SmartNews Keeping you current So. Many. Islands. (NASA World Wind/Wikimedia Commons)

smithsonian.com June 9, 2017 2:50PM

How many islands are in Indonesia? You might think that the answer a lot is a bit glib, but it turns out that the Republic of Indonesia itself doesnt really know, either. The nation of many islands consists of so many small land masses that they have never been officially counted. Until now: As the BBC reports, Indonesia is embarking on an ambitious island census.

The census isa bid to mark Indonesian territory by registering the islands with the United Nations, the BBC reports. As the Financial Times Ben Bland explains, Indonesia fought hard for the legal concept of an archipelagic statea country that controls not just the waters inside it, but around it. The concept led to a long definitionin the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea, an international treaty that establishes how UN member nations deal with oceans.

That treaty contains another key definition, the BBC notes: one that describes an island. According to the treaty, an island is a natural land mass that is surrounded by water and that is not obscured by water during a high tide. Indonesia certainly doesnt lack for thosebut it cant seem to keep its numbers straight. Its submitted varying estimates of its number of islands over the years, perhaps because the definition of island doesnt depend on whether its inhabited, above a certain size, or even named.

But the estimates are just that: estimates. With satellite technology, Indonesiaupped its estimate from 17,508 in 1996to over 18,000in 2003.As the Indonesian news agency reported earlier this year, the hope is to bring the official UN count up to at least 14,572 named islands. But even that wont take all of the countrys manyunnamedislands into consideration.

Still, not all islands Indonesia claims are willing to stay there. In 2002, the International Court of Justice forcedIndonesia to cede Ligitan and Sipadan, two tiny islands, to Malaysia, and after a 24-year occupationEast Timor became an independent nationfrom Indonesia (also in 2002).

The total number of islands in Indonesia has big geopolitical implications. Voice of Americas Pete Cobus notesthat the area is one of the worlds most important waterways,home to a third of the worlds maritime traffic and up to $5 trillion in trade. Indonesian vessels recently clashed with Vietnamese ones in the area, and questions of sovereignty continue to roil the waterway.

With maritime tensions in Asia on the rise, fueled by controversy over island ownership in the South China Sea, not to mention climate concernsthousands of Indonesias islands are threatened by rising seasand fears of private companies taking over small islands, there's no doubt thatnumerical drama will play out at the UN Conference on the Standardization of Geographic Names this summer when the conference decides which names go on official maps.

But first, Indonesia must finish its own big taskcounting all of those islands.

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Indonesia's Trying to Figure Out How Many Islands It Contains - Smithsonian