Cartographic amnesia

The continuing controversy stirred by Sen. Rodante Marcoleta’s statements on the West Philippine Sea (WPS) has compelled the National Mapping and Resource Information Authority (Namria) to issue a rare public statement—one more notable for what it does not say than for what it does.

The apparent purpose of the unsigned statement, now circulating on social media and reported by the press, is to convey that since 2012 the Philippines has used “West Philippine Sea” as a label on its administrative maps. That was the year the second Aquino administration issued Administrative Order No. 29, designating the waters off our western seaboard by that name.

The statement adopts a technical, neutral, and authoritative tone, emphasizing hydrographic standards, curved exclusive economic zone (EEZ) limits, and compliance with international practice. On paper, this sounds uncontroversial, even reassuring. In substance, however, it reveals a troubling disconnect between official cartography and the 2016 South China Sea Arbitral Award (AA).

The first problem is temporal dissonance.

This Namria map is hopelessly outdated. It appears conceptually pre-AA, depicting maritime space in a way that does not visibly internalize the Tribunal’s core holdings on the status of features in the Spratlys and Scarborough Shoal. The AA clarified that none of the Spratly features qualify as full islands capable of generating an EEZ. At most, they are rocks entitled only to a 22.22-kilometer territorial sea. That holding was determinative of maritime entitlements.

Yet the map does not visually foreground this very real doctrinal shift. It does not distinguish between territorial seas around high-tide features and the surrounding high seas or Philippine EEZ waters (in contrast to the illustrative maps the Philippines submitted with the Arbitral Court). It does not convey, even illustratively, the “no EEZ from rocks” principle that undercut expansive claims in the region. Instead, it presents the public with misleadingly undifferentiated maritime expanse.

The second problem is legal geometry. Indeed, EEZ limits are arcs measured from archipelagic baselines under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (Unclos) and Republic Act No. 9522, our new baselines law. But invoking curvature as a technical defense sidesteps the deeper issue: how does the award affect the interaction of those arcs with other maritime features? The tribunal recharacterized the entitlements of specific features, with spatial consequences.

Consider the Kalayaan Island Group. Post-AA, our entitlement vis-à-vis other Spratly features is primarily a matter of territorial sea pockets embedded in broader EEZ or high seas. These pockets extend to the seabed and airspace. A map that does not illustrate this structural consequence risks perpetuating conceptual ambiguity.

Third, the statement leans heavily on compliance with international standards and submission to technical bodies such as the International Hydrographic Organization and the Commission on the Limits of the Continental Shelf (CLCS). Those are important. But technical compliance is not the same as doctrinal alignment. The Philippines’ 2023 partial submission on the extended continental shelf in the West Palawan region explicitly relies on natural prolongation under Article 76 (Unclos), carefully constrained by maritime zones of relevant States and possibly disrupted by the territorial seabed of disputed rocks. Our CLCS submission reflects a calculated understanding of entitlements beyond 370 kilometers.

Why, then, does Namria’s administrative map not exhibit comparable doctrinal sophistication within 370 kilometers? Why hide the AA behind an administrative map rather than lay it bare on an hydrographic map?

There is also a strategic dimension. Visual representations shape narrative battles. When the Philippines secured a landmark AA invalidating China’s nine-dash line and clarifying feature status, it gained a jurisprudential advantage. Failing to internalize that advantage in official cartography amounts to a self-inflicted wound.

Finally, the 2024 Philippine Maritime Zones Act (RA 12064) and the Philippine Archipelagic Sea Lanes Passage Act (RA 12065) demand coherent geographic articulation. Sea lanes, territorial seas around rocks, EEZ limits, and continental shelf outer limits form a single legal ecosystem. If one component is visually underdeveloped, the integrity of the whole is weakened.

Legal clarity demands formal articulation and deposit. If the outer limit west of Palawan remains a mathematical construct embedded in mapping software—without a formally deposited limit that reflects the Award’s findings—then the depiction is mere artist’s sketch, not encoded legal position and state practice.

If the AA is binding and final, our official maps must do more than label the WPS. They must embody the legal architecture the tribunal confirmed.

Anything less is cartographic amnesia.

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Melissa Loja and Romel Bagares are independent Filipino scholars of international law.