Indonesia, Malaysia Sign Border Agreements, Pledge Joint Action on Palm Oil – The Diplomat

Malaysia and Indonesia introduced yesterday that they’ve settled a longstanding maritime border dispute and vowed to bolster cooperation in opposition to European laws which might be prone to affect their economically pivotal palm oil industries.

The announcement got here on the primary day of Indonesian President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo’s two-day go to to Malaysia, reciprocating the journey that Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim made to Indonesia in January – his first as prime minister.

In a ceremony yesterday, the 2 leaders signed plenty of agreements overlaying plans to enhance border crossings, strengthen border commerce, and promote funding. Far eclipsing these in significance, nonetheless, was the signing of two treaties, a few years in negotiation, on the delimitation of the nations’ territorial seas in components of the Straits of Malacca and the Sulawesi Sea.

“After 18 years of negotiations … reward be to God, it has lastly been resolved,” Jokowi advised a joint information convention, in reference to the treaties, The Related Press reported.

Maritime borders have been a supply of precise and latent bilateral pressure since Konfrontasi within the Sixties. After the battle cooled, Jakarta and Kuala Lumpur signed agreements partly delimiting their continental shelf boundary and territorial sea boundary across the Straits of Malacca in 1969 and 1970, respectively. However these didn’t cowl your entire sea border, whereas the international locations’ maritime border within the Celebes Sea, which laps the shores of Borneo and Sulawesi, in addition to the southern Philippine islands, remained undemarcated.

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In 1998, Indonesia took Malaysia to the Worldwide Courtroom of Justice over its declare to 2 islands, Sipadan and Ligitan, which it claimed fell inside its territorial waters. 4 years later, the ICJ dominated that the islands belonged to Malaysia, however didn’t settle the maritime boundary within the surrounding waters.

The border agreements, which adopted painstaking negotiations, take away a possible supply of friction between the 2 neighbors whose relations have been shadowed by the legacy of Konfrontasi. In a joint assertion issued after their assembly, the AP reported, Anwar and Jokowi stated that the signing of the treaties will present a robust basis for future maritime boundary negotiations. They pledged to resolve different land boundary points by subsequent June.

Along with border points, Anwar and Jokowi additionally made a public pledge to combat what their joint assertion described as “extremely detrimental discriminatory” measures in opposition to palm oil imposed by the European Union.

In December, the EU permitted the European Union Deforestation Regulation (EUDR), which is meant to “make sure that a set of key items positioned on the EU market will not contribute to deforestation and forest degradation within the EU and elsewhere on this planet.” Given palm oil’s connection to widespread rainforest destruction and wildlife loss, imports from Indonesia and Malaysia – the world’s two largest producers of palm oil – are prone to be hit exhausting.

The 2 nations haven’t held again of their criticism of the EU measures, with one Malaysian official even suggesting that it’d reduce off exports to the European bloc.

Yesterday, Anwar and Jokowi pledged to cooperate carefully to combat in opposition to the EU regulation, urging Brussels to work towards a “honest and equitable decision.”

“We have to strengthen this collaboration,” Jokowi advised the information convention. “We don’t need commodities produced by Malaysia and Indonesia to be discriminated in opposition to in different international locations.” Anwar added, “We are going to communicate in a single voice to defend the palm oil trade.”

Representatives from Malaysia and Indonesia undertook a joint commerce mission to Brussels late final month, after which they described the EUDR as “inherently discriminatory and punitive in nature.”