Ocean governance opportunities and challenges in the Indian Ocean

This dedicatory section in this issue of the Journal of the Indian Ocean Region includes three papers as part of an effort to honor Commodore Professor Sam Bateman who passed away in October 2020. Before joining the academic community full-time, Sam served in the Royal Australian Navy (RAN) for four decades, commanding several ships. Sam was a scholar and a sailor, something that was illustrated by his taking on the role of the first Director General of the RAN’s Maritime Studies Program which later became the Sea Power Centre Australia. Further, in his final posting with the Navy, Sam became the founding Director of the Centre of Maritime Policy (CMP) at the University of Wollongong, the organization that became the Australian National Centre for Ocean Resources and Security (ANCORS) in 2005. Further, from 2004 to 2018, he served Senior Fellow and Advisor to the S. Rajaratnam School of Maritime Security Programme (2004–2018). Sam’s research interests were wide-ranging, encompassing issues including naval operations, the role of coast guards, ocean governance, law of the sea, mariner well-being, and environmental stewardship. All of these interests were, however, were founded on a desire to foster enhanced safety and security at sea. The Indian Ocean region was of particular interest to Sam who recognized its growing strategic importance. Accordingly, he sought to highlight and draw attention to the need to improve understanding of understandings of challenges in the Indian Ocean, whether they related to competition, especially between India and China, risks related to interstate conflict, terrorize, smuggling in all its forms, the scourge of illegal fishing and increasing concerns over climate change impacts, natural disasters and other non-traditional security threats. Sam leaves a powerful legacy as a leader, a strategist, a thinker in the field of maritime security and had a profound influence in the Indian Ocean region and far beyond. In order to mark his contribution a joint ANCORS-RSIS project has led to a series of meetings and the production of an edited volume entitled Towards Maritime Cooperation in the IndoPacific Region: Policy, Governance and Security: Essays in Honour of Commodore Sam Bateman will be published with Brill Publishing towards the end of 2022. Additionally, and reflecting the strong response to the call for papers for that project, a number of more regionallyoriented papers have been published in the journal Contemporary Southeast Asia and here in the pages of the Journal of the Indian Ocean Region. The three papers included in the section of the journal dedicated to the memory of Sam collectively address ocean governance opportunities and challenges in the Indian Ocean. These include India’s role in providing and enabling maritime security in the Indian Ocean region, something which given budget constraints and capacity shortfalls involves increasing emphasis on maritime security partnerships and cooperation between India and other Indian Ocean littoral states. Rahul Roy-Chaudhury examines these themes under the title, From Net Security Provider’ to ‘Preferred Security Partnerships: The Rhetoric, Reality and Result of India’s maritime security cooperation in the Indian Ocean. In particular, he contrasts the Indian government’s use of the term ‘net security provider’ with the Indian Navy’s preferred usage of the