here to give a short talk the theme of
our activities starting points and for
something as complex as the South China
Sea disputes I think it’s by quite
fitting that we start with something
something I will be quite relevant to
each one of us the title is our common
future in the South China Sea and
interestingly right now because of the
disputes it seems like that future is
becoming less and less common and more
and more exclusive now why is it like
that well really it’s not because of oil
it’s not because of military advantages
really but most fundamentally it’s about
this it’s about fish ok the South China
Sea is actually precipitated by a
problem with fish rather than anything
else
all the other other activities military
oil and gas etc they tend to be much
less of a problem but it’s the fishing
that really tends to be this part of
some something really really big so for
example in the in throughout the 1970s
there have been two armed clashes in the
South China Sea between Vietnam and
China one in the Paracels another one in
Johnson South Beach in both instances
the run-up to it the the precipitator is
really an argument between fishermen in
our case the event symbolized by this
sculpture how timely Scarborough Shoal
in 2012 notice what did it start with
the Philippine Navy trying to arrest
Chinese fishermen so it’s really about
the fish and that’s something that most
people don’t seem to appreciate because
they tend to think in other terms such
as military terms or oil and gas every
time we say South China Sea in the
papers there’s always that adjective
boil rich South China Sea but that’s not
really what’s working of are the
problems most of the time now for us
Filipinos fish
no fish fishing that’s so familiar why
because we live with fish we eat fish so
much no I’ve been to several other
countries many times and there there are
quite a lot of them where if you you go
to dinner have lunch you’ll not see a
fish or whatever fish that they have is
probably the same kind of fish that they
use for every other dish literally we
have such a variety and diversity of
fish to eat now compared to say in the
United States or in Canada where
everything is either a Pollock or a
haddock or a or a Dory Dory the creme
Doreen at Natori okay so in the
Philippines of course we expect to have
to take our fish from Philippine waters
and everybody especially in the past
couple of years has gained such a
different awareness of this Philippine
waters and how important they are prior
to the net to say 2009-2010 most people
were really focused on the land
everything that they knew was about the
land and few people actually gave
importance to the waters of our
archipelago but thankfully since that
time a lot of our people both in
government and and in the wider public
have gained much much greater
appreciation for these waters and here
I’m showing you actually what these
waters are under international law now
the West Philippine Sea which has become
so ingrained in our consciousness in the
past couple of years is actually this
little portion here not the entire South
China Sea I had to point out to Gigot
that these two are not synonymous so
when you talk about the West Philippine
Sea disputes we’re using that term to
identify that part of the South China
Sea which we claim to be ours and why is
it important again fish if you look at
the fishing activity that has been
taking place in this country for it is
the past couple of years and thankfully
we can see that now more vividly through
satellite data you’ll notice that for
example in the middle of the archipelago
those are archaeologic waters are inter
Island waters that’s where more
of the Philippine fishing activity
actually takes place and much of the
fish that we eat comes from there but a
good portion also comes from the West
Philippine Sea now the West Philippine
Sea however invention is only part of
something bigger and that’s the South
China Sea not the South China Sea that
China is claiming but something more
than that extending out onto the edges
of the Gulf of Thailand and right up
there nearly around Taiwan the South
China Sea is so big that it and it has
so much so much resources that actually
all of the surrounding countries get
their fish from that same place so it’s
not just us it’s everyone else and the
thing that most people don’t realize is
that fish move they don’t stay in any
one place and here what you see here
from satellite data is the movement of
plankton the base of the food chain
where the plant don’t go the fish will
follow and where the fish go fishermen
will this is actually a series of images
taken over the course of one year in
2010 so every month if that’s one shop
or one photograph or one one image
rather of the distribution plankton now
and I’ve gotten only one image per month
but just from that you can see how the
water circulates how the plantain
circulates more or less here in a
counterclockwise motion so you realize
that really whatever fish we catch
actually comes from somewhere else and
those that we don’t catch go somewhere
else and that is the crux of the problem
sort of South China Sea really is a
common resource it’s a common pool
resource and this is going to be a big
part of what we need to realize and in
order for us to come up with a solution
to the problems that we face again
if we look at that image I showed you
earlier about fishing the fishing
activity look this time at the left side
of that image and you’ll notice how much
more fishing has been going on
especially since 2012 the other thing
you probably will notice is the lot of
that fishing
has been increasingly coming closer and
closer to our shores other statistics
gathered but I assigned this elsewhere
we commonly consult with with this we
designed this in order to to appreciate
marine policy issues some of them have
tried to put together the attached data
from this region and adjusted them based
on certain information and you look here
in this particular chart this is the
catch since 1950 going up to around 2015
if I’m not mistaken and each 12 these
colors represent a type of fish that is
being harvested and you’ll notice that
what does this track represent all types
of fish are being caught or fished out
of the South China Sea and it has been
increasing as such a massive trait
especially since the 1990s we’ve gone
from the region has gone from catching
about 1 million tons in 1950 to about 14
to 15 million tons just last year that’s
over a hundred million tons in the past
few decades if we then look at who is
catching the fish here you see the
Philippines in light green that’s us and
that’s everybody else particularly this
is Thailand and China
that’s Malaysia and then some of the
other smaller countries so you see that
with this increasing fish catch we have
not been actually increasing our fishing
and if we take a look again at the
different percentage a different I’d
kinda presentation that data this is
actually photographs of lights at night
that have been averaged out so this each
is equivalent to a year’s worth of
location of off lights each light
represents a fishing vessel and the
or you can get a sense of the fishing
activity for that entire year and if you
look at that series since 2012 what
you’ll notice really is that fishing
activity especially from the western
side that would be China Vietnam and
Thailand have been moving closer and
closer to us and basically they’ve also
been fishing more and more of the West
Philippine Sea and that is really now
the the challenge before us everyone
around the region needs food we need it
as much as they do and yet because of
this this need it is driving it is
driving the exploitation of the South
China Sea at a far greater rate than
ever before and we are now seeing the
manifestation of that dispute in things
like the West Philippine Sea case the
Chinese incursions into our waters the
artificial islands all of this the
question that we need to start with is
what do we want to do with it how do we
want to do it do we do it by trying to
be exclusive trying to clean these
waters only as our own trying to keep
everyone out or do we do it by trying to
look at different cooperative solutions
trying to recognize that this is a
common resource that we all share and
trying to work together to try to manage
and make them sustainable the reason why
this is most important is that if we
look at who has been catching this this
fish this division that represents
different sectors most of the fish are
being caught by this group it is the
industrial sector meanwhile everyone
else the small fishermen the artisanal
fishermen as I call it have only been
catching this and people who have been
working classified as subsistence
fishermen are only this and so while
everybody else has been catching more
and more of the fish actually the people
who are most more dependent on them have
been unable to people
at the same time because we’ve been
catching all of the fish and the
exploitation rates have been increasing
this is and in these two charts are a
kind of warning signal the first one
shows us that from the 1950s when only
that small portion about 20 percent of
the South China Sea was actually being
exploited we’ve gone to nearly what 99
percent and a good portion about five
five to seven percent are now already in
a state of collapse another look at that
data also shows that in terms of each
particular kind of fish whether its
crustaceans or or tunas or politics as
we call them bottom dwellers or the
swimmers now they’re all also being
exploited because as we saw earlier we
are taking all kinds of fish all of the
kinds of fish that we can find that is
found in the South China Sea and what
they’re seeing here is a huge trend of
it of the exploitation peaking and
beginning now to taper off and possibly
go down that is the signal in other
places this pattern has been seen before
it is the signal of the beginning of a
collapse so thank you very much I hope
that with that kind of information you
can you can now have a very different
perspective about what this represents
and this is the South China Sea disputes
thank you
[Applause]
[Music] [Applause]