Environmental Law Aspects of the Arbitral Tribunal Award in the South China Sea Dispute

Few disputes have attracted more controversy during the past few years than the South China Sea dispute. The new addition to the saga of the dispute is the award of an Arbitral Tribunal constituted under Annex VII of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea on a case brought by the Philippines against the People’s Republic of China (PRC). The Philippines initiated proceedings against the PRC in early 2013 asking the Tribunal to decide on four categories of issues, as the Tribunal itself defined them. First, it asked for a decision on maritime rights and entitlements, second, on entitlements to maritime zones, third, on a number of actions taken up by the PRC in the South China Sea, and fourth, on the aggravation of the dispute on behalf of the PRC through a number of activities, including land reclamation and the construction of artificial islands. This chapter will not focus on the more publicized (and perhaps thornier) issues such as the PRC non-appearance in the proceedings, or the question of jurisdiction. It will rather focus on the environmental aspects of the award (covered by the third and fourth categories of complaints). The award contains extensive passages on issues of environmental protection worthy of analysis and contextualization. Therefore the aim of this chapter is twofold. On the one hand to analyse those environmental law aspects of the award as such. On the other hand, to place the environmental aspects of the award in the wider context of international environmental law (and in the context of the environmental issues in the South China Sea).