Cribb on Managing the Archipelagic State: Scoop Preview! September 18, 2008
Posted by Ross McLeod in Essays and Comments.trackback
The following is the draft text of the opening address by Robert Cribb, organiser of this year’s Indonesia Update Conference, which gets underway at 9am on Friday 19th September.
This conference focuses on the special problems of governance that arise in an archipelagic state. One clear lesson of history is that failing to govern the sea is dangerous. An ungoverned sea can be a highway for enemies, or at least for people with malicious intentions. Badly managed, it becomes a barrier between the 17500 islands of Indonesia. Managed well, on the other hand, it can be a highway linking those islands, an essential element in the economic division of labour in Indonesia which helps to create economies of scale that match Indonesia’s size. It can be a key element in the national economy as a source of resources, such as fish and minerals that not only provide a living to those who harvest them but also bring broader benefits to the economy and to society. It can be a source of hazards such as pollution, tsunami and storms, and we are just beginning to understand the role that it may play in climate change. And we should not forget that the sea is also a deep part of the Indonesian sense of identity, as reflected in one of the most evocative Indonesian terms for homeland, tanah air, land and water.
And yet despite the importance of the sea, governing the maritime world is an immensely difficult task. The task is difficult for the simple reason that the sea is fluid. It is often impossible and always difficult to mark out any clear border at sea or to maintain or fortify any fixed point. And the sea is dangerous. There is hardly anywhere on land where the possibility of death is as close and as constant as it is on the sea.
The fluidity and dangerousness of the sea means that it rewards technology and skill in a way that has few parallels on land. Throughout history, we find that technological advances at sea have driven major social and political changes on land. Advances in ship-building technology, improvements in the technology of locating and capturing fish or minerals under the sea, developments in mapping and navigation, and refinements in the legal regime covering the seas have all been instrumental in major historical transformations. The implications of these changes have spread well beyond the maritime zone.
For the reasons I have mentioned, the sheer presence of government that is so much a fact of life on land is vastly weaker on the surface of the ocean and almost non-existent underneath the waves. In the last few decades, however, there have been dramatic advances in the technology needed for accessing the seas safely, dramatic advances in our understanding of the complex physical and biological systems within the sea and of their influence on the land, and also dramatic advances in our creativeness in devising rules and laws that reflect the current state of both technology and scientific knowledge.
The sea is the great frontier of the twenty-first century. Indonesia not only controls an important part of that frontier, but it has also retained skills of seamanship that comes from long experience with the sea and that will remain crucial in making the most of that maritime frontier in the long term.
In this conference we will hear papers, both current and historical, that set out the strategies that Indonesian governments have followed to overcome the basic ungovernability of the sea. We have papers on new and old maritime regimes, on marine security and marine safety, on people whose lives are intertwined with the sea, on the economic implications of the management of maritime trade, and on the challenges of environmental management at sea.
It is about time that the Indonesian Navy’s motto:
Jalesveva Jayamahe! (roughly translated: On the Seas we Prosper)
should be made true.
I am not thinking in terms of weapons, more about how to bring prosperity to the people, in particular who make their living from the seas, the marginalised fishermen and coastal population.
I pray that this conference will contribute to the achievement of those lofty goals.