Protecting the ocean is a shared global goal, but how to balance development with conservation has become increasingly contentious.

New policies announced last month in Indonesia and Australia reveal two starkly different approaches, one turning to market mechanisms to fund protection, the other doubling down on strict bans. Examining these policies side-by-side helps up consider an important question: in a world of limited resources and relentless development pressure, what makes conservation truly sustainable?

Aiming to use commerce to fund conservation, Indonesia has chosen a market-driven path. The government plans to rezone parts of Way Kambas National Park to pilot carbon trading and high-end eco-tourism, seeking to transform the national park from a "cost center" to a "profit center". Located in southern Sumatra, the park boasts extensive mangroves, swamps and coastal woodlands.

While it has high ecological value, it has long faced funding shortages. By introducing private capital, the government in Jakarta hopes to secure sustainable financing for ecological restoration. Critics, however, worry that allowing commercial development could erode the core goal of conservation, potentially fragmenting sensitive coastal ecosystems in pursuit of profit.

Australia, on the other hand, has moved in the opposite direction. The government in Canberra has announced plans to add approximately 524,000 square kilometers of "no-fishing and no-drilling zones" through a review of 44 marine parks, raising the proportion of highly protected marine areas from 24 percent to 30 percent in pursuit of the global "30×30" target. The logic is straightforward: when human activity recedes, ecosystems recover.

Yet communities dependent on marine industries strongly oppose the move. To them, it is "paper conservation" at the expense of their livelihoods — and the effective enforcement of such bans across vast areas of ocean remains a significant challenge.

At first glance, these two paths are poles apart. But look beyond the surface of the policies and a shared dilemma emerges. While Indonesia's new policy is targeted inland and Australia's at sea, their ecological contexts are not disconnected. Mangroves and coastal wetlands serve as the "outposts" of marine ecosystems: carbon sinks, fish nurseries and natural filters that directly shape the health of offshore protected areas. This means that both Indonesia's coastal pilot and Australia's marine sanctuaries are ultimately grappling with the same questions: where does conservation funding come from? How can protection be sustained over time?

Each approach reveals part of the answer. Strict protection offers clear ecological benefits but comes with high enforcement costs and the risk of social backlash. Without the support of local communities, even the most ambitious protected areas can remain little more than lines on a map. Market-based approaches, meanwhile, promise self-sustaining financing but carry their own risks. Without robust oversight and transparent mechanisms for distributing benefits, carbon trading and eco-tourism risk becoming a case of impressive figures on paper that fail to deliver real ecological gains.

The real challenge is not that one model is right and the other wrong, it is rather the lack of genuine dialogue and mutual understanding between countries. Indonesia chose a market-driven approach because it has vast degraded coastal zones in urgent need of funding for restoration. Australia chose strict protection because it has the fiscal capacity and political will to pursue the "30×30" target. Different national conditions — development stages, governance traditions and policy priorities — naturally lead to different choices. The problem arises when these differences are misunderstood, limiting opportunities for mutual learning.

This is where dialogue becomes essential. Technical cooperation can provide a practical starting point: aligning standards for measuring mangrove carbon sinks, developing shared frameworks to assess protected area effectiveness and exchanging best practices in enforcement. These technical domains offer space for collaboration, even when political perspectives diverge.

Indonesia and Australia may continue along different paths — and that need not be a problem. What matters is whether these approaches can learn from one another: whether strict protection can benefit from innovative financing tools, and whether market-based models can incorporate stronger ecological safeguards and community protections. In the face of shared challenges — from climate change to coastal degradation — diversity in approaches should be a source of strength, not division.

These cases also carry important implications for environmental cooperation in the South China Sea. As a semi-enclosed sea with overlapping claims and complex geopolitical sensitivities, the region faces not only ecological pressures — such as overfishing, habitat degradation and climate change — but also persistent trust deficits among coastal states. In this context, pursuing a single, uniform model of conservation is neither realistic nor necessary. Instead, a more pragmatic path lies in fostering flexible, issue-based cooperation.

Joint efforts in areas such as marine scientific research, fisheries resource management, and the protection of mangroves and coral reefs can serve as entry points for building confidence. In particular, technical collaboration — such as sharing data, harmonizing monitoring standards and developing pilot projects — can help depoliticize environmental governance while delivering tangible ecological benefits.

Much like the broader global experience, the future of marine protection in the South China Sea will depend less on choosing one model over another, and more on whether countries can create space for dialogue, mutual trust and incremental cooperation despite their differences.

There is no single blueprint for ocean protection. The real progress lies in the process: countries understanding each other's constraints, learning from each other's experiences and recognizing that different paths can lead toward the same destination.

When seemingly opposing approaches begin to complement rather than compete, ocean protection becomes not just a shared goal, but a shared process.

The author is an associate research fellow at the National Institute for South China Sea Studies, Haikou, China.

The views don't necessarily reflect those of China Daily.

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