Senator Risa Hontiveros has filed a resolution urging the Executive Branch to exert legal and diplomatic pressure on the Chinese government to cease all ecologically destructive activities in the West Philippine Sea and to pay reparations for the damage they have already done in the area.

In filing Senate Resolution No. 85, Hontiveros noted that China’s presence in the West Philippine Sea hit a record high in 2024, citing Philippine Navy reports. This constitutes at least 28 China Coast Guard vessels, 16 People’s Liberation Army Navy warships, 204 maritime militia vessels, and 3 Chinese research/surveillance vessels, a total of 251 Chinese ships, tracked within the Philippines’ Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ).

The Senate deputy minority leader also said the Philippine Coast Guard has also blamed the so-called Chinese Maritime Militia for the destruction of coral reef ecosystems within the Philippines’ EEZ, including those in Rozul Reef and Escoda Shoal.

Underwater surveys, she said, also showed that the marine ecosystem in the subject WPS features appeared lifeless, with minimal to no signs of life.

“The PCA also found that, with respect to the protection and preservation of the marine environment, China was aware of, tolerated, protected and failed to prevent its fishermen from engaging in the harvesting of endangered species on a significant scale, and from harvesting giant clams in a manner severely destructive of coral reef ecosystems,” she said in the explanatory note of the resolution.

Hontiveros also said the current Chinese regime’s unilateral policy of reclaiming and constructing artificial islands, installations and structures—what has been described as the “Great Wall of Sand”—in the same area was also found to have caused severe, irreparable harm to those same ecosystems.

“China’s autocratic government has, likewise, took advantage of the chaos caused by the coronavirus pandemic by unilaterally establishing new administrative bodies in the disputed territory and by imposing Chinese names upon more than 80 islands, reefs, shoals and ridges,” she said.

According to Hontiveros, the estimated cost of damages that unlawful Chinese activities in the West Philippine Sea reached at least P33 billion annually or around P396 billion since Philippine vs. China was filed in 2013.

“These estimates were computed on the basis of a 2012 study published in the international academic journal Ecosystem Services which pegged the annual baseline value per hectare of a coral reef at US$353,429, as well as satellite images showing that Chinese activities had caused ecological damage to a total of 1,850 hectares of reef ecosystems in Panatag and the Spratly Islands,” she said.

“In the form or reparations, these are funds that can be used to not only restore and renew vulnerable marine ecosystems, but to bolster Philippine efforts to address the pandemic as well,” she said.

"Therefore, be it resolved as it is hereby resolved to urge the Executive Branch to exert legal and diplomatic pressure upon the Chinese government to cease all ecologically destructive activities in the West Philippine Sea and to pay reparations for damage already done," she stressed.