Asserting sovereign rights

Two Philippine Navy ships have been deployed to patrol Benham Rise, the continental shelf in the Pacific Ocean where the country has sovereign rights officially recognized in 2012 by the United Nations.

Apart from naval patrols, the government should pursue proposals to set up a special office to develop the area and exercise the country’s sovereign rights. Beijing, whose nine-dash-line territorial claim over nearly the entire South China Sea has been invalidated by a UN arbitral tribunal, has announced it is not challenging the Philippines’ jurisdiction over Benham. But Chinese ships, described as research vessels, have been spotted in the continental shelf on the Philippines’ eastern seaboard, a long way from any Chinese-claimed territory including artificial islands.

The Benham Plateau, described as a mini continent, sprawls across an area with a diameter of about 250 kilometers in the Philippine Sea, east of the coastline of Isabela province in Northern Luzon. The shelf is an extinct volcanic ridge that is seismically active, whose movements might have affected the 1990 earthquake that killed over 1,600 people mostly in Central and Northern Luzon.

Like the waters in the country’s western seaboard, Benham is blessed with rich biodiversity and marine resources over which the country has rights under the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea. Benham also has vast, largely untapped potential for ecotourism and related activities.

Development of the area will require work and significant investment in resources. Similar development must be undertaken in the areas in the West Philippine Sea awarded to the country by the UN-backed Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague last year. These include Panganiban or Mischief Reef, Ayungin or Second Thomas Shoal and Recto or Reed Bank off Palawan. The country also cannot be deprived of fishing rights in Panatag or Scarborough Shoal.

Ties between the Philippines and China plumbed new depths following the ruling of the arbitral court. But relations have since improved as President Duterte continues to proffer a hand of friendship to the Chinese. The warmer ties make it easier for the Philippines to exercise its officially recognized sovereign rights over certain maritime areas. If the country wants to enjoy its UN-recognized maritime entitlements, it should assert its rights by developing the areas and supervising them.