Indonesia has on the task of counting its islands in order to better its territory and marine resources. It to locate and an additional 1,700 islands in time for the UN Conference on the Standardization of Geographical Names in August. Indonesia wants to sovereignty and fishing rights in the waters surrounding the islands, many of which its neighbors also claim. The Indonesian government illegal fishing in its waters is billions of dollars in lost revenue each year. A fisheries spokeswoman the BBC: "Sixty per cent of islands in Indonesia don't have a name or officially have legal status, so they can easily be or by another country."
Indonesia the world's largest archipelago. At the last UN conference on geographical names in 2012, Indonesia 13,466 islands. A law in 1996 that the number of islands was 17,508. The UN Convention on the Law of the Sea an island as, "a naturally area of land, by water, which is still at high tide". A spokesman from Indonesia's Ministry of Marine Affairs and Fisheries explained the scale of the task the counting team had. He said: "We have to every one of these islands, and then we the coordinates, the name, the meaning of the name, the history of the land and the landscape and its geographical history…all that in great detail."
