China declares nature reserve around Scarborough Shoal, but experts doubt environmental motives

Beijing’s National Forestry and Grassland Administration announced last week the creation of a nature reserve around Scarborough Shoal, also known as Huangyan Island, in the South China Sea. The stated aim is to protect the coral reef ecosystem and associated marine life in the area. Scarborough Shoal is a triangular chain of reef and rock with a fish-rich lagoon and sits in waters claimed by China, the Philippines and Taiwan. China has exercised de facto control since a 2012 standoff with Manila, but Philippine vessels still approach the shoal to press its claim. In recent years, confrontations have spiked, including an August incident in which Chinese ships collided with a Philippine vessel near the shoal.

Analysts caution that the move reads less like an ecological effort and more like a political calculation. Some experts say the reserve fits a broader pattern in which Beijing uses environmental language to justify actions already taken to assert control. Greg Poling, who tracks the South China Sea at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, described the designation as part of a pattern of creating administrative justifications for territories that have been shaped by military and diplomatic pressure. Other scholars describe the step as the weaponization of environmental concerns, arguing the declaration serves to buttress sovereignty claims amid ongoing disputes with regional rivals. China’s state media, including CCTV, issued statements suggesting the reserve is part of a shift from reactive governance to long‑term maritime governance in the area, signaling that Beijing intends to anchor its presence more firmly rather than simply respond to provocations.

The environmental dimension is disputed among scientists as well. Marine researchers inside and outside China have long warned that reef health at Scarborough Shoal has suffered from heavy harvesting and habitat modification. Giant clams, once abundant in the reef’s lagoons, became a target for removal and trade; harvesting of giant clams was banned last year, but observers say the damage extends beyond the large shells. Researchers say Chinese fleets dug up clams by dragging their propellers across the reef and later switched to high‑pressure jetting to dislodge organisms, methods that degrade the reef structure and disrupt ecological processes. The shells have value as substitutes for ivory in some markets, a factor that global conservation groups have cited in discussing the harvesting pressures around the shoal. Ray Powell, founder and director of SeaLight, a Stanford University–affiliated project tracking maritime activity, said the pattern reflects environmental devastation caused by the fleets themselves and questioned the optics of calling the area a nature reserve when it remains a focal point of geopolitical contest. Powell framed the move as an attempt to “strengthen its claim while diverting scrutiny from the environmental devastation its own fleets inflicted.”

Bec Strating, a professor of international relations at La Trobe University in Australia, described the declaration as political signaling more than ecological policy. She called it a case of the “weaponization of environmental concerns,” arguing the reserve’s placement on Scarborough Shoal—where China has maintained a steady presence since 2012—has more to do with asserting governance and control than with protecting reef systems. James Borton, a nonresident senior fellow at Johns Hopkins University’s SAIS Foreign Policy Institute, cautioned that while the move may be framed as conservation, it does not erase the broader pattern of assertive action around the South China Sea that includes regular patrols, coast guard activity and occasional coercive encounters.

For observers, the episode echoes a longstanding dynamic in which China has balanced environmental rhetoric with strategic infrastructure moves elsewhere in the region. In 1995, Beijing built small huts on Mischief Reef in the Spratly Islands, which officials said were emergency shelters for fishers. Over time those sites acquired runways and other facilities, drawing warnings from Manila and other claimants that the reefs had become militarized outposts. Some analysts say Scarborough Shoal remains a testing ground for China’s ability to maintain a claim close to the Philippines and Taiwan, while avoiding a broader clash with Manila. In contrast, some experts argue that building new facilities on Scarborough Shoal would be logistically costly and strategically unnecessary given China’s already aggressive posture on other features farther from its shores, suggesting the reserve designation may be more symbolic than practical governance.

As the South China Sea remains a flashpoint for regional and great-power skepticism, observers say the Reserve’s impact will depend on follow‑through. If the designation translates into real management practices and environmental protections, some hope it could yield tangible reef restoration or protected-area governance. If not, analysts warn the move could intensify suspicions that conservation language is being used to shield sovereignty assertions from international scrutiny. The episode underscores how climate and environmental policy in contested maritime spaces can intersect with geopolitics, complicating efforts to protect vulnerable marine ecosystems while maintaining transparent, evidence-based governance in one of the world’s most sensitive regional theaters.