Indo-Pacific

Source: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

Area covered by the Indo-Pacific biogeographic region
Indo-Pacific. The green circle covers ASEAN.

The Indo-Pacific is a vast biogeographic region of Earth.

In a narrow sense, sometimes known as the Indo-West Pacific or Indo-Pacific Asia, it comprises the tropical waters of the Indian Ocean, the western and central Pacific Ocean, and the seas connecting the two. It does not include the temperate and polar regions of the Indian and Pacific oceans, nor the Tropical Eastern Pacific, along the Pacific coast of the Americas, which is also a distinct marine realm. The term is especially useful in marine biology, ichthyology, and similar fields, since many marine habitats are continuously connected from Madagascar to Japan and Oceania, and a number of species occur over that range, but are not found in the Atlantic Ocean.

The region has an exceptionally high

Western Atlantic, and around 500 species of reef building corals, compared with about 50 species in the Western Atlantic.[3]

The term first appeared in academic use in

Weimar Germany, and spread to interwar Japan. German political oceanographers envisioned an "Indo-Pacific" comprising anticolonial India and republican China, as German allies, against "Euro-America".[4] Since the late 2010s, the term "Indo-Pacific" has been increasingly used in geopolitical discourse. It also has a "symbiotic link" with the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue, or "Quad", an informal grouping between Australia, Japan, India, and the United States. It has been argued that the concept may lead to a change in popular "mental maps" of how the world is understood in strategic terms.[5] Remarking on overlapping older terms for the region, the political scientist Amitav Acharya stated
that as a concept, "'Asia' was built by nationalists, 'Asia-Pacific' by economists, 'East Asia' by culturalists, whereas 'Indo-Pacific' by strategists'".

In its widest sense, the term geopolitically covers all nations and islands surrounding either the Indian Ocean or the Pacific Ocean, encompassing mainland African and Asian nations who border these oceans, such as

Pacific Islands east of them, as well as Pacific nations of the Americas such as Canada or Mexico.[6][7][8] ASEAN countries (defined as those in Southeast Asia and the Malay Archipelago) are considered to be geographically at the centre of the political Indo-Pacific.[9]

Subdivisions

The figure shows 8 maps of biogeographic regionalizations that were tested using model selection with analysis of molecular variance(AMOVA) by Crandall et al. 2019.
Biogeographic regionalizations that were tested using model selection with analysis of molecular variance(AMOVA) by Crandall et al. 2019. Colours represent different regions within a scheme.

The WWF and Nature Conservancy divide the Indo-Pacific into 3 realms (or subrealms), and each of these into 25 marine provinces and 77 ecoregions (Marine Ecoregions of the World; MEOW) based on data-driven expert opinion.[10] Other schemes for subdivision of the Indo-Pacific have included: 5 provinces, based on endemism in fishes;[11][12] 3 regions split into 10 provinces based on dissimilarity of fish assemblages,[13] 11 provinces based on range boundaries in corals,[14] 12 divisions split into 124 ecoregions based on biogeographic clustering from coral distributions[15] and finally 8 realms from distributions of 65,000 marine species.[16] All but the last of these schemes were tested against one another by an international consortium of marine scientists using genetic data from 56 Indo-Pacific species, with the reasoning that genetic data should reflect the evolutionary processes that structure the Indo-Pacific.[17] While there was no clear winning scheme, and all schemes were supported by data from at least one species, the genetic data in general favored schemes with few subdivisions, supporting the Indo-Pacific as relatively unstructured biogeographic realm - possibly the world's largest. Below are briefly described the 3 MEOW realms of the Indo-Pacific:

Central Indo-Pacific

The Coral Triangle and countries participating in the Coral Triangle Initiative

The Central Indo-Pacific includes the numerous seas and straits connecting the Indian and Pacific oceans, including the seas surrounding the

Indonesian archipelago (with the exception of Sumatra's northwest coast, which is part of the Western Indo-Pacific), the South China Sea, the Philippine Sea, the north coast of Australia, and the seas surrounding New Guinea, western and central Micronesia, New Caledonia, the Solomon Islands, Vanuatu, Fiji, and Tonga. The Central Indo-Pacific, due in part to its central location at the meeting of two oceans, has the greatest richness and diversity of marine organisms, specifically located within the Coral Triangle, which contains 76% of all known coral species in the world.[2]

Eastern Indo-Pacific

The Eastern Indo-Pacific surrounds the mostly volcanic islands of the central Pacific Ocean, extending from the Marshall Islands in the west through central and southeastern Polynesia to Hawaii, to the west coast of Chile. The World Wide Fund for Nature believe the region ends at Chile's Easter Island and Isla Salas y Gómez, although it is sometimes extended even further to include Chile's Desventuradas Islands and Juan Fernández Islands.[18][19][20][10]

Western Indo-Pacific

The Western Indo-Pacific covers the western and central portion of the Indian Ocean, including Africa's east coast, the Red Sea, the Gulf of Aden, the Persian Gulf, the Arabian Sea, the Bay of Bengal, and the Andaman Sea, as well as the coastal waters surrounding Madagascar, Seychelles, the Comoros, the Mascarene Islands, Maldives, and the Chagos Archipelago.[10]

Ecology

Some seashore and coastal plants are found throughout most of the region, including the trees

Suriana maritima, and Pemphis acidula. These plants have adapted to grow on coral sand, and have seeds adapted to crossing salt water, including distribution by birds or which can survive floating in salt water.[21]

The trees

candlenut (Aleurites moluccanus), and Morinda citrifolia originated in the Central Indo-Pacific, and were spread further across the region by human settlers.[21]

Economic region

The "Indo-Pacific" has been an economic idea since its early formulation in

urbanisation and population growth, are key vectors that determine the 'manometers' of the oceanic region. Haushofer also explained why industrialisation broke out in Europe rather than the Indo-Pacific by a spatial theory of demography.[4]
: 3–22 

In the 21st century, with the rising involvement of the United States in the new growth areas of Asia, the idea of the Indo-Pacific Economic Corridor (IPEC) emerged during the U.S.–India Strategic Dialogue of 2013. The Secretary of State John Kerry referred to the potential of the Indo-Pacific Economic Corridor in transforming the prospects for development and investments as well as for trade and transit between the economies of South and Southeast Asia Indo-Pacific economic corridor.[22]

K. Yhome in his scholarly study has mapped out the potential for various emerging trans-regional corridors in Asia along with the challenges of linking IPEC into the larger web of regional economic integration initiatives taking shape in the region in 2017.[23]

On 23 May 2022, the president of the United States, Joe Biden, launched the

Indo-Pacific Economic Framework for Prosperity
(IPEF). This agreement includes a dozen of initial partners including: Australia, Brunei, India, Indonesia, Japan, Republic of Korea, Malaysia, New Zealand, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, and Vietnam. Together, all the countries included within the framework represent 40% of the world GDP. The IPEF contains four pillars:

  1. Connected Economy: through digital economy rules, data localization, AI, privacy.
  2. Resilient Economy: through better supply chain commitments that better anticipate and prevent disruptions in supply chains.
  3. Clean Economy: with commitments to
    decarbonization, and green infrastructure
    .
  4. Fair Economy: with recommendation to strengthen efforts to crack down on corruption, effective tax implementation, anti-money laundering, and anti-bribery regimes.[24]

Geopolitical context

Origins

The German geopolitician

historical philology. He envisioned an "Indo-Pacific" comprising anticolonial forces in India and China, as Germany's ally against the maritime domination of Britain, the United States, and Western Europe.[4]

Contemporary use

The Japanese Prime Minister

Institute of Defense Studies and Analyses (IDSA), New Delhi. It was a result of consultations between IDSA and the Japan Institute of International Affairs (JIIA) held in New Delhi in October 2006.[27] From 2010 onwards, the term Indo-Pacific acquired salience within the Indian government and has since been used often by India's apex political leadership.[28] From about 2011 onwards, the term has been used frequently by strategic analysts and high-level government/military leadership in Australia, Japan and the United States to denote said region. However, a formal/official documented articulation of the term first appeared in Australia's Defence White Paper, 2013.[29] It is also "symbiotically linked"[5] with the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue—an informal grouping of like-minded democracies in the region, comprising Australia, India, Japan, and the United States
.

Since 2011, the term "Indo-Pacific" is being used increasingly in geopolitical discourse.[30][31]

In 2013, Indonesian Foreign Minister Marty Natalegawa proposed an "Indo-Pacific Treaty of Friendship and Cooperation" to restore trust, manage unresolved territory disputes, and help countries deal with change in the region.[32] In 2013, U.S. officials have begun using the term "Indo-Asia Pacific".[33]

In 2019, the United States Department of State published a document formalizing the concept of a "Free and Open Indo-Pacific", to be sustained among members of "the Quad", a partnership of four Indo-Pacific democracies led by the United States, in concert with Australia, India, and Japan.[34] "Indo-Pacific" has also featured prominently in top-level U.S. strategic documents such as the 2017 National Security Strategy,[35] the 2018 Nuclear Posture Review,[36] and the 2018 National Defense Strategy.[37] According to Felix Heiduk and Gudrun Wacker at the German Institute for International and Security Affairs, the concept of a "Free and Open Indo-Pacific" is aimed at containing China and the "Indo-Pacific" is "primarily understood as a U.S.-led containment strategy directed against China" in Beijing.[38] Australian scholar Rory Medcalf has argued that "The Indo-Pacific...does not exclude or contain China, though it does dilute China’s influence."[39] It has been argued that the concept of the Indo-Pacific may lead to a change in popular "mental maps" of how the world is understood in strategic terms.[40]

The term's profile was raised when it found mention in the joint statement issued by the Indian Prime Minister

President Biden, who declared a "secure and prosperous Indo-Pacific."[44] Tamer calls the Indo-Pacific a concept that started to gain ground in international relations as a geopolitical challenge by the U.S. toward China.[44]

The term was also used in 2019 by the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) in its statement ASEAN Outlook on the Indo-Pacific (AOIP),[45] though the bloc also still uses the longstanding term "Asia-Pacific" which is preferred by China and Russia.[46] Its use by ASEAN is arguably an attempt by the bloc at balance-of-power hedging[47] between competing visions for the region between the US and China. However, it is also clear that ASEAN does not share the exact same understanding of the term as the US,[48] and its AOIP statement specifically states[45] that it envisions continuing to play a "central and strategic role" in the region.

Criticism

The Australian Citizens Party, a minor party associated with the US-led Rouche movement, criticises the "Indo-Pacific" vision as a reenactment of Nazi strategy, given the concept's link to Karl Haushofer.[49]

Former Prime Minister of Australia Paul Keating, in a televised address at the National Press Club, criticised the notion of the "Indo-Pacific" as a construct of the United States in its diplomatic war with China:[50]

The United States says, well, that's all very interesting. But look, if you behave yourself, you Chinese. You can be a stakeholder in our system. And look, you wouldn't have to be Xi Jinping or anybody, to take the view of your Chinese Nationalist say, "Well, hang on, let me get this right. We are already one and a quarter times bigger than you, will soon be twice as big as you, and we may be two and a half times as big as you. But we can be a stakeholder in your system, is that it?" I mean, it’d make a cat laugh.

See also

References

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Further reading