Scientists warn WPS marine ecosystem at risk

This map is not to scale and is for visual representation purposes only. —Graphics by: Samuel Yap/INQUIRER.net
MANILA, Philippines — Scientists are expressing concern over the continuous environmental degradation in the West Philippine Sea (WPS) amid the worsening dispute over territorial boundaries with China, according to oceanographer Deo Florence Onda.
Plastic pollution, climate change-induced coral bleaching, and overfishing, among others, are the main problems Onda identified, challenges that have now pushed the Philippine waters and the rest of the South China Sea to a “very critical point.”
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“The scientists are very worried because we talk about territories but degradation is continuously happening. The sad thing is that probably when we come to the point where we’ve already resolved our disputes, there’s nothing to protect anymore. So what’s the value of that?” Onda said in a recent dialogue organized by the Department of Foreign Affairs-Foreign Service Institute.
Onda, who also serves as an associate professor at the University of the Philippines-Marine Science Institute, said there was an ongoing effort to encourage other countries to return to the “negotiation table” and tackle the environmental problems in the South China Sea.
Article continues after this advertisement“Science itself has been pushed as a nonaggressive approach or intervention for conflict resolution since the 1990s in the South China Sea,” he said.
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For example, plastic pollution, Onda said, was a very “neutral, pervasive and prevalent” topic that could serve as a “jumping point” for discussions.
He said based on their studies that measured how much plastics go out on a system, Manila Bay was still the most polluted with 23.77 plastics per square meter, followed by Eastern Palawan (5.48) and Western Palawan (0.84).
Surprisingly, he said, Pag-asa, an island located far away in the middle of the South China Sea, recorded a pollution index of 1.71, higher than Western Palawan.
“The first time I went to Pag-asa I thought [it was] paradise but no, I spent two days cleaning up the coast, trying to collect those plastics,” Onda said.
It’s not an isolated case, he added, because even in Taiwan or Taipei, where he also went, isolated islands accumulated piles of trash and plastic, which usually come from other bodies of water connected to the sea.
In addition to analyzing the amount of plastics, Onda and his team also identified the usage of the plastics to determine what industry, organizations and sectors were contributing to the problem so the targeted policies and intervention could be developed.
In Palawan, he said the majority of the plastics were foamed fragments, fishing lines, ropes and strings, which meant that most of the waste came from the fishing and maritime industry.
In Manila Bay, the most common types of waste were thin plastic wraps, foamed fragments and straws, which came from the food and commercial industry.
Need for data-sharing
The marine scientist said their team also identified the origin of the plastics found on Pag-asa Island and based on the results, during the northeast monsoon, 60 percent of the plastics were foreign.
During a southwest monsoon, 90 percent of the plastics come from Thailand, Vietnam, Malaysia, China, Taiwan and even Singapore.
“I always refer to this as the Asean (Association of Southeast Asian Nations) convention of trash,” Onda quipped, adding that it showed the transnational boundary nature of the problem.
Asked how the environmental problems in the South China Sea could be addressed, Onda noted that a “low-hanging fruit” would be data sharing in the region.
“Different studies have been done in the South China Sea but they are not available. One thing that we are pushing for is a low-politics scientific symposium … to talk about how we are going to approach the problem,” he said.
Onda emphasized the need for information as well as support for scientists who are in a “good position to push for confidence-building in the West Philippine Sea.”
“At the end of the day, we always ask the scientists, what’s the status of the South China Sea? [What’s the] status of the environment? We can’t do that if we don’t give them support, we can’t do that if they can’t go out to the sea because there’s no gasoline in their vessel,” he said.
“Building capacity entails building a framework to also support the scientists in the Philippines,” he added.
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