Assessing regional cooperation among all parties as an alternative to sovereignty disputes in the South China Sea

Collectively the sovereignty disputes in the South China Sea give rise to one of the most intractable regional conflicts in the world, and have prevented the parties from making progress on regional ocean issues of mutual concern and interest. This dissertation assesses regional cooperation as an interim alternative to the stalemate engendered by disputes over sovereignty.;A review of the history and status quo in the South China Sea reveals that sovereignty disputes in the region are unlikely to be settled in the foreseeable future, because no claimant is likely to make any concessions or compromises regarding its claims. An assessment of possible alternatives to the settlement of sovereignty disputes concludes that regional cooperation on the commons and shared living resources is best suited to advance regional ocean governance in the South China Sea and could lead as well to substantial discussions more directly related to the current disputes.;This dissertation considers five areas of potential cooperation in the South China Sea---marine environmental protection, marine scientific research, marine living resources, maritime safety, and maritime security---and reviews existing practices in the region and considers the experiences of cooperation in other maritime regions. Based on a comparative analyses of experiences in five identified areas of cooperation in three regions, the mechanisms employed in the Polar Regions to work around sovereignty claims, and the mechanism that have been used elsewhere to accommodate Taiwan's participation, this dissertation concludes that the conservation and management of marine living resources is the area of cooperation that has the greatest potential to succeed among the parties in the South China Sea. It further concludes that the practices in the Western-Central Pacific Fisheries Commissions (WCPFC) and Inter-American Tropic Tuna Commission (IATTC) provide the best models among all the regional cooperative experiences examined to be applied mutatis mutandis in the South China Sea. In any event, however, the political will of all parties is unequivocally necessary to initiate and conclude successful cooperation in the region.