Image retrieved from businessmirror.com.ph
Environment Secretary Maria Antonia Yulo-Loyzaga recently conducted a site visit to Pag-asa Island in the Kalayaan Island Group (KIG) in the disputed West Philippine Sea (WPS).
A fifth-class municipality, Pag-asa is the biggest in the Philippines in terms of area with 290 sq. km, but the least populated with a population of 193 people, according to the 2020 Census.
Part of the Spratly Islands—which is composed of islands, islets, cays and more than 100 reefs, sometimes grouped in submerged old atolls that lie off the coasts of the Philippines, Malaysia and southern Vietnam—KIG is a remote island municipality in the province of Palawan.
Yulo-Loyzaga recently bared plans of putting up a research station on Pag-asa Island, the biggest island in the KIG and the seat of government of the municipality of Kalayaan.
The plan is part of the move to start accounting the country’s natural wealth and to rev up the so-called blue economy.
The Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) is closely working with the University of the Philippines Diliman-College of Science through the Marine Science Institute (UP-CS-MSI) on the project.