cross-posted from: https://lemmy.sdf.org/post/54979104

China managed to secure Taiwan’s exclusion from a Track 2 platform designed to address maritime ecology. It’s a worrying escalation of China’s political warfare.

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Taiwan is an indispensable stakeholder in ocean governance. It has transformed from a historical trouble-maker accused of laundering fish into a vanguard against IUU fishing, directly advancing the Mombasa Declaration. Globally, IUU fishing inflicts an astronomical economic toll of up to $50 billion annually, devastating coastal livelihoods and fueling severe human rights abuses through forced labor. Catherine Chabaud, France’s minister delegate for the sea and fishery, noted that transparency must become the universal norm in the fisheries sector, as international cooperation is paralyzed without it.

Through the Fisheries Agency’s aggressive digitization, Taiwan can offer the international community robust verification of catch data. By aligning with the Mombasa Declaration’s core mandates – modernizing vessel registries, publishing fishing authorizations, and strengthening information-sharing – Taiwan can deploy cutting-edge artificial intelligence into its Vessel Monitoring Systems to provide predictive AI tracking that detects anomalous vessel behavior and unauthorized transshipments in real-time. This tech capability is vital for conserving marine genetic resources under the BBNJ framework.

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If the international community tolerates Beijing’s expansion of its geopolitical veto […], the future of the rules-based maritime order is bleak. It signals to authoritarian regimes that political leverage can buy the censorship of key scientific actors. To safeguard the oceans, like-minded partners – including the United States, Japan, and Australia – must look beyond standard diplomatic condemnations and actively counter this form of bullying in the multilateral scientific sphere. When both formal and secondary tracks are compromised by bilateral coercion, these nations should integrate Taiwan’s research capabilities directly into robust, decentralized scientific coalitions.

We cannot allow political exclusion to dictate the terms of ecological survival. The ocean knows no borders, and ocean science must no longer tolerate geopolitical blackmail.

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