A Threat to ASEAN

There’s a threat to the security of Southeast Asia that the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, or Asean, must confront with hammer and tongs. No, it’s not China, silly. Nor is it the United States. This is a non-traditional threat. It’s called “loss of biodiversity.”

What’s biodiversity all about? The World Wide Fund for Nature calls it the “web of life,” the bond of interaction among all plants and animals in a given environment. The community of living organisms in forests, rivers, lakes, streams, deltas, and marine and coastal waters. “The resource upon which families, communities, nations and future generations depend.”

Remove biodiversity and you don’t have food security. You’ll have famine and drought. Nations will go to war over sources of water. But if we take care of it like the treasure that it is, biodiversity will continue to make life livable for us and our families, our nations, the human race.

The Asean region is blessed with biodiversity. It has only 3 percent of the Earth’s surface, but it’s home to 18 percent of all species — according to the International Union for Conservation of Nature.

How is Asean taking care of this blessing? It’s doing many things to be sure. After all, Asean has a Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD). It has, among other measures, declared various terrestial ecosystems (forests) and marine parks as protected areas. But it isn’t doing nearly enough.

Philippine Permanent Representative to Asean Elizabeth Buensuceso recalls that the Philippines started talking with other member countries in the mid-1990s about filling the lack of regional cooperation on biodiversity management.

In 1999, the Philippines and the European Union launched the Asean Center for Biodiversity, with an initial funding of 9.5 million euros ($13 million). The Philippines provided the land and personnel and bore the operational expenses. The center was completed in 2004.

In September 2005, Asean leaders decided to establish the Asean Center for Biodiversity (ACB). The Philippines agreed to host it. Today the Center is known worldwide for its work in biodiversity conservation and management. Various dialogue partners, aside from the EU, want to partner with the ACB — but there’s a catch.

Indonesia and Cambodia haven’t ratified the agreement establishing the Center. If you are a dialogue partner you would like to see Asean commitment to conserving biodiversity in the form of a unanimous ratification of the agreement before you commit a lot more funds to it. Meanwhile, Asean members contribute to the Center’s funds on a voluntary basis. The Philippines pays for most of its operational expenses.

Buensuceso hopes President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, whose strongest initiatives have been in foreign policy, will ensure the ratification of the ACB before he turns over the presidency of Indonesia to his successor. That would nicely cap this legacy.

At any rate, it’s time Asean took bolder measures for its biodiversity. In a surprising revelation, Belinda Aruwarnati Margano, formerly of Indonesia’s Forestry Ministry and now with the University of South Dakota, says Indonesia lost 840,000 hectares of forest in 2012, almost double that of the reputed biggest loser, Brazil.

In 2011, satellite imagery showed that Malaysia destroyed 353,000 hectares of its forests. Last year, Cambodia was reported to have lost about 7 percent of its forest cover during a 12-year period, the fifth fastest in the world. At the same time, the Philippines continued to lose more than 50,000 hectares per year of what little is left of its forest cover.

According to the ACB, Asean has the world’s highest loss rate of mangroves — at 26 percent over a 25-year period — and the highest loss rate of coral reefs, at 40 percent.

The bottom line is that we don’t need a war in the South China Sea to experience the worst of hell. We need only do nothing more for our biodiversity.

Jamil Maidan Flores is a Jakarta-based writer whose interests include philosophy and foreign policy.