First of a collection on our messy maritime claims
THE likes of former Supreme Court docket justice Antonio Carpio and Aquino third’s bungling former Overseas Affairs secretary Albert del Rosario have been incessantly ranting in opposition to China, that it’s encroaching on our unique financial zone (EEZ), and our “West Philippine Sea” (WPS).
A little bit of an issue although: we shouldn’t have an EEZ nor a territorial sea — but. We have now not enacted a legislation indicating these maritime areas. The federal government company that has the only real authority to outline such areas as offered by legislation and find it in official maps says so.
We could not actually have a West Philippine Sea, since President Benigno Aquino third’s administrative order giving that identify to the waters off the western facet of the Philippine archipelago implicitly stipulated {that a} massive a part of it’s the EEZ, which nonetheless actually has a phantom existence at the moment.
Sure in concept, we now have such maritime areas, since we ratified the United Nations Conference of the Regulation of the Sea (Unclos) in 1984, which stipulated that the EEZ “shall not prolong past 200 nautical miles from the baselines.”
However we now have to have a home legislation to affirm that worldwide legislation, which is the Unclos. This might specify the geodesic coordinates that outline the EEZ. Moreover, the paperwork for this must be submitted to the UN that might flow into it amongst its members to find out if it complies with the Unclos and doesn’t encroach on EEZs and territorial seas of different international locations. The need for such a home legislation can be apparent in that Unclos merely specified the most distances for the EEZ and territorial seas from the baselines.
We haven’t handed such a legislation defining our territorial sea and EEZ. Formally, subsequently, we shouldn’t have an EEZ or perhaps a territorial sea which we are able to demand our neighbors to respect. We’d be similar to someone declaring that he owns this land, but he can’t produce the court docket titles to it.
Is the oil-rich Reed Financial institution inside our EEZ and subsequently China had no proper to shoo away the First Pacific-Enrique Razon exploration vessel that went there in 2011? We don’t know, as we shouldn’t have an official map of our Philippine EEZ.
Is Mischief Reef and 4 different reefs within the Spratlys, which the Chinese language reworked into synthetic islands to retaliate in opposition to Aquino’s submitting of a swimsuit in opposition to China in 2013, inside our EEZ, as Aquino third’s legal professionals claimed within the swimsuit? We can’t set up that legally, as we don’t have an official map of our EEZ.
Can we protest if the Chinese language Coast Guard fires at a Philippine Navy vessel in waters off Pag-asa Island, invoking its new legislation authorizing it to make use of arms to defend its alleged sovereignty? Objectively, we are able to’t say. Whereas we are able to declare Pag-asa Island to be ours by sheer many years of occupation which by worldwide legislation is a justification for claiming sovereignty, we are able to’t declare the waters off it as inside our EEZ — as a result of we don’t have an official map displaying they’re.
Malaysia
Malaysia clearly knew about this, when it submitted December 2019 to the UN Fee on the Limits of the Continental Shelf its declare — outlined by geodesic coordinates — of its continental shelf within the South China Sea that encroached on waters that “in precept” is inside our EEZ, however we haven’t outlined to this point. In its observe verbale to the UN protesting the Malaysian submission, our Overseas Affairs division subsequently might solely say that “it intends to make a submission (to outline these coordinates) at a future time.”
That we don’t have an official map of the Philippine EEZ and its territorial sea isn’t my hypothesis, however a declaration by the company solely licensed by authorities to situation official maps of the nation, together with its maritime areas, the Nationwide Mapping and Useful resource Info Authority (Namria).
I had been bugging the Namria for over a yr to supply me a map displaying the Philippines territorial sea and EEZ. I used to be given the runaround at its workplace which sells such maps. I submitted 5 freedom of knowledge (FOI) requests (beneath President Rodrigo Duterte’s order issued a month after he assumed workplace), which it denied with out no satisfying rationalization.
The one two maps the Namria gave me had been first a map titled “Philippine Administrative Map.” Whereas it was undated, it had a notation that it was printed beneath “Usec Diony Ventura” as administrator. Ventura was administrator from 2002 to 2010. The map curiously indicated the Philippine territory and its territorial sea as that outlined by the 1898 Treaty of Paris, by which Spain ceded its colony to the US. That’s, the territorial sea on this map are the waters contained in the treaty limits. The map didn’t present any EEZ.
Baselines solely
The second map exhibits the archipelago’s baselines, “as outlined by Republic Act 9522.” The map didn’t present the nation’s EEZs or seaward territorial sea.
(The baselines are the traces drawn between 101 factors decided by its geodesic coordinates the legislation offered [i.e., longitudes and latitudes], which hew carefully to the form of the Philippine archipelago. Whereas the Unclos says that the EEZ and seaward territorial seas are to be measured type these baselines [200 nautical miles for the former and 12 for the latter] the legislation says nothing about these maritime areas. All it stipulates is that the Philippines has “dominion, sovereignty and jurisdiction” over every little thing inside these baselines, that are outlined as its nationwide territory.)
I lastly understood why the Namria couldn’t accommodate my earlier requests after I obtained an e-mail final January 22 by the pinnacle of its hydrography department, Antonio Valenzuela Jr., responding to my final FOI request:
“We remorse to tell you that we shouldn’t have an official Philippine map indicating the territorial sea, EEZ and different maritime zones since we’re nonetheless awaiting for the maritime zones invoice to turn into legislation. The Maritime Zones Regulation can be our foundation in getting ready the official map.”
No map
What? We don’t have a map displaying the place the hell is our EEZ, whereas the del Rosarios and Carpios of the nation have been foaming on the mouth ranting that the Chinese language have been encroaching into these waters?
For all of the Aquino regime’s arbitration swimsuit versus China, which value P1 billion (principally charges to American companies and Philippine officers’ five-star journey bills to the Hague) to say that the superpower was encroaching on our EEZ, for all its huge, and costly propaganda effort to demonize China as intruding into our West Philippine Sea, it didn’t trouble to get the “title” to such maritime space that Congress might have secured.
Two payments had been filed in the course of the Aquino third administration to outline our territorial sea and EEZ, one in 2011 and one other in 2014. Each of which had been permitted by the Home and transmitted to the Senate, which sat on them. 4 such payments had been filed throughout Duterte’s watch, all of which had been unacted upon by the completely different committees on overseas affairs. The final invoice was filed by Rep. Rufus Rodriguez January final yr, however remains to be pending on the Committee on Overseas Relations to today. Our Congress clearly doesn’t suppose that defining our territorial sea and EEZ is essential.
We should always thank Duterte for reversing the Yellows belligerent coverage in opposition to China that was so lengthy on patriotic declarations, however so brief on arduous proof.
On Wednesday: Carpio and Aquino authorities’s pretend EEZ maps
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