Indo-Pacific

The Indo-Pacific, sometimes known as the Indo-West Pacific or Indo-Pacific Asia, is a biogeographic region of Earth's seas, comprising the tropical waters of the Indian Ocean, the western and central Pacific Ocean, and the seas connecting the two in the general area of Indonesia. 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.

This article is about a region. For similar region, see Asia-Pacific. For the proposed language family, see Indo-Pacific languages. For the Australian rail service, see Indian Pacific.

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

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 species richness, with the world's highest species richness being found in at its heart in the Coral Triangle,[1][2] and a remarkable gradient of decreasing species richness radiating outward in all directions.[1] The region includes over 3,000 species of fish, compared with around 1,200 in the next richest marine region, the 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 oceanography and geopolitics. Scholarship has shown that the "Indo-Pacific" concept circulated 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.

Subdivisions
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.[5] Other schemes for subdivision of the Indo-Pacific have included: 5 provinces, based on endemism in fishes;[6][7] 3 regions split into 10 provinces based on dissimilarity of fish assemblages,[8] 11 provinces based on range boundaries in corals,[9] 12 divisions split into 124 ecoregions based on biogeographic clustering from coral distributions[10] and finally 8 realms from distributions of 65,000 marine species.[11] 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.[12] 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
Main article: 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
Main article: Eastern Indo-Pacific

The Eastern Indo-Pacific surrounds the mostly volcanic islands of the central Pacific Ocean, extending from the Marshall Islands through central and southeastern Polynesia to the west coast of Chile and Hawaii. 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.

Western Indo-Pacific
Main article: 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.

Ecology

Some seashore and coastal plants are found throughout most of the region, including the trees Pisonia grandis, Calophyllum inophyllum, Heliotropium arboreum, Pandanus tectorius, Cordia subcordata, Guettarda speciosa, and the shrubs Scaevola taccada, 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.[13]

The trees coconut (Coco nucifera), candlenut (Aleurites moluccanus), and Morinda citrifolia originated in the Central Indo-Pacific, and were spread further across the region by human settlers.[13]

Economic region

The "Indo-Pacific" has been an economic idea since its early formulation in Weimar Germany. According to Hansong Li, the German geographer Karl Haushofer, son of the economist Max Haushofer, believed that capital, along with 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.[14]

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.[15]

Geopolitical context

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 India and South Africa, Indian Ocean territories such as the Kerguelen Islands and Seychelles, the Malay Archipelago (which is within the bounds of both the Indian Ocean and the Pacific), Japan, Russia and other Far East nations bordering the Pacific, Australia and all the Pacific Islands east of them, as well as Pacific nations of the Americas such as Canada or Mexico.[16][17][18] The term may also be seen as encompassing offshore Atlantic islands which are politically part of Indo-Pacific nations, in addition to Alaskan and Russian islands north of the Aleutian chain, which do not technically fall within the Pacific Ocean. 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.[19]

Origins

The German geopolitician Karl Haushofer first used "Indo-Pacific" in the 1920s in multiple works on geography and geopolitics: Geopolitics of the Pacific Ocean (1924), Building Blocks of Geopolitics (1928), Geopolitics of Pan-Ideas (1931), and German Cultural Politics in the Indo-Pacific Space (1939). Haushofer legitimated the integration of the two oceans by evidence in marine biology, oceanography, ethnography, and 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 Shinzō Abe referred to the "confluence" of the Indian and Pacific Oceans in his speech to the Indian Parliament in August 2007 as "the dynamic coupling as seas of freedom and of prosperity" in the "broader Asia".[20][21] The focus of Japanese Prime Minister's August 2007 speech in the Indian Parliament was on security of sea lanes linking the two oceans. In the academic discourse relating to such maritime security issue in the Indo-Pacific, the first articulation was carried by a paper published in January 2007 by the 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.[22] 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.[23] 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.[24] It is also "symbiotically linked" 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.[25][26] The concept is not new to the geopolitical discourse.

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.[27]

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.[28] "Indo-Pacific" has also featured prominently in top-level U.S. strategic documents such as the 2017 National Security Strategy,[29] the 2018 Nuclear Posture Review,[30] and the 2018 National Defense Strategy.[31] 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.[32] In 2013, U.S. officials have begun using the term "Indo-Asia Pacific".[33] This enabled America to maintain its geographic inclusiveness in the new coinage of "Indo-Pacific".

The term's profile was raised when it found mention in the joint statement issued by the Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and United States President Donald Trump after the former's state visit to the White House on 26 June 2017. "As responsible stewards in the Indo-Pacific region, President Trump and Prime Minister Modi agreed that a close partnership between the United States and India is central to peace and stability in the region. In marking 70 years of diplomatic relations between India and the United States, the leaders resolved to expand and deepen the strategic partnership between the countries and advance common objectives. Above all, these objectives include combatting terrorist threats, promoting stability across the Indo-Pacific region, increasing free and fair trade, and strengthening energy linkages".[34] However, President Trump's November 2017 articulation on Indo-Pacific was widely seen as something that would usher in a new (US–China) Cold War.[35] This led to the Indian Prime Minister spelling out the Indian vision of Indo-Pacific as an enabler for "a common pursuit of progress and prosperity... not directed against any country... (albeit based on) our principled commitment to rule of law".[36]

Criticism

The Australian Citizens Party, a minor third party associated with the LaRouche movement, criticises the "Indo-Pacific" vision as a reenactment of Nazi strategy, given the concept's link to Karl Haushofer.[37] Haushofer, however, developed the "Indo-Pacific" vision in the interwar period, not during the Second World War.

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:[38]

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
  1. Roberts, Callum M.; McClean, Colin J.; Veron, John E. N.; Hawkins, Julie P.; Allen, Gerald R.; McAllister, Don E.; Mittermeier, Cristina G.; Schueler, Frederick W.; Spalding, Mark; Wells, Fred; Vynne, Carly (15 February 2002). "Marine Biodiversity Hotspots and Conservation Priorities for Tropical Reefs". Science. 295 (5558): 1280–1284. Bibcode:2002Sci...295.1280R. doi:10.1126/science.1067728. ISSN 0036-8075. PMID 11847338. S2CID 25927433.
  2. Veron, J. E. N.; Devantier, Lyndon M.; Turak, Emre; Green, Alison L.; Kininmonth, Stuart; Stafford-Smith, Mary; Peterson, Nate (2009). "Delineating the Coral Triangle". Galaxea, Journal of Coral Reef Studies. 11 (2): 91–100. doi:10.3755/galaxea.11.91.
  3. Helfman, Gene S.; Collette, Bruce B.; Facey, Douglas E. (1997). The Diversity of Fishes. Blackwell Publishing. pp. 274–276. ISBN 0-86542-256-7.
  4. Li, Hansong (4 June 2021). "The "Indo-Pacific": Intellectual Origins and International Visions in Global Contexts". Modern Intellectual History: 1–27. doi:10.1017/S1479244321000214. S2CID 236226422.
  5. Spalding, Mark D.; Fox, Helen E.; Allen, Gerald R.; Davidson, Nick; Ferdaña, Zach A.; Finlayson, Max; Halpern, Benjamin S.; Jorge, Miguel A.; Lombana, Al; Lourie, Sara A.; Martin, Kirsten D.; McManus, Edmund; Molnar, Jennifer; Recchia, Cheri A.; Robertson, James (July–August 2007). "Marine Ecoregions of the World: A Bioregionalization of Coastal and Shelf Areas". BioScience. 57 (7): 573–583. doi:10.1641/B570707. S2CID 29150840.
  6. Briggs, J.C. (1974). Marine Zoogeography. McGraw-Hill.
  7. Briggs, John C.; Bowen, Brian W. (2012). "A realignment of marine biogeographic provinces with particular reference to fish distributions: Marine biogeographic provinces". Journal of Biogeography. 39 (1): 12–30. doi:10.1111/j.1365-2699.2011.02613.x. S2CID 56455379.
  8. Kulbicki, Michel; Parravicini, Valeriano; Bellwood, David R.; Arias-Gonzàlez, Ernesto; Chabanet, Pascale; Floeter, Sergio R.; Friedlander, Alan; McPherson, Jana; Myers, Robert E.; Vigliola, Laurent; Mouillot, David (30 December 2013). Stergiou, Konstantinos I. (ed.). "Global Biogeography of Reef Fishes: A Hierarchical Quantitative Delineation of Regions". PLOS ONE. 8 (12): e81847. Bibcode:2013PLoSO...881847K. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0081847. ISSN 1932-6203. PMC 3875412. PMID 24386083.
  9. Keith, S. A.; Baird, A. H.; Hughes, T. P.; Madin, J. S.; Connolly, S. R. (22 July 2013). "Faunal breaks and species composition of Indo-Pacific corals: the role of plate tectonics, environment and habitat distribution". Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences. 280 (1763): 20130818. doi:10.1098/rspb.2013.0818. ISSN 0962-8452. PMC 3774232. PMID 23698011.
  10. Veron, John; Stafford-Smith, Mary; DeVantier, Lyndon; Turak, Emre (18 February 2015). "Overview of distribution patterns of zooxanthellate Scleractinia". Frontiers in Marine Science. 1. doi:10.3389/fmars.2014.00081. ISSN 2296-7745.
  11. Costello, Mark J.; Tsai, Peter; Wong, Pui Shan; Cheung, Alan Kwok Lun; Basher, Zeenatul; Chaudhary, Chhaya (December 2017). "Marine biogeographic realms and species endemicity". Nature Communications. 8 (1): 1057. Bibcode:2017NatCo...8.1057C. doi:10.1038/s41467-017-01121-2. ISSN 2041-1723. PMC 5648874. PMID 29051522.
  12. Crandall, Eric D.; Riginos, Cynthia; Bird, Chris E.; Liggins, Libby; Treml, Eric; Beger, Maria; Barber, Paul H.; Connolly, Sean R.; Cowman, Peter F.; DiBattista, Joseph D.; Eble, Jeff A. (2019). Borregaard, Michael (ed.). "The molecular biogeography of the Indo‐Pacific: Testing hypotheses with multispecies genetic patterns". Global Ecology and Biogeography. 28 (7): 943–960. doi:10.1111/geb.12905. ISSN 1466-822X. S2CID 149934700.
  13. "Central Polynesian tropical moist forests". Terrestrial Ecoregions. World Wildlife Fund.
  14. Sundararaman, Shankari (10 February 2017). "Indo-Pacific economic corridor: A vision in progress". orfonline.org. Observer Research Foundation. Retrieved 9 December 2021.
  15. Yhome, K.; Chaturvedy, Rajeev Ranjan, eds. (2017). Emerging Trans-Regional Corridors: South and Southeast Asia (PDF). Observer Research Foundation. ISBN 978-81-86818-26-8.
  16. https://www.orfonline.org/expert-speak/the-broadening-spectrum-of-india-mexico-ties/
  17. https://macdonaldlaurier.ca/where-is-canada-the-missing-indo-pacific-player-stephen-nagy-for-inside-policy/
  18. https://issafrica.org/iss-today/africa-a-low-presence-in-the-first-indo-pacific-forum
  19. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/09749284211005036
  20. ""Confluence of the Two Seas" Speech by H.E.Mr. Shinzo Abe, Prime Minister of Japan at the Parliament of the Republic of India". mofa.go.jp. Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Japan. 22 August 2007. Retrieved 9 December 2021.
  21. "Maritime Policy Archives". orfonline.org. Observer Research Foundation. Archived from the original on 6 December 2017. Retrieved 6 December 2017.
  22. Khurana, Gurpreet S. (January–February 2007). "Security of Sea Lines: Prospects for India–Japan Cooperation". Strategic Analysis. 31 (1): 139–153. doi:10.1080/09700160701355485. S2CID 153632833.
  23. Scott, David (July–October 2012). "India and the Allure of the 'Indo-Pacific'". International Studies. 49 (3–4): 165–188. doi:10.1177/0020881714534038. S2CID 153576791.
  24. Defence White Paper 2013 (PDF) (Report). Department of Defence, Australian Government. 2013. ISBN 978-0-9874958-0-8. Archived from the original (PDF) on 12 May 2013. Retrieved 9 December 2021.
  25. Amane, Yamazaki (28 February 2020). "The PRC's Cautious Stance on the U.S. Indo-Pacific Strategy". China Brief. Jamestown Foundation. 20 (4). Retrieved 7 March 2020.
  26. Medcalf, Rory (2020). Contest for the Indo-Pacific: Why China Won't Map the Future. Black Incorporated. ISBN 978-1-76064-157-3. OCLC 1127546396.
  27. Georgieff, Jack (17 May 2013). "An Indo-Pacific Treaty: An Idea Whose Time Has Come?". The Diplomat. Retrieved 7 April 2022.
  28. A Free and Open Indo-Pacific: Advancing a Shared Vision (PDF) (Report). Washington, D.C.: United States Department of State. 4 November 2019. Retrieved 9 December 2021.
  29. National Security Strategy of the United States of America (PDF) (Report). Washington, D.C.: White House. December 2017. Retrieved 9 December 2021.
  30. Nuclear Posture Review (PDF) (Report). Washington, D.C.: Office of the Secretary of Defense. February 2018. Retrieved 9 December 2021.
  31. Summary of the 2018 National Defense Strategy of the United States of America: Sharpening the American Military's Competitive Edge (PDF). Washington, D.C.: United States Department of Defense. 2018. Retrieved 9 December 2021.
  32. Brewster, David (2014). "Dividing Lines: Evolving Mental Maps of the Bay of Bengal". Asian Security. 10 (2): 151–167. doi:10.1080/14799855.2014.914499. hdl:1885/13057. S2CID 154762903.
  33. Miles, Donna (8 February 2013). "Locklear Calls for Indo-Asia-Pacific Cooperation" (Press release). United States Department of State. Archived from the original on 10 February 2013.
  34. "Joint Statement - United States and India: Prosperity Through Partnership". mea.gov.in. Ministry of External Affairs, Government of India. 27 June 2017. Retrieved 9 December 2021.
  35. Khurana, Gurpreet S. (14 November 2017). "Opinion: Trump's new Cold War alliance in Asia is dangerous". The Washington Post. Retrieved 9 December 2021.
  36. "Prime Minister's Keynote Address at Shangri La Dialogue". mea.gov.in. Ministry of External Affairs, Government of India. 1 June 2018. Retrieved 9 December 2021.
  37. Bardon, Richard (20 January 2021). "The Nazi roots of the 'Indo-Pacific strategy'". citizensparty.org.au. Australian Citizens Party. Retrieved 20 June 2021.
  38. "Australia's long march into Asia". Workers BushTelegraph. 14 November 2021. Retrieved 16 March 2022.

Further reading
Library resources about
Indo-Pacific
This article is issued from Wikipedia. The text is licensed under Creative Commons - Attribution - Sharealike. Additional terms may apply for the media files.