimate that ASEAN economic welfare should rise by 5.3 percent, or $69 billion, relative to the baseline — more than six times the effect estimated for AFTA, even under conservative assumptions.

HISTORICAL INTRODUCTION: FROM SEA TO SUGAR

Mauritius today is made up of the main island of the same name (20-15S.57-35E.) — 1,865 sq. km, 1.2 million inhabitants; of the island of Rodriguez — 110 sq. km, 35,000 inhabitants and 560 km to the east; the small islands of Agalega — 260 inhabitants and 1,250 km to the north; and Saint Brandon — 8 sq. km, no permanent inhabitants, 390 km to north-east. Historically, the island of Réunion, 150 km to the west, now a French Département d'Outremer, and the Seychelles, were also part of Mauritius. Over the years, the islands entity has been dismembered to suit the interests of the colonial rulers. The most recent dismemberment of Mauritius was the hiving off of the Chagos archipelago on the eve of its independence. Diego Garcia, the main atoll of the Chagos, is now the pivotal military base of the United States in the Indian Ocean. Mauritius claims the Chagos and the island of Tromlin. France uses Tromlin as a meteorological station administered from Réunion. Although the total land area (2,040 sq. km) is small, Mauritius, with its outlying islands, has a very large Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) of 1.9 million sq. km of the Indian Ocean. Were the claims to Chagos and Tromlin to be successful, its EEZ would be further extended.

The islands are referred to as African islands, Africa being the nearest continent. However, the islands are quite distinct from the continent and are truly oceanic islands. Among the islands of this part of the Indian Ocean, however, a categorical distinction must be made between Comoros, Madagascar, and Maldives on the one hand, and Mauritius, Réunion and Seychelles on the other hand. While the islands in the first category have been peopled from countries on the rim of the Indian Ocean and have developed cultures of their own well before the arrival of European colonizers in the Indian Ocean, those in the second category had no human inhabitants when the Europeans arrived.

D. INTEGRATION INTO THE GLOBAL ECONOMY

64. ASEAN operates in an increasingly global environment, with interdependent markets and globalised industries. In order to enable ASEAN businesses to compete internationally, to make ASEAN a more dynamic and stronger segment of the global supply chain and to ensure that the internal market remains attractive for foreign investment, it is crucial for ASEAN to look beyond the borders of AEC. External rules and regulations must increasingly be taken into account when developing policies related to AEC.

D1. COHERENT APPROACH TOWARDS EXTERNAL ECONOMIC RELATIONS

65. ASEAN shall work towards maintaining “ASEAN Centrality” in its external economic relations, including, but not limited to, its negotiations for free trade (FTAs) and comprehensive economic partnership (CEPs) agreements. This shall be done by:

Actions:

i. Review FTA/CEP commitments vis-à-vis ASEAN's internal integration commitments; and

ii. Establish a system for enhanced coordination, and possibly arriving at common approaches and/ or positions in ASEAN's external economic relations and in regional and multilateral fora.

D2. ENHANCED PARTICIPATION IN GLOBAL SUPPLY NETWORKS

66. ASEAN shall also enhance participation in global supply networks by:

Actions: i. Continuing the adoption of international best practices and standards in production and distribution, where possible; and

ii. Developing a comprehensive package of technical assistance for the less developed ASEAN Member States to upgrade their industrial capability and productivity to enhance their participation in regional and global integration initiatives.

In November 2002, the ASEAN Heads of Government meeting in Phnom Penh proposed that the region consider establishing an ASEAN Economic Community (AEC) by 2020. The ASEAN leaders agreed at the Bali ASEAN Summit in October 2003 to create a region in which goods, services, and skilled labor would flow freely, and capital would enjoy freer movement. In the 2007 Cebu Declaration the ASEAN leaders pushed the AEC deadline forward to 2015. In November 2007, the region approved the AEC Blueprint, which puts flesh to the bones of the commitment to create a unified market. The Blueprint was accompanied by a strategic schedule for implementing various measures. As part of this process, ASEAN developed the ASEAN Charter, which will significantly enhance the formal nature of ASEAN integration by making it an international legal entity. The Charter was signed on November 20, 2007 and went into effect after being ratified by all ASEAN Member States on December 15, 2008.

The AEC Blueprint has four parts:

1. Single Market and Production Base

1. • Free flow of goods, including the elimination of tariffs and nontariff barriers (NTBs), rules of origin harmonization and rationalization, trade facilitation, customs integration (including the ASEAN Single Window), and standards and technical barriers to trade (including mutual- recognition arrangements, or MRAs). Trade in goods receives the most attention, in part because it includes areas relevant to the entire AEC project (such as customs and other areas of trade facilitation).

2. • Free flow of services through a progressive increase in sectoral coverage, a commitment to advance mutual recognition of professional qualifications and services, and financial services liberalization through an ASEAN-X formula (i.e., an allowance for more advanced countries to proceed first).

3. • Free flow of investment, particularly FDI, building on the process initiated by the ASEAN Investment Area (AIA). The AEC will integrate several agreements pertinent to FDI, such as investment protection, and emphasize the cornerstones of the AIA (i.e., national treatment, investment facilitation and cooperation, and promotion).

The potential economic and social gains from an AEC are considerable. Each section of the AEC Blueprint — from the single market and production base to integration in the global economy — should contribute significantly to the ultimate goal of ASEAN economic cooperation: regional prosperity, stability, and equity.

However admirable, this goal will not be easily achieved. Deep economic cooperation always faces political obstacles. For example, the European Economic Community achieved its single market nearly 40 years after it was established with the Treaty of Rome. NAFTA went through two incarnations under two US administrations and required a politically risky and bold intervention by President Clinton to be ratified (and during his presidential campaign Barak Obama even considered the need to renegotiate it). Lack of progress on the Doha Development Agenda can be traced to special interests and protectionist groups in constituent economies, and this for an agreement mild in comparison to the comprehensive measures being promulgated in the AEC. Likewise, the AEC will no doubt face opposition in the political bodies of member states. Making the political costs worth enduring will require making the likelihood of widely distributed and significant gains from the AEC compellingly clear.

To this end, our study has presented the economic implications of an AEC and used a variety of techniques and approaches, including a specially designed CGE model, to estimate gains and losses. The nature of the AEC and its many measures make exact estimates impossible but our use of the best proxies available make our estimates as realistic as possible.

We conclude that the AEC should lead to substantial gains, and that these gains should be widely distributed, though some countries and agents may benefit more than others. Our CGE estimates project a 5.3 percent increase in economic welfare relative to the baseline. This is a large impact, but we suggest that it constitutes a lower-bound estimate.

ASEAN's relations with the world economy are the heart of the fourth section of the AEC Blueprint (Appendix D). Effective integration could turn ASEAN's 10 economies into a global powerhouse — the world's third largest economy, in terms of population, behind China and India — and dramatically improve the region's ability to attract globally mobile capital and technology and develop advantageous partnerships with other economic centers. How can this potential be realized and what benefits would accrue?

The AEC Blueprint envisions an ASEAN distinct from most other regional groupings by its outward focus. This vision reflects economic realities: most ASEAN Member States conduct a majority of their trade with outside partners, have overlapping patterns of comparative advantage, and are embarked on similar, outward-oriented development trajectories (see Chapters 1 and 2). There are real benefits to be had from the internal dimensions of ASEAN integration — e.g., more competition and improved scale economies in production, greater efficiency in consumption — but the benefits of improving the region's competitive position in the world economy could be especially significant.

ASEAN's external success will depend in part on how the region responds to challenges, improves the efficiency of its production system, and manages its trade and investment relations with the rest of the world. These two aspects of integration — improving global competitiveness and using negotiating leverage — are the focal points for this analysis. In the rest of this chapter we explore the challenges posed by a rapidly changing global environment; examine solutions offered by the AEC, specifically strategies for competitiveness and leverage; and assess the benefits that could result from these strategies and how to implement them.

CHALLENGE: ASEAN'S NEW COMPETITIVE ENVIRONMENT

ASEAN has recovered from the financial crisis of 1997–1998 but, at least until recently, its performance has fallen short of its exceptional pre-crisis trajectory. As Figure 6-1 shows, ASEAN's average annual growth rate has declined from 7–8 percent to 5–6 percent and had been reaccelerating gradually before the current economic turmoil began in September 2008.

At the Twelfth ASEAN Summit in Cebu in January 2007, ASEAN decided to create an ASEAN Economic Community (AEC) by 2015. This milestone reflects growing awareness that ASEAN must deepen and hasten its economic integration in order to cope with serious challenges. The end of the Cold War, thawing relations among countries in Northeast Asia, and the economic rise of China and India are testing ASEAN's traditional role in regional cooperation and its economic competitiveness even as member state governments struggle to ensure political and social stability as well as inclusive and sustainable growth. In addition, the financial crisis of 2008 — itself partly the result of insufficient cooperation in addressing global imbalances — revealed ASEAN's stark vulnerability to shocks it did little to create.

How can deeper economic integration help ASEAN and member states weather these challenges? Integration is expected to promote regional economic resilience and the delivery of regional public goods; raise the international competitiveness of individual Southeast Asian countries that must be able to compete, particularly against China and India in the global marketplace; and give the region “one voice” in shaping the mechanisms necessary to contain and manage economic crises whatever their origin. In short, to maintain its traditional role and the competitiveness of member states ASEAN must keep the “economic center of gravity” from shifting rapidly to the north by proceeding with its ambitious plans for an AEC.

The process for achieving the AEC by 2015 is critical. ASEAN Member States have fewer than seven years to execute a complicated reform agenda (see Appendix A for a summary of AEC components). That short time span has led to cynicism among detractors, but ASEAN did well to establish a timeframe for erecting various aspects of a single market and production base — and in getting member states to gauge progress on compliance “scorecards.” From an economic viewpoint, however, the top priority should be putting in place the correct policies for a unified market.

INTRODUCTION

The main objective of this chapter is to present an overview and discussion of the fisheries in the French Indian Ocean territories, which are quite different from one administrative unit to another, and have been evolving rapidly since the end of the 1990s. It will be shown that fisheries generally represent an important activity in the small island states and territories. However, pressure on the fishery resource in French Indian Ocean waters is quite significant and overexploitation has resulted in a dramatic fall in the southern catch, and has forced the closure of the fisheries for several commercial species. The long-term sustainability of the fishery will largely depend on continued French involvement and success in preventing foreign illegal fishing in its EEZ, as well as on better knowledge and management of fish stocks.

In the Indian Ocean, France exercises sovereignty over ten different island territories that can be regrouped into six distinct administrative units (Table 9.1 and Figure 9.1). Only two of these ten territories have a permanent population and form a main administrative unit of their own: Réunion Island (also known as La Réunion) in the Mascarene Archipelago, which is both a France Overseas Department (DOM) and an Overseas Region (ROM); and Mayotte, in the Comoros Archipelago, which now has the status of an Overseas Collectivity of the French Republic (COM). The eight other island territories are administratively linked to the French Southern and Antarctic Lands (FSAL) of which they form four of its five districts, namely Crozet, Kerguelen, Saint-Paul and Amsterdam, and the Scattered Islands (Îles Éparses). While the first three FSAL districts are made up of unique island groups located in the Southern Indian Ocean, the Scattered Islands are made of five very small and isolated island features in the vicinity of Madagascar (Bassas da India, Europa I., Glorioso Is, Juan de Nova I., and Tromelin I.).

INTRODUCTION

The principal aim of this chapter is to argue for an integrated approach to the political assessment of the maritime zone management of the ocean in a regional context. As such, it draws attention to the regional need for cooperation in fishery conservation and technology and for the further development and enhancement of trading relationships among the littoral states. In a bid to obtain or control access to the use of maritime space and the seabed, national maritime claims have been steadily expanding to the point where the majority of coastal and island states have claimed offshore zones for distances varying from 200 to 350 nautical miles for their exclusive exploitation and utilization of the ocean resources.

In order to elaborate on the overall argument, the chapter will first evaluate the impact of the 1982 Convention on the governance of maritime space in the Indian Ocean Region. Second, examples of the nature of maritime jurisdiction and regional sovereignty claims and disputes will be discussed. Third, the chapter will especially stress the necessity for cooperative approaches to the use of regional maritime space and the need to develop a comprehensive ocean policy in order to maximize maritime biodiversity and thus enhance the quality of regional fisheries.

The Indian Ocean basin comprises a number of regional seas and associated bays, channels, gulfs, and straits. Geographical studies of regional seas assist in focusing local factors which might encourage regional solutions to trans-boundary resource allocation problems and political boundary issues. Increased harvesting of marine biotic resources, exploitation of marine mineral resources, and the utilization of maritime space have spawned jurisdictional and management problems in regional seas between national governments and their subordinate political units, and among management agencies within governments (Alexander 1977, pp. 84–109). These problems require vigorous national assessment and development programmes, which must be guided by clearly defined policy objectives.