Dr. Elizabeth Buchanan and Katie Burkhart join the podcast to discuss a wide range of Arctic issues, including Russian and Chinese activity in the Arctic, the Arctic Council, Russia’s 2035 policy document, the Northern Sea Route, and increased NATO activity in the Arctic.
**SPOILER ALERT** Ships (not boats)! Surface Warfare Officers! Metaphorical SWO jackets! The Texas National Security Review’s Executive Editor and retired Navy Surface Warfare Officer Doyle Hodges joins the program to discuss the new film Greyhound from the perspective of a retired destroyer captain. “Meet her!”
On July 2, 2020 at around 4:20 a.m., three vessels attacked the Sendje Berge, a floating production support vessel off the coast of Nigeria. While there were no physical injuries, the perpetrators took nine personnel hostage. The kidnapping is the latest incident in a series of attacks in the Gulf of Guinea, which has become the most piracy-infested region in the world, closely followed by Southeast Asia. Worldwide, 162 actual and attempted piracy attacks were reported in 2019.1 As most incidents have taken place in territorial waters, the cross-border nature of maritime crimes matters for ocean governance. When operating, pirates are not restrained by national borders, and exploit states’ inconsistencies in maritime security capacities and capabilities. Therefore, the unabatedly high numbers of attacks underlines the need for littoral and user states to cooperate on counterpiracy.
Three Regional Agreements to Govern Piracy
To govern maritime piracy through state cooperation, three agreements have been set up in different regions of the world. The members to these regional agreements agree to arrest, investigate, and prosecute pirates on the high seas, and to suppress armed robbery in their respective territorial waters. In Asia, the Regional Cooperation Agreement on Combating Piracy and Armed Robbery against Ships in Asia (ReCAAP) was established in 2006. 14 regional states as well as six extra-regional states are currently contracting parties. In East Africa, the Djibouti Code of Conduct (DCoC) was agreed on in 2009. To date, 20 states from the Indian Ocean region have signed this agreement on the repression of piracy and armed robbery in the western Indian Ocean and the Gulf of Aden. In 2017, the DCoC’s piracy-only focus was expanded to include maritime crimes more generally when the so-called Jeddah Amendment was adopted by a subset of DCoC member states. Finally, the Yaoundé Code of Conduct (YCoC) to combat illicit maritime activities in West and Central Africa was signed in 2013 by 25 regional states.
Signatories to the regional agreements on countering maritime crimes (Author illustration, based on material from www.freevectormaps.com)
As these agreements were successively established, policymakers were able to utilize insights from already developed setups elsewhere, a learning process that was actively sponsored by the International Maritime Organization. As a result, the agreements’ institutional structures are strikingly similar.2 This is most obvious in the agreements’ information-sharing structures. All agreements have Information Sharing Centers (ISCs) which collect data on maritime crimes and provide infrastructure for information exchange. The regional agreements also have a system of national focal points designated by each member state, which manage piracy and armed robbery incidents within the respective state’s territorial waters, report incidents to the ISCs, and coordinate surveillance activities with neighboring states.
Information Sharing and Capacity Building
These regional agreements have been rightfully praised as a milestone in ocean governance, as they are a strong symbol of the commitment of member states to combat piracy and other maritime crimes. The collection and dissemination of data on maritime crimes is one of the most important practical tasks carried out by the regional agreements, because to efficiently coordinate cooperation between maritime security actors it is crucial to have available all relevant information on the threat at hand. Furthermore, by creating reliability, regular information sharing has the potential to strengthen trust and confidence among key actors.3
Capacity building carried out through the framework of the regional agreements is equally important. To varying degrees, the agreements’ frameworks offer exercises, workshops, and trainings to accumulate expertise on and foster cooperation between national agencies and the shipping industry, and also provide technical assistance to member states. In fact, the regions cooperate in their capacity building efforts on a regular basis. Due to their similar institutional structures, ReCAAP and DCoC members held several joint workshops where best practices were shared.
The Limits of Cooperation
While the setup of the regional agreements is certainly a milestone in counterpiracy governance, the different regions are faced with a variety of challenges concerning cooperation in general and the implementation of the agreements’ provisions in particular.
Concerns over Territorial Sovereignty
Citing concerns over their territorial sovereignty, two of the states most affected by piracy in Southeast Asia, Indonesia and Malaysia, refuse to accede to ReCAAP. Although state cooperation in Asia is generally characterized by major sovereignty sensitivities, their reluctance is reinforced by ReCAAP’s open membership policy. While DCoC and YCoC have limited their membership to regional littorals, every interested state can join ReCAAP, which further fuels Indonesia’s and Malaysia’s concerns about foreign involvement in their territorial waters.4 However, the actual impact of the non-membership of key states in Asia remains unclear. Despite their official disapproval, both Indonesia and Malaysia cooperate with ReCAAP on a low-key level, participating in meetings and sharing select information. Nevertheless, an accession would certainly underline the two states’ willingness to commit to multilateral counter-piracy efforts given their strategic position in the Strait of Malacca and the Sulu and Celebes Seas.
Institutional Fragmentation
National sensitivities also led to a fragmented institutional landscape, both regionally as well as internationally. The DCoC operates three regional ISCs in Kenya, Tanzania, and Yemen. The YCoC architecture is even more fragmented, with regional maritime security centers for West as well as Central Africa in Congo and Ivory Coast, an interregional coordination center in Cameroon, and five coordination centers at the zonal level. Due to this fractional structure, information flows may be less efficient, and the ability to swiftly respond to undesirable events on the ocean could be hindered.5 While ReCAAP only operates one ISC, several other data-collecting bodies exist in Asia, such as the International Maritime Bureau’s Piracy Reporting Center and the Information Fusion Centre hosted by the Singaporean Navy. To complicate matters further, not all ISCs, particularly those in Southeast Asia, report data in a consistent way.6 Overall, the institutional plethora of information-sharing mechanisms underlines the importance of coordination between the different agencies. To this end, the regions’ potential to learn from each other’s experiences is not being fully realized yet.
Lack of National Capacities
To implement the regional agreements’ provisions on site, the capacities of member states are essential. However, member states’ means to counter maritime crimes in their territorial waters differ significantly. Some states, particularly in Asia, have comparably well-equipped navies, coast guards, and law enforcement agencies. In contrast, other states often lack those capacities, which is particularly apparent in Somalia and Yemen, which are both stricken by the devastating consequences of ongoing civil wars. Although the agreements offer capacity building measures, the mechanisms do not directly account for the resources of member states or their lack thereof.
Gaps in Scope
Although the regional agreements geographically cover the greater portion of world regions currently affected by piracy, there are still blind spots. Whole continents have not set up comparable cooperation mechanisms yet, such as Oceania and the Americas, where local piracy hotspots like the Caribbean and the Venezuelan coast would call for concerted governance efforts. This becomes more salient when not only piracy, but also maritime crimes more generally are in focus, since crimes such as illegal, unreported, and unregulated (IUU) fishing are pressing in every corner of the world
Additionally, the regional agreements are rather narrow in their operational scope. This is particularly obvious in Southeast Asia, where ReCAAP has thus far only institutionalized cooperation on piracy and armed robbery. As policymakers increasingly realize that these crimes are only one of many pressing issues in the maritime domain, the agreements may go one step further. Already in Africa, with YCoC as well as the DCoC’s Jeddah Amendment, the signatory states agreed to also cooperate on transnational organized crime in the maritime domain, maritime terrorism, IUU fishing, as well as other illegal activities at sea. By calling on its member states to develop national strategies for sustainable blue economic growth, the Jeddah Amendment, although very tentatively, even ties maritime security to the greater blue economy.
Looking Ahead
Threats to maritime security cannot be understood in isolation, as they are deeply interrelated. Going forward, maritime security governance will therefore need a more integrated understanding of the hazards posed by maritime crimes as well as the potential of coordinated efforts to combat these crimes.7 Specifically, it is necessary to strengthen maritime domain awareness by emphasizing potential synergies between combatting maritime crimes with the blue economy and the safety of the marine environment. This integrative understanding of developments and threats at sea is a prerequisite for coordination and cooperation between the diverse maritime security agencies and actors in this field.8 In that sense, the establishment of these regional counter-piracy agreements, their process of learning from each other and the gradual broadening of their scope, marks an important first step into realizing the full potential of an integrated approach toward maritime security governance.
Anja Menzel is a postdoctoral researcher at the FernUniversität in Hagen, Germany. She received her PhD in International Relations from Greifswald University, where she studied state cooperation on counterpiracy. Her current research interests include ocean governance, the construction of maritime spaces, and the link between the blue economy and development funding.
References
1. ICC IMB 2019. Report. Piracy and armed robbery against ships [1 January-31 December 2019]. London.
2. Menzel A. 2018. Institutional adoption and maritime crime governance: the Djibouti Code of Conduct. Journal of the Indian Ocean Region 14(2), 152-169.
3. Bueger C. 2015. From dusk to dawn? Maritime domain awareness in Southeast Asia. Contemporary Southeast Asia 37(2), 157–182.
4. Lee T. and McGahan K. 2015. Norm subsidiarity and institutional cooperation: Explaining the Straits of Malacca anti-piracy regime. The Pacific Review 28(4), 529-552.
5. Ralby I. 2019. Learning from success: Advancing maritime security cooperation in Atlantic Africa. Center for International Maritime Security, [https://cimsec.org/learning-from-success-advancing-maritime-security-cooperation-in-atlantic-africa/41517].
6. Joubert, L. 2020. What we know about piracy. One Earth Future Foundation, [https://stableseas.org/publications/what-we-know-about-piracy].
7. Menzel A. and Otto L. 2020. Connecting the dots: Implications of the intertwined global challenges to maritime security. In: Otto, Lisa (ed): Global challenges in maritime security. An Introduction. Springer.
8. Bueger C. 2015. From dusk to dawn? Maritime domain awareness in Southeast Asia. Contemporary Southeast Asia 37(2), 157–182.
Featured Image: ReCAAP ISC Signs MOU with World Maritime University (February 7, 2018)
Countries are beginning to pay more attention to their dependence on rare earth metals. Rare metals like cobalt and nickel are sought out for their applications in smart phones, electric car batteries, and countless other gadgets, but come from an exceedingly small number of places, – virtually all of which are within the borders of the People’s Republic of China or under the control of its state-owned enterprises. This sets up a worrying imbalance in an extremely crucial supply chain that any advanced economy relies on.
There is one potential solution that has come up time and time again: mining the seabed. Unbeknownst to many, the bottom of the ocean holds deposits of rare metals that could scratch the tech-hungry world’s itch, and most of these resources are finally becoming accessible for the first time. These deposits usually take the form of polymetallic nodes sitting on certain parts of the seabed, or as crusts surrounding hydrothermal vents.
There is some wisdom in wanting to decrease one’s reliance on China for something as critical as the components that power almost every electronic device, given China’s history of economic coercion. There is also an understandable fascination with tapping a mostly untouched area like the seabed.
Manganese nodules embedded in the seabed (Image via the NOAA Office of Ocean Exploration and Research, 2019 Southeastern U.S. Deep-sea Exploration)
One way to think of the deepest, darkest parts of the world’s oceans is as a new frontier, similar to the thawing Arctic or the yawning abyss of space. There is a shortage of scientific and strategic understanding of the seabed’s value, even as humankind eagerly throws itself into the water to develop blue economies based on marine resources.
The deep sea is rapidly approaching an era reminiscent of the gold rush period of the American West, when pioneers could potentially strike it big solely by venturing out to where few others wanted to go. The risk is high, but the rewards are potentially massive – if one could get seabed mining to scale.
The problem is that nobody should be mining the seabed anytime soon. The looming environmental cost is monumental, and the race for seabed resources could reinvigorate any number of maritime disputes. Is seabed mining really worth the trouble?
A Steep Environmental Cost
Currently, seabed mining is limited to some massive state-backed projects in China and India, and to some Australian or Canadian start-ups with less-than-impressive records. There is also a major regulatory gap when it comes to seabed mining practices, which is meant to be filled by the International Seabed Authority (ISA).
The ISA was mandated to handle seabed issues by the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS). UNCLOS, at the time of its drafting, was ill-equipped to codify an equitable way to handle seabed mining, especially since the technology at the time didn’t enable any country to have a full sense of seabed resources or how to extract them.
UNCLOS passed responsibility to the ISA, which has the uncanny mission of handing out licenses and devising an entire regulatory framework for all seabed mining in international waters. That is a tall order for what is, by any stretch of the imagination, a very small UN agency.
The ISA has been plugging away at one comprehensive seabed mining framework for years now – the Mining Code. The Mining Code will set out how and when countries and companies can prospect for seabed minerals and eventually commercially extract them.
The ISA is working under a stressful deadline to get the Mining Code finalized later this year and allow companies to begin plowing the seabed. By its own estimates, the ISA believes larger-scale commercial extraction of seabed minerals will start around 2027.
A map of known locations of deep sea minerals [Click to expand] (Image via China Dialogue Ocean)That leaves little time to write out a comprehensive and widely accepted environmental standard for seabed mining, especially given what is at stake. Nonetheless, the ISA seems up to the task, explicitly crafting the Mining Codeto show how one can plausibly mine the seabed in an environmentally sustainable way.
However, the Mining Code will instead give a green light to companies to damage the ocean floor beyond all repair.
The concept that there is an environmentally responsible way to mine the seabed is highly dubious. A test that attempted to shed light on this dilemma ended up permanently scarring seabed ecosystems for years. The 1989 DISCOL testused an eight-meter-wide plough harrow to rake the center of an 11-square-kilometer plot in the Pacific Ocean, and is still considered to be the most advanced seabed mining trial to date. But ecosystems in the area haven’t recovered more than 30 years later. According to ecologist Hjalmar Thiel, who organized the DISCOL test, “The disturbance is much stronger and lasting much longer than we ever would have thought.”
Most of the world’s seabed hasn’t even been mapped, and countless deep sea environments on the bottom of the ocean lay waiting to be discovered. What is known to an extent is that the organisms living in these areas constitute some of the most fragile ecosystems on the planet, making any minor change in their environment potentially catastrophic.
Remotely operated vehicle Deep Discoverer examines deep sea ecosystems (Video via National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration)
Case in point – the scaly-foot snail only lives at three very specific underwater hydrothermal vents on Earth. The snail had barely been discovered before its home was dug up for potential metal deposits, forcing the fascinating, rare creature onto the endangered species list.
The snail is one example of a near-extinction we knew happened. If seabed mining were to scale up to the commercial stage and plows began dragging back and forth over a seafloor that is poorly understood, then there would be countless other creaturesand ecosystems that could be endangered or even thrown into extinction. And humankind likely wouldn’t even be aware of it until it is too late.
Aside from the environmental impacts, there is the question of how seabed mining will progress within national borders, where the ISA has no authority beyond setting an example. For a cautionary look at how this race for new resources can progress, it is best to look at the country poised to start seabed mining before anyone else – China.
China’s Maritime Dreams
China has made it eminently clear it takes the resource potential of the seabed seriously, and frequently seems to flaunt its topographical knowledge of the ocean floor to its neighbors and other claimants surrounding the South China Sea.
For example, in April China released a list of Chinese-language names and locations for some 55 new undersea features – seamounts, underwater canyons, and others – in the South China Sea. China seems to treat the naming and placement of undersea features as a specious way to supplement its ambiguous historic rights argument, which China insists entitles it to nearly all of the rocks, waters, and seabed in the South China Sea. That line of reasoning was decisively struck down in a 2016 Permanent Court of Arbitration ruling, but China has never backed down from trying to justify its maximalist claims.
Maritime features recently named and listed by China [Click to expand] (Gif via RadioFreeAsia/Google Earth)
This cluster of undersea features listed in April closely tracks with a provocative survey China conducted last year within Vietnam’s exclusive economic zone.
That survey roped in a flotilla of coast guard ships and maritime militia, employed by both Vietnam and China, and sparked a tense stand-off between the two countries. China has regularly used survey vessels forits pressure campaigns against other claimant states in Southeast Asia. The aim of this harassment is to keep other Southeast Asian nations from exploring and exploiting resources within their waters. But in an area like the South China Sea, where the vast majority of the seabed is unmapped, the use of survey vessels and the curious publishing of lists of undersea features sitting on other countries’ continental shelves conveys another message – China knows what’s out there, and other countries in the region do not.
The path of Chinese survey ships near the Taiwanese occupied atoll of Pratas, shown by MarineTraffic ship-tracking software, June 22, 2020. The current survey by the Hai Yang 9 appears to be a continuation of a survey started last year in the same area. (Image via RadioFreeAsia)
China views the deep sea environment as a critical part of the marine economy,which encompasses virtually everything from fishing to submarine cables to genetic material used in state-of-the-art biomedicine. At the same time, the ostensibly civilian mission of deep sea research vessels allows China to send ships well-within the economic zones of other countries without potentially provoking a naval skirmish – thus making research vessels another element of China’s maritime insurgency against other claimants in the South China Sea, similar to the notoriously muscular China Coast Guard (CCG) and People’s Armed Forces Maritime Militia (PAFMM).
There are military applications as well, such as how topographical knowledge of the seabed makes it easier to chart paths for submarines and to ensure those submarines move around undetected.
Seabed mining is a logical priority if China wants to maintain its dominance over rare earths, as metals like cobalt and nickel are critical components for electric vehicles and smartphones, and are found on the ocean floor and in very few other places.
The issue seabed mining enthusiasts should first consider is that these ventures can serve as yet another arena for confrontational behavior in already tense waters.
Seabed mining is not cheap – the kinds of investments necessary to make it commercially profitable by 2027 will necessitate massive subsidies and state support. China is ahead of the curve on seabed mining solely because its state-owned enterprises (SOEs) involved in seabed prospecting are so heavily subsidized they can afford to get involved in such a risky and speculative industry. Michael Lodge, general secretary of the ISA, stated that “I do believe that China could easily be among the first (to start exploitation).”
By nature of being so expensive, there is an incentive to protect seabed mining projects through extensive means. As a country securitizes the ocean around state-backed seabed mining platforms, those same state-backed companies are emboldened to operate further and further afield. They then become wrapped up in the push to assert maritime claims over the objections of neighboring countries. China’s approach to seabed mining may thus begin to look very much like its approach to oil and gas in the South China Sea, which has not been conducive to regional stability.
Different methods of mining the seabed (Image via New Zealand Environment Guide)
Couple all this with how the exact boundaries of many countries’ continental shelves are in dispute, and how those Pacific countries with a high probability of holding seabed minerals in their borders also have virtually no regulatory frameworks to handle a nascent industry like seabed mining. The end result is that many latent maritime disputes may suddenly burst back into prominence, and at a time when the region needs far less, not more, imbroglios over maritime resources and borders.
Solutions Are Needed
Seabed resources have a dangerous potential to become conflict resources, fueling disagreements over maritime boundaries across the ocean at a time when many overlapping continental shelf claims are unresolved.
There is a straightforward solution to get ahead of the problem – ban seabed mining. The international community and regional forums should promulgate a series of regional and international moratoriums on seabed mining within countries’ maritime borders immediately, and the ISA should stop issuing licenses for seabed prospecting in waters outside of any national jurisdictions. However, that outcome, while undoubtedly the best for the undersea environment and their marine ecosystems, is probably unrealistic.
One alternative is for the ISA to craft a strict environmental standard that denies any seabed mining company the use of plowing machinery on the ocean floor. If the upcoming Mining Code were to require all seabed mining to only happen through the individual collection of one polymetallic nodule at a time, then seabed prospecting and extraction will lose much of its commercial viability and revert back to being employed mostly for research purposes and perhaps the extraction of biological material necessary for pioneering new medicines.
The ISA could also demand the most stringent environmental impact assessments necessary before any seabed mining or prospecting takes place, reducing the speed of the commercialization of seabed mining to a snail’s pace and postponing exploitation by perhaps another 10-20 years.
Ultimately the ISA cannot be expected to do everything. The international community, and most especially those civil society groups most attuned to the dire environmental stakes facing the ocean in the coming years, should proactively shine a light on seabed mining wherever it takes place.
Every project and license should be documented, followed, and vigorously examined, so that when deep sea environments are irreversibly damaged and coastal communities are inadvertently affected, pressure can be exerted on those companies or countries responsible. That requires, most dauntingly, forging ties with environmentalist groups in those countries most rapacious for deep sea resources, wherever they may be.
Seabed mining cannot be allowed to take place without stringent environmental safeguards and enforcement mechanisms. At best, seafloor ecosystems will be irreparably ruined and only some species and ecosystems will go extinct. This is not an acceptable trade-off for an industry that, as of yet, has not proved itself to actually be commercially viable, and is mostly sustained by the largesse and subsidies of certain countries.
Conclusion: A Common Heritage for Mankind
Seabed governance is going to be one of the thornier issues for a humankind more dependent on the oceans and coasts in the future, and the foundation needs to be laid now for an approach that does not imperil the seabed’s ecosystem for a very dubious profit. National governments may be too indecisive to come to consensus, and international organizations like the ISA are ill-equipped to enforce anything even if they do have a change of heart or code. The process of better seabed governance begins with increased scrutiny, and will largely depend upon an alliance of marine environmentalist non-governmental organizations and the scientific research community.
The deep sea has always been and remains one of the most fascinating new frontiers on the planet, only accessible in the modern day because of incredible advances in technology. Let’s keep it how humanity found it – unspoiled.
Drake Long (@DRM_Long) is a 2020 Asia-Pacific Fellow for Young Professionals in Foreign Policy. He is a contractor for RadioFreeAsia, covering the South China Sea and other maritime issues in Southeast Asia.
Featured Image: Remotely Operated Vehicle Deep Discoverer passing over a rock outcropping. (NOAA Office of Ocean Exploration and Research, Exploration of the Gulf of Mexico 2014)
