2.1 Territorial disputes are about the land and source.

In Southeast Asia (SEA), just like any other regions conflicts still exists. However,
compared to other regions, the numbers of unresolved territorial disputes in SEA are still
considered small and SEA is considered a relatively safe region with no violence going on
due to the unresolved territorial disputes as compared to the Africa region where the
conflicts has involved 9 million people causing them to be refugees and internally displaced
people (IDP) where hundreds and thousands of people were slaughtered. The territorial
disputes in Southeast Asia consist of the following disputes. The Philippines’ Sabah Claim,
the Ligitan and Sipidan dispute, The Pedra Branca dispute and the South China Sea Conflict
Zone also known as the Spartly Islands disputes.

2.1.1 Issue

The territorial disputes in SEA begin with the contesting for the rights of the territory
because of countries wanting to claim rights for territories which they believe that it belongs
to them. The colonial rulers, by treaties and agreements had drawn lines on maps showing
the limit of sovereign authority, but at the margins of imperial authority where the real
borders on the ground were often fuzzy and ambiguous. And after World War 2, when newly
independent states of Southeast Asia had inherited their national borders as shown on the
colonial maps. Along hundreds of miles of these borders, the map lines that have never
being physically demarcated through survey and physical marking now poses a territorial
dispute between countries as these new states refuse to accept the demarcations.
 Resource is one of the factors that led to the territorial dispute left unresolved. An
example is the Spartly Islands dispute where Spartly’s island geographic consists of
hundreds of islets, reefs and rocks which extends to over 400,000 square kilometres of the
central South China Sea. The resources that can be extracted out from Spartly Islands is
energy which consists of oil and natural gas reserves which also means money considering
the high demand for energy be it oil or natural gas reserves in the current world situation.
Other than energy, another resource that the Spartly Islands provide is fishes. The number
of fishes caught each year in Spartly Islands is five million tons which accounts for ten
percent of the global fishery market. As claimant’s inshore fishing resources is facing
depletion due to overfishing or pollutions, the Spartly Islands would therefore be a cause
worth contesting for because of number of fishes available in Spartly Islands.

2.1.2 Impact

Aside from creating manmade islands, Vietnam and China have also increased
commercial fishing to strengthen territorial claims. China has expanded its fishing
practices in the Spratly and Paracel Islands in order to bolster historical claims to the
territories, going so far as to pay fishermen to maintain presence in its Spratly outposts. The
use of fishing vessels as political pawns has led to conflicts such as the sinking of the
Vietnamese fishing boat earlier this year and the arrests of several Chinese fishermen for
illegal fishing in Vietnam in 2001.

Overfishing in the South China Sea has caused fish stocks to decline by an estimated 70-
95 percent since the 1950s. Despite overfishing problems, the artificial islands have provided
an opportunity to expand fishing in the region into waters that were previously too difficult to
access. Additionally, the dredging process used to build these islands is harming fish
larvae populations along the coral reefs

2.1.3 Solution

As times passes and disputes remaining the same as it is with no breakthrough to end
the disputes, a possible solution would be to present the dispute to a higher level such as to
the ASEAN or International Court of Justice (ICJ) just like how the Singapore and Malaysia
presented its disputes to the ICJ which thus has ended its 27 years disputes for Pedra
Branca.
 The first step forward to resolve the disputes should be to discuss and agree on the
desired goal. If the desired goal is a joint development as an interim solution, then several
obstacles will have to be addressed and one of the fears among the claimant’s is China’s
vision of joint development is development of resources on China’s legal continental shelves
and unless China could justify and clarify on these claims, other claimants are not likely to
enter serious discussions of joint development thus hindering the resolutions to the territorial
disputes. The current fragile standoff among the claimants could result in military strife and
the involvement of outside powers thus it is in the interest everyone involves in the disputes
to explore and develop the resources in Spartly Islands cooperatively however these efforts
are currently blocked by the stalemate over the competing claims.

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/186810341703600302

https://www.scmp.com/knowledge/topics/asia-territorial-disputes

https://brill.com/view/title/32831