By Rear Admiral (Retd.) Y.N. Jayarathna
Recently, the Melbourne-based Australia India Institute (AII) in partnership with the University of South Pacific conducted the inaugural Fiji Dialogue; under the theme of Australia and India: Enhancing Cooperation with Indo-Pacific Island States.
I was invited as a lead speaker for two sessions: Maritime Cooperation, Infrastructure Protection and Resource Management (session 1) and Enhancing Regional Governance (session 4) in the inaugural one-day dialogue held at the capital city of Suva in Fiji. This article is based on my exposure to this part of the world and the on-ground assessment of the challenges and opportunities for these small Pacific Islands.
Large Oceanic States
What is striking is the oceanic area these small island states inherit compared to their land masses and the image below is an overlay of Exclusive Economic Zones (EEZ) of these island states and the claims for continental margin on Google-earth Pro maintained by the writer. As one can see, these are not small island States but large oceanic States where at this scale of the image what is noticeable is the size of the oceanic space and not the island itself.
The Southwestern Pacific comprising Polynesia and Micronesia islands is a crowded space already as seen from overlays of maritime boundaries as depicted in the above image. These numerous islands; mostly volcanic islands, stand to face numerous maritime challenges, and the Australia-India Institute is focusing on enhancing the regional cooperation and their outreach to these islanders for betterment of livelihood and maritime governance. This is a process that needs complete collaboration of the island States. And the dialogue discussed several of these key issues from ‘effect from fortress America’ to climate change through deliveries of the academics, practitioners, and the officials.
What highlighted these discussions have many similarities and yet many differences from the perspective of small island nations of the Indian Ocean, as Sri Lanka and the Maldives were among the invited states for the forum to express and share their experiences.
The writer with over three decades of maritime practitioner experiences encompassing asymmetric threats at sea, managing maritime disasters, expertise in hydrography and submarine cables and the geo-political analysis was able to contribute and at same time analyse the present and future trends these South Pacific small island States are going to encounter. The most notable, just like in the Indian ocean is the maritime blindness of the governments; and as long as the governments remain blind to maritime matters, the island States are at peril. The writer witnessed that Yuan Wang 6 (whose sister ship Yuan Wang 5 caused a diplomatic blunder in 2022 as then Sri Lankan Government mis-managed the handling of the ship’s request for a port call) is docked in Suva Harbour but was unable to assess the impact in local governance and the media due time constraints faced in focusing for the Fiji Dialogue. This port call has not drawn the media attention elsewhere as happened in 2022 in Sri Lanka where, picking from Indian Media’s fanatic coverage, the local media also triggered opinions on numerous fronts.
Building maritime awareness is a top-down approach where the Government and the policymakers should realise that, what potentials the small island States inherit under today’s geo-strategic posture. A good example lay in the region itself with Nauru leading its global posture with several initiatives thereby attracting the attention of the power-to-be. Under present geo-strategic posture, the writer believes that small island States are having an opportunity to lead and engage on equal partner level with big economies and big maritime players. The fact all these small island States are inheriting a vast oceanic space makes them more relevant under today’s global initiatives such as the Nippon-GEBCO-led Seabed 2030 and the seabed mining. These compel small island states to invest robustly on maritime and associated activities such as Legislature, education, and Maritime Domain Awareness (MDA); because MDA is the foundation to build the capacities and capabilities in ocean governance.
Sri Lankan expertise
For example, due to the internal conflict Sri Lanka have had, the Navy invested in coastal radar stations and later interlinked all of them to have a common operating picture as a Network-Centric system. This network later was aided by USA funded Athena Project which supplied several high-tech ‘gadgetries’ such as Marine Small Target Trackers (MSTT) augmenting the coastal surveillance and the Sri Lanka’s investments in High Frequency Surface Wave Radar (HFSWR) giving coverage up to 200 nautical miles. These drew the attention of the Indian Navy when they started their white-shipping monitoring capacities and was benefited by the linking of four (4) of Sri Lanka’s coastal Radar Stations to their system under an agreement of information sharing. These all happened in 2005-2009 era, and today these have evolved to much broader and wider coverage where Sri Lanka Navy today have the coverage encompassing the Nothern part of the Indian Ocean and beyond. The establishment of Maritime Rescue Coordinating Centre (MRCC) in 2014 and the Information Fusion Centre (IFC) in 2019 are part of these gradual developments and such remains an ideal case study even for the small island States of south-pacific in building maritime governance in a phase out and less financial commitment basis.
South Pacific
The writer assessed that the geography of these small islands of south-pacific is of their advantage, as the high peaks/high grounds provides the wider radar coverage, and inter-linking these as a maze of stations would envelop the entire region. These not necessarily to be linked by satellite connections as micro-link and undersea cable connectivity is already in hand for networking the surveillance system. The wide use of small aircraft movements among the islands is another low-cost solution as these ‘eyes-on-air’ could provide real-time information for cross checking and verification. It is a matter of taking all sources and stakeholders of relevance on-board to design a local system that is interconnected to a regional system encompassing the entire islandic regions of interests. These need maritime awareness and affinity, and this is the reason the writer emphasises on maritime blindness of the Governance and the policy makers as the first and foremost impediment for these island nations.
With the number of tools available through official and commercial sources for maritime governance, what is needed is a concept and design of acceptance among the island States where AII’s initiative could reap fruit by bringing Australian and Indian assistance to specific and integrated projects. The Universities meantime can build the know-how capacities by enhancing wider understanding on law of the sea, marine geology, oceanography and hydrography etc. it is best advisable that these are build up on broad understanding as this South-Western Pacific is likely to be an ocean area of geo-strategic competition with the new American administration where much of financial and aid programme destined to this particular area may see a gradual decrease. Thus, it becomes a driving burden for Australia and India, who are already committed for these Pacific Ocean States as part of their strategic reach and need. The writer is of the view that the Philippines despite being another major player in this part of the world, would do much to engage the south-west of the Pacific as their strategic interests are much towards the north and north-east. It is the geography that ultimately defines the coastal States’ relevance in modern geo-strategies and Sri Lanka in the Indian Ocean remains a classic case study.
There are several maritime initiatives the Fijian Government can undertake without further delays as such know-how may already be within the island. These include Marine Spatial Planning (MSP) and designing of Marine Spatial Data Infrastructure (MSDI) to spread awareness among the government before they start serving the wider investor and regional cooperative needs. These web-based systems can be designed and built upon without much financial investment and the writer is of the view that these could form the Governments’ first steps as inhouse measurers.
Today’s global economies are maritime dependent, and the import/export alone is not an indicator of how relevant an island nation is to the world’s economies. Sri Lanka’s investments in deep water ports are increasingly being benefited by the maritime crisis in the Bab-El-Mandeb and the Indian economy and similarly the islands of south-west pacific may get benefitted by secure maritime domain besides being the connecting nodes for another critical maritime infrastructure; the undersea cables. Although not within the global maritime ‘superhighways,’ the sea lanes of communication still a principal element for this part of the world where coastal states are responsible for safety and security, with an application for global common good.
In comparison, small island states in the Indian Ocean also underwent a similar period in the past, and thanks to many maritime security challenges within the region and sub-regions, has evolved to a better status of maritime governance to that of the small island states of the south-west pacific. Whilst the AII led initiative is shouldered by the Australian and Indian Governments, the writer opined it is time that small island states of the Indian Ocean also to reach out for the pacific islands as there are much that can be shared and incorporated. Although Indo-Pacific seems to be only for bigger players, such provide avenues for small players to play big in maritime dominated global posture.