Indonesia’s U.S.-China balancing act is playing out at sea
The shifting of Jakarta’s naval headquarters to the edge of the South China sea was much more than a strategic military move.
Chloe King is a PADI Divemaster and avid ocean advocate, leading marine research projects in Indonesia and Timor-Leste as a Boren Scholar, Projects for Peace Fellow, and Fulbright Scholar. Adopting tools from political ecology, behavioral economics, and marine science, her research analyzes the interactions between traditional tenure systems, sustainable tourism, and common-pool resource governance to achieve long-term marine conservation goals.
As a 2019-20 Fulbright Scholar, she worked in Wakatobi National Park analyzing how various tourism operators influence the resilience and adaptive capacity of surrounding socio-ecological systems and their access to livelihood capital in response to crises like climate change and Covid-19. Chloe currently works for Solimar International, a sustainable tourism consulting firm based in Washington, D.C. She continues to advise communities and organizations in Indonesia on sustainable tourism development, especially with the challenges Covid-19 poses to the industry. She holds a Bachelor of Arts in International Affairs from the George Washington University in Washington, D.C. She is currently based at the University of Edinburgh, studying to obtain a Masters of Science in Marine Systems and Policy as a Marshall Scholar.
The shifting of Jakarta’s naval headquarters to the edge of the South China sea was much more than a strategic military move.