Former Foreign Secretary Albert del Rosario and former Ombudsman Conchita Carpio Morales released a statement saying that no public officer, even the President, can share what international law provides is the exclusive right to explore and exploit natural resources, known in international law as sovereign rights. With all due respect to the two, I disagree. For starters, the fact that the scope of the exclusive economic zone (EEZ) is 370 kilometers (200 nautical miles) from a country’s basepoint or baselines makes it inevitable for countries to have overlaps in their EEZs. In the case of the Philippines, we have overlaps with China up north, given that Taiwan is only a stone’s throw away from our northernmost island; with Palau on the east, with Malaysia and Indonesia in the south, and with China in the west, the subject of dispute between the five claimant states to the islands and waters of the West Philippine Sea (WPS).

Roque, H. L. Jr. (2019, July 27). Sovereign states can share their sovereign rights. Philippine Daily Inquirer, pp. A1, A6.