How Asia’s failure to cooperate is killing its rivers and oceans

Prof. Syed Munir Khasru

South China Morning Post
June 19, 2025

https://www.scmp.com/opinion/asia-opinion/article/3314617/how-asias-failure-cooperate-killing-its-rivers-and-oceans

__________________________________

The recent UN Ocean Conference was a missed opportunity for a region that has the means to save its marine environment, but not the political will

Asia’s relationship with the ocean represents one of the most complex environmental contradictions of our time. The region is home to some of the world’s largest maritime economies, with China, Japan, South Korea and India among those leading the global shipping, fishing and marine trade. It contains about 60 per cent of the world’s coastal population, and those people depend on the region’s coastal zones for their livelihoods, food security and economic survival.

Yet, at the same time, the same region that benefits most from ocean resources is systematically destroying the very marine ecosystems on which it depends.

The 2025 UN Ocean Conference last week in Nice, France offered a stark illustration of this contradiction. While some Asian nations have made impressive pledges – such as South Korea committing to sustainably manage all of the ocean areas under its jurisdiction by joining the 100% Alliance and India’s push for swift ratification of the High Seas Treaty – the fundamental drivers of ocean degradation across Asia remain largely unaddressed.

The conference highlighted Asia’s potential for leadership while simultaneously exposing its dangerous shortcomings in protecting marine environments. The most glaring failure lies in plastic pollution, where Asia’s rivers serve as conveyor belts of waste into global oceans. Around 90 per cent of river-transported plastic in our oceans can be traced back to just 10 rivers, eight of which are in Asia, with the Yangtze, Ganges and Mekong among the worst offenders.

Despite India’s advocacy at Nice for a binding agreement to end ocean plastics, domestic policies remain woefully inadequate. India’s plastic recycling rate is just 8 per cent, meaning most plastic waste ends up in landfills or waterways. Similar patterns exist across Southeast Asia, where rapid economic growth has long outpaced waste management infrastructure.

Asia’s fishing practices represent another critical failure point. Illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing remains rampant throughout Southeast Asian waters, while China’s distant-water fishing fleets and South Korean bottom trawlers continue destructive practices despite mounting international criticism

The scale of the problem is staggering. Chinese fishing vessels operate across global waters with minimal oversight, often engaging in practices that devastate local fish populations and marine ecosystems. South Korea’s industrial trawling operations, despite technological sophistication, continue to employ methods that destroy sea floor habitats and capture massive amounts of non-target species.

Despite calls for fisheries reform and sustainable marine practices in Nice, no binding Asian coalition emerged to regulate harmful fishing methods or establish meaningful limits on destructive practices. The region’s inability to coordinate on fisheries management reflects deeper political divisions that prevent effective ocean governance. While individual countries have pledged improvements in fisheries management, the absence of regional coordination ensures that these efforts will remain fragmented and insufficient.

The “blue economy” rhetoric that dominated many presentations in Nice masked a troubling reality about financial commitments and accountability. Many Asian “blue finance” initiatives remain perpetual pilot projects, never scaling to the level required for meaningful impact.

Blue bonds, satellite monitoring systems and marine technology innovations generate impressive press releases but often fail to integrate into national budgets or accountability frameworks. The focus on hi-tech solutions also frequently excludes coastal communities and small-scale fishers who depend most directly on ocean health.

The gap between innovation hype and delivery becomes apparent when examining actual outcomes. Despite years of blue economy initiatives across Asia, marine protected areas remain inadequately funded, coastal pollution continues to worsen and fishing communities report declining catches and degraded marine environments. The Nice conference’s emphasis on financial commitments without corresponding enforcement mechanisms suggests this pattern will continue.

Asia faces the world’s most severe coastal vulnerability, with several of the most threatened coastal megacities located in the region. Even so, adaptation funding and coastal resilience investments remain heavily skewed towards urban infrastructure and militarised coastal defence, while rural and indigenous coastal communities face displacement and marginalisation.

The conference missed a crucial opportunity to address climate justice and coastal migration support, largely ignoring the millions of coastal residents who face displacement and livelihood destruction. This oversight reflects a broader tendency to treat ocean governance as a technical rather than social challenge. Perhaps most fundamentally, Asia’s ocean governance failures stem from geopolitical tensions that prevent regional cooperation. South China Sea disputes hamper joint marine conservation efforts and monitoring systems that could address overfishing and pollution. Historical mistrust among Japan, Korea and China hinders regional fisheries governance and hampers coordination on shared challenges.

The Nice conference exposed Asia’s leadership failure, with the region offering only fragmented national commitments while others, such as the EU’s Blue Pact and Pacific island coral reef alliances, presented unified approaches.

Given the region’s outsize impact on global marine environments, the absence of an Asian ocean governance framework is particularly problematic. Individual national efforts remain woefully insufficient to address challenges that transcend political boundaries and require coordinated regional action.

Asia’s ocean crisis demands a fundamental shift towards people-first governance that prioritises food security, small fishers and climate resilience over geopolitical competition. The region needs a coordinated Northeast and Southeast Asia Ocean Pact with binding commitments and policy coherence that aligns ocean health with climate and trade goals.

While Asia possesses the financial resources and technical capacity for ocean leadership, it lacks the political will and regional cooperation necessary to move beyond impressive pledges and towards equity-centred solutions that address underlying causes. Asia’s ocean future will determine global marine health, food security and climate stability for the billions who depend on these ecosystems for survival.