Need for coastal integration in South Asia
Mukul SHARMA and Charu GUPTA
One important condition that will make coastal integration possible
in the region is a new understanding of ‘sovereignty,’ in which the
coasts do not symbolize control or power but become spaces for
interdependence.
Bangladesh’s recent decision to take to the UN long-time maritime
boundary disputes with India and to issue a compulsory arbitration
notification under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS),
marks a new chapter in coastal conflicts among South Asian countries
(The Hindu, October 10, 2009).
Sea boundary
The region has been unable to amicably resolve a large number of
issues regarding sea laws, maritime boundaries and coastal resources,
leading to increasing conflicts. International sea laws, foreign
policies and domestic interests have often crosscut each other in this
process. South Asian coasts need de-bordering and any such process
entails a re-bordering from the perspective of coastal fisherfolk and
sustainable fisheries. More possibilities, therefore, need to be
explored for greater coastal, bilateral and regional integration.
Coasts are places where the ‘geographic’ and the
‘management’ could be superimposed on each other to
create powerful and secure nations. Courtesy: Google |
India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh share the resources of the
Bay of Bengal, the Indian Ocean and the Arabian Sea. Whereas India’s
maritime boundaries necessitate delimitation with seven states on
adjacent and opposite coasts - Pakistan, Maldives, Sri Lanka, Indonesia,
Thailand, Myanmar and Bangladesh - it shares land borders with six
states. Since the 1970s, India’s maritime boundaries have been
demarcated with many countries, but these remain seriously unresolved
with Pakistan and Bangladesh.
Bangladesh has comparatively much less of a coastline. The limited
land-based food and fuel resources available to them and the disparity
between resources and subsistence needs of a large population make it
imperative for Bangladesh to recognize the potential of oceans as a
tangible promise for the future.
Thus the government enacted the Territorial Waters and Maritimes
Zones Act, 1974. This Act, however, did not specify the breadth of the
Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) of Bangladesh in the Bay of Bengal in
clear-cut terms.
The delimitation of maritime boundaries has created a conflict
between Bangladesh and its neighbours. Disagreement arose mainly with
India when Dhaka signed in 1974 contracts to share production with six
international oil companies, granting them oil and natural gas
exploration rights in its territorial waters in the Bay of Bengal.
The Bangladesh line moved towards the South from the edge of the
country’s land boundary, while the Indian line took a South-easterly
direction, thus creating an angle within which lie thousands of square
miles of the Bay, claimed by each country as its economic zone. This
overlapping claim has become a critical problem between the two
neighbours. For example, the territorial sea, the EEZ and the
continental shelf will depend on how this dispute is resolved.
Harekrishna Debnath of the National Fishworker Forum said in an
interview with the authors: “Since the mid 1970s, after the
International Conference on the Law of the Sea, a sense of EEZ and
maritime boundary has deeply got involved with questions of sovereignty
of a nation. All nations, particularly those with coastal lines, are
therefore engaged in demarcating their maritime boundaries. However,
while theoretically this has been realized, unlike land, it is not easy
to demarcate sea boundaries. The process is also tied closely to the
lives of millions of fisherfolk across the globe.
LOS decisions
India and Bangladesh are no exception to this. Between them, there is
a less than 400-km area in the sea. Thus there is an absence of the
200-km EEZ on both sides, though it theoretically exists. This has led
to a great amount of confusion. In this situation it is not only
difficult but near impossible to maintain the LOS decision.”
Although negotiations have been going on since 1974, Dhaka and New
Delhi are not able to settle the delimitation problem, mainly because of
the concave nature of the Bangladesh coast. Bangladesh’s position is
that no right principle can be applied in the present case and that the
basic guideline should be equity. India, on the other hand, applies the
equidistance principle in delimiting the boundary, ignoring the physical
features of the coast. It is imperative that an amicable solution be
found, even if it is based on the equitable principle.
De-bordering coasts
It is by now a truism in India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka
that coastal borders, EEZs and laws of the seas have radically changed
the coastal areas. The term ‘coastal conflicts’ has become a menacing
qualifier among us. It is clear how and why borders have affected the
fisherfolk who have lived within their cartographic confines. Thus, they
are much more concerned with cross-border policing and managing
cross-border infiltration than with coastal cross-border relationships
and cross-border coastal conservation. More important, there is no
effort to un-map and re-map the coastal borders, because the changes
that have taken place are not only in the physical space but also in
ways of comprehending the region.
The imaginary of the coastal borders in South Asia is conceived
primarily with reference to nation-building, relationships of
nation-states within the region and natural resource management for a
broader common good internationally.
Coasts are places where the ‘geographic’ and the ‘management’ could
be superimposed on each other to create powerful and secure nations,
with perceptions of their rights to harness their coastal production.
However, given the history of the region and community relationships
among the coastal fisherfolk, the coastlines have been neither natural
nor practical.
Not allowing neighbouring coastal territories of individual countries
even an informal freedom to interact has rendered the coastal borders
inimical not only to livelihoods but also to shared histories,
religions, festivals, sensibilities, languages and habits.
It is true that the function of the modern South Asian coastal states
has been to codify and territorialize the decoded, de-territorialized
flows of the coasts so as to prevent them from breaking loose at all the
edges and hems of national, environmental and coastal balances. But this
has fatally failed the coastal people.
The South Asian States must rework on their coastal borders,
bilaterally and regionally, in such a manner that a collective coastal
community comes into being.
Coastal integration is ideal. Any project of greater coastal
bilateral and regional integration involves what are called ‘sovereignty
tradeoffs.’ Integration often requires the establishment and maintenance
of structures of authority and institutions that surpass national
boundaries.
South Asia
One important condition that will make coastal integration possible
in South Asia is a new understanding of ‘sovereignty’ itself, in which
the coasts do not symbolize control or power but become spaces for
interdependence, even though this may at first seem to compromise
autonomy.
The other important condition would be an acceptance by the states of
a simultaneous dialectic of greater bilateral/regional integration and
sub-regional power.
In such a scenario, Sindh of Pakistan would likely develop extensive
links with Gujarat in India. The coasts of Tamil Nadu will resonate
vibrantly with the coasts of Sri Lanka, as might those of West Bengal
and Bangladesh.
On the ground, regional or bilateral coastal cooperation will gather
momentum only when it is based on organic links among different coastal
sub-regions of the subcontinents.
By rediscovering and re-establishing cultural affiliations and
working and living ties, nations can actually emerge safer and more
secure.
As the coastal regions of India, Bangladesh, Pakistan and Sri Lanka
come together, the coastal laws of all these countries will also begin
to look more or less alike and work in an integrated fashion.
Courtesy: The Hindu |