Philippines says PRC causing environmental damage in South China Sea
The Associated Press
The Philippines is calling for an international inquiry into environmental damage at a Chinese-controlled shoal in the South China Sea, including a massive loss of giant clams.
The Philippine Coast Guard in late May 2024 released surveillance photographs of Chinese fishermen harvesting giant clams in a lagoon at Scarborough Shoal. It said such activity occurred for years until apparently stopping in March 2019.
Surrounding coral appeared to be badly scarred by what the Coast Guard characterized as a futile search for more clams.
“Those were the last remaining giant clams that we saw in Bajo de Masinloc,” Coast Guard spokesperson Commodore Jay Tarriela told reporters, referring to the prominent fishing area off the northwestern Philippines.
“We are alarmed and worried about the situation that’s happening there,” Philippine National Security Council Assistant Director General Jonathan Malaya said. He said the People’s Republic of China (PRC) should accept an independent inquiry by the United Nations and environmental groups.
Beijing has repeatedly asserted sovereignty over much of the South China Sea despite territorial claims by nations including Brunei, Malaysia, the Philippines and Vietnam. The Indonesian Navy also has skirmished with the Chinese coast guard and fishing vessels in the Natuna Sea at the southern margin of the South China Sea.
The Philippines has highlighted the PRC’s increasingly assertive actions in the contested waters and again condemned its rogue stewardship of Scarborough Shoal.
Beijing seized the shoal in 2012. It reneged on a pledge to remove Chinese ships and has since surrounded the shoal with coast guard and suspected militia ships, Philippine officials said.
Since then, the Chinese coast guard has repeatedly sought to block Philippine patrol ships and fishing boats from the coral-ringed lagoon. In April 2024, Chinese ships fired water cannons that damaged Philippine Coast Guard and fishing vessels.
“They’re preventing us from getting into the lagoon,” Malaya said. “We can ask third-party environmental groups or even the United Nations to do a fact-finding mission to determine the environmental situation.”
An international tribunal in 2016 invalidated the PRC’s expansive claims to the South China Sea, a key global trade route, and cited Chinese actions that caused damage in the area.
Beijing refused to participate in the arbitration and continues to ignore the tribunal’s ruling.
