Conservation scientists seldom discuss a certain type of frustration in public. It has nothing to do with money, the pressure to publish or perish, or the tedious process of peer review. It is the annoyance of knowing that important survey locations exist—islands teeming with resident and migratory waterbirds—but being unable to access them because fieldwork is practically impossible due to the political climate on the water.
For researchers working anywhere close to the South China Sea, that is becoming more and more of a reality.
The disputed island chains at the heart of this geopolitical standoff—the Spratly Islands, the Paracels, and the shoals and reefs that Beijing, Manila, Hanoi, Kuala Lumpur, and Taipei all claim in overlapping, sometimes conflicting ways—are more than just disputed economic and military territory. They are important ecological waypoints as well. These low-lying islands and reef flats serve as breeding grounds and stopovers for migratory waterbirds traveling seasonally throughout East and Southeast Asia. Without the ability to track species composition, nesting success, and population trends, scientists are operating with, at best, out-of-date baselines and, at worst, conjecture.
For years, the structural issue has been getting worse. The physical landscape and access conditions in the region have been significantly changed by China’s island-building campaign, which picked up speed after 2014 and has persisted despite a 2016 Hague tribunal ruling rejecting the legal basis for Beijing’s expansive claims. Where there used to be open water or small natural formations, military installations now stand, reefs have been dredged, and sand has been piled onto submerged features. Because few independent researchers have been able to get close enough to properly assess it, the ecological disruption caused by that construction alone has not been well documented.
Some of the loss of nesting habitat may be irreversible. Reclaimed land that is covered by port infrastructure or concrete runways is difficult to reclaim. It is mostly unknown what bird populations existed prior to construction and what happened to them during and after.
In the meantime, rather than becoming less volatile, the political dynamics surrounding these islands have become more unstable. This July marks the tenth anniversary of the 2016 arbitral ruling, which has rekindled tensions, especially between China and the Philippines, whose coast guard vessels have been embroiled in an increasing number of clashes close to the Second Thomas Shoal.
When conducting surveys close to features that Chinese coast guard vessels actively patrol, researchers affiliated with Philippine universities or operating under Philippine government permits encounter clear challenges. Researchers whose funding sources or institutional affiliations raise suspicions in other claimant states face the same difficulty in reverse.
There’s a feeling that science gets entangled in these conflicts not because anyone specifically wants to obstruct it, but rather because the diplomatic and bureaucratic framework required to approve multinational field access just doesn’t exist in an area where each island’s jurisdictional status is a hotly debated topic. The permit is issued by whom? Whose territorial waters are being entered? These are significant political issues in the South China Sea, not merely procedural ones.
The fact that waterbird survey work by its very nature necessitates access across large geographic areas during particular seasonal windows makes this particularly challenging to solve. If a nesting census is conducted after three consecutive breeding seasons, the population trend is completely lost. There is no way to close the data gap. Additionally, the populations under observation—including species that are highly dependent on island and reef flat habitats—are vulnerable to pressures that go well beyond the political boundaries of this particular disputed sea, such as habitat degradation and fishing disturbance.
As a partial workaround, some researchers have turned to satellite tracking and remote sensing. These instruments can sometimes identify aggregate activity at nesting colonies and offer helpful information about habitat change. However, they do not take the place of the ground-level survey work required to accurately determine species composition, count individuals, and evaluate reproductive success. It’s still unclear if the satellite-derived datasets that are currently being gathered will be adequate to close the gap left by decreased field access, or if they will only provide higher-resolution documentation of uncertainty.
Beyond any one archipelago, conservationists are silently observing this situation with concern. The South China Sea is not an exception to the larger trend of geopolitical tension gradually undermining the circumstances that allow for international scientific cooperation. However, one of the more striking examples is the South China Sea, an area of great ecological significance that overlaps with one of the world’s most difficult territorial disputes, where the gap between what scientists are actually allowed to do and what they are required to do keeps growing.
The islands are split up. There is a halt to the surveys. And the birds continue to fly through an area that the world is unable to adequately observe, unconcerned about anything.
