Benham Rise is ours

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EDITORIAL
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Wednesday, February 21, 2018
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BEIJING’S move to assign Chinese names to five seamounts in Benham Rise or the Philippine Rise should not have any impact on the sovereign rights that our country enjoys over the 13 million-hectare extinct underwater volcano ridge.

Under international law, Benham Rise is part of the Philippine continental shelf. Therefore, all the natural resources found in the waters, seabed and subsoil of Benham belong to the Philippines and form part of our national wealth.

Just the same, our government must proceed and give Filipino names to every seamount in Benham Rise.

Between 2007 and 2008, the Department of Environment and Natural Resources tasked the National Mapping and Resource Information Authority (NAMRIA) to conduct a survey on Benham Rise in connection with the Philippine government’s submission to the United Nations (UN) Commission on the Limits of the Continental Shelf. Under the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea, the Philippine government was then required to tender for approval the particulars of the outer limits of the Philippine continental shelf. Benham Rise is located off the Philippines’ Pacific coast, some 250 kilometers east of Isabela province.

When the Philippine government under then President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo finally submitted the limits of our continental shelf, we made it a point to include Benham as within our limits, complete with supporting scientific and technical data.

Unlike the disputed territories in the West Philippine Sea, no other state was claiming Benham at that time so the Philippine government’s submission was eventually approved by the UN on April 12, 2012 – long after the Aquino administration had taken over.

With the UN approval, the Philippines now enjoys the exclusive right to exploit all living as well as non-living resources inside Benham. Only Filipinos can actually fish in Benham now. The NAMRIA survey showed that the sea floor around Benham is covered with metal-rich chunks – manganese nodules that also contain nickel, copper, cobalt and other minerals.

Benham Rise could be of great economic value to future generations of Filipinos, considering the region’s rich marine resources and massive deposits of metal-bearing nodules.

There’s a proposal to create a “Benham Rise Protection and Development Authority” to ensure that all resources that are rightfully ours would not be exploited and abused by other countries claiming it to be their own.

By all means let us do this.
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