Naming the North Natuna Sea: Considerations and Stages in Sea Naming in Indonesia Multamia RMT LAUDER* and Allan F
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Naming the North Natuna Sea: Considerations and stages in sea naming in Indonesia Multamia RMT LAUDER* and Allan F. LAUDER† Recently, Indonesia named an area of the South China Sea falling within its EEZ as the North Natuna Sea. This act of naming can be seen as a determination of state sovereignty. It also is made with consideration to historical realities. The present paper reports on this particular issue, as a case study based on a literature review and interviews with government officials. The case study is presented in the context of a general discussion of Indonesia’s management of its boundaries and the role that naming plays in this. The discussion refers to Indonesia’s character as a large archipelagic nation. Indonesia, with its more than 17 thousand islands, is the largest archipelagic country in the world, stretching east west over three-time zone. This means that managing its entire territorial area is a challenging job. Indonesia must manage maritime boundaries with a number of neighboring countries, namely India, Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore, Vietnam, Philippines, Palau, Papua New Guinea, Timor Leste, and Australia. Managing all of these different bilateral relationships requires a coordinated approach. Indonesia’s management of its maritime boundary is best understood in a historical and legal context. Indonesia has taken a largely diplomatic approach that follows global rules and is consultative. In Indonesia’s case, the most important legislation relates to the Djuanda Declaration of 1957 in which the country is stated to be an archipelago. This was ratified shortly after in Law No.4 / PRP / 1960. The next major piece of legislation was the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) 1982. This international convention formulates the rights and obligations of each country with regard to its surrounding sea, including guidelines for managing its marine resources including commercial activities and environmental issues. Indonesia ratified UNCLOS 1982 through legalization of Law No. 17 of 1985. The impact of the Djuanda Declaration and subsequent legislation on the extent of Indonesia’s maritime territories is significant. During colonial times, Indonesia’s internal sea territory extended only 3km from the coast. Beyond this, the seas were considered open international waters. In the present day after UNCLOS 1982, Indonesian waters have * Professor, Universitas Indonesia, Indonesia † Visiting Professor, Universitas Indonesia, Indonesia Multamia RMT LAUDER and Allan F. LAUDER 125 expanded substantialy. The total area of its water has increased from 2.027.087 km ² to 6,000,000 km ². The other important issue arising is that it gives Indonesia the right as sole claimant to the marine resources within its territorial borders. This obviously has both economic and political consequences. All countries with sea borders have the right to an Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) which extends up to 200 miles from the coastline. The country has the rights to all naturally occurring maritime resources in this area, including the application of its legal system, freedom of navigation, flight paths, and the planting of cables and pipelines. The paper will look at the North Natuna Sea naming process in the context of these things and will also discuss the process of naming, in particular the stages that the government must go through for the process to be successful. Key words: maritime boundary, national sovereignty, EEZ, sea naming, territorial management INTRODUCTION In 2017, Indonesia made public that they had given the name North Natuan Sea to an an area lying within its territorial waters to the north of the Natuna Islands. The event was shown on television and widely discussed in various news and academic forums as well as on television and social media. It also generated responses in the academic sphere (Hunt, 2017, Supriyanto, 2017). This is all set against a relatively robust literature which focuses on wider stragegic issues in the South China Sea (Chapsos and Malcolm, 2017, Fels and Vu, 2016, Gindarsah and Priamarizki, 2015, Hellendorff, 2016, Parameswaran, 2016). The language used in the media reports is exemplified in the small selection following and gives an indication of the perspective and concerns of this literature: Indonesia, Long on Sidelines, Starts to Confront China’s Territorial Claims. Recently, with the naming of the North Natuna Sea, Indonesia has taken a more assertive posture with regard to intrusion by foreign vessels, in particular Chinese fishing vessels, to the resource rich area around the Natuna Sea (Cochran, 2017). Indonesia’s new North Natuna Sea: What’s in a name? Indonesia, under Jokowi, is taking a firm stand against Chinese intrusions into its EEZ waters. (Connelly, 2017) The media message was woven around the collocation of South China Sea and words like confront, intrusion, and firm stand. Much of the literature and the discussion on this issue is geostrategic and political. The present paper looks at the naming of seas and the case of the North Natuna Sea from another perspective, that of toponymy, the study of names. The paper traces Indonesia’s geospatial identity, including its relations with neighboring countries with which it has borders, its character as an archipelagic state and the consequences of that, and its engagement with conventions and treaties governing the seas around it. 126 SESSION IV The case of the naming of the North Natuna Sea is looked at from a review of the process of sea name standardization and the practical difficulties involved in documenting and standardizing the names in such a large maritime country. Following is a review of the general principle of sea naming, a historical perspective on sea names in Indonesia and a study of the name Natuna including an etymology and a systematic analysis of the name based on a set of principles set out by Ormeling (2000). This allows us the see both the semantic and the connotational implications related to power or governance for the name. The question of whether the naming of the North Natuna Sea is a case of dual naming is also raised. This paper is the result of both a review of the literature and interviews and other interactions with government officials who have knowledge of the case of the North Natuna Sea. The approach that they have taken is, naturally, diplomatic and focuses around the idea that the naming is lawful, widely recognized and disadvantages no other country. One key point strongly iterated to us was that Indonesia has no border with China and the media story of conflicts is not relevant here. INDONESIA AS AN ARCHIPELAGIC STATE Indonesia is the world’s largest archipalegic country. The terms archipelagic state and archipelago are defined in Article 46(a,b) of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS 1982). Article 46. Use of Terms For the purposes of this Convention: a. “archipelagic State” means a State constituted wholly by one or more archipelagos and may include other islands; b. “archipelago” means a group of islands, including parts of islands,interconnecting waters and other natural features which are so closely interrelated that such islands, waters and other natural features form an intrinsic geographical, economic and political entity, or which historically have been regarded as such. (United Nations, 2009: 23) GEOSPATIAL DESCRIPTION The territory of the Republic of Indonesia stretches from Rondo island off the northern tip of Sumatra (Latitude 6° 05' North) to the southwest point of Roti island (Lat. 11° 15' South), and from Longitude 94° 58' to 141° 00' East. This geographical extent excludes that portion of Timor Island which forms the nation of Timor-Leste, and that part of Borneo Island which belongs to Malaysia (Sabah and Sarawak) and Brunei. With an overall distance of nearly 5,000 km from east to west Indonesia covers an area which is almost as great as that of Europe. (Forbes, 2014). Indonesia’s territory stretches over three time zones, from Breueh in the west to Sibir Island in Humboldt Bay (Yos Sudarso Bay) in the east (Cribb and Ford, 2009). Multamia RMT LAUDER and Allan F. LAUDER 127 Indonesia’s land territory covers 1,913,578.68 km2. while its territorial waters extend over 3.1 million km2 (Lauder and Lauder, 2015: 388). Forbes (2014) states that nearly 80 % of the area between Indonesia’s geographical extremities consists of seas. A more recent figure for the sea area, obtained from the Indonesian government, puts the sea area at 6,000,000 km ² up from 2.027.087 km ². This would mean that 84% of Indonesia’s territory is seas. NUMBER OF ISLANDS Indonesia has five major islands and 35 smaller groups of islands and islets (Forbes, 2014). The question of what the total number of islands is problematical and a number of different estimates have been put forward. Some just give an estimate, “In total, there are about 19,000 islands and islets of which about 6,000 are inhabited” (Forbes, 2014). Others try to be more specific, “The Indonesian government has up to now given the number of islands in Indonesia as 17,504 and this number is much quoted” (Lauder and Lauder, 2015: 388). “By the latest official count, the archipelago consists of 18,108 islands” (Cribb and Ford, 2009: 3). So, how many islands are there and why is this so problematic? The answer to why there are discrepancies is that before 2005, the number was based on surveys done by local government and the military. However, even ignoring the scale of identifying and inventorying islands in Indonesia, these efforts ran into some unexpected problems. The first of these was the question of what counts as an island. There are many features in the sea that do not qualify as islands (Lauder and Lauder, 2015: 388).