In the framework of a meeting in which Daniel Filmus and members of the commission in charge of the demarcation of the new outer limit of our Continental Shelf participated, they introduced the work accomplished for more than twenty years and received well-deserved recognition.
On August 13, the Foreign Relations Commission of the Chamber of Deputies held an informative meeting dedicated to detailing the work carried out by the National Commission on the Outer Limit of the Continental Shelf (COPLA in the Spanish acronym) in which the Secretary of the Malvinas, Antarctica and the South Atlantic, Daniel Filmus, took part, together with representatives of the body.
During the meeting, the deputies expressed their recognition of the work carried out by COPLA from its creation in 1997, transcending governments of different political signs and that allowed Argentina to complete the demarcation of the outer limit of the continental shelf beyond 200 miles.
At the beginning of the meeting, the Tierra del Fuego deputy Mabel Caparrós read the text of a draft declaration that expresses “approval for the uninterrupted work for two decades carried out by the National Commission on the Outer Limit of the Continental Shelf dependent on the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, International Trade and Worship, which has allowed the demarcation of the outer limit of the Continental Shelf of the Argentine Republic and thus the reaffirmation of our sovereignty rights”.
Meanwhile, Daniel Filmus congratulated the entire COPLA team for the task carried out and also recognized the legislators for having had “the political will to pass this law” unanimously in both the Chamber of Deputies and the Senate. “This norm gives us legal certainty, not only as a claim to sovereignty, but as a development project. Argentina is no longer from Ushuaia to La Quiaca, but from La Quiaca to the South Pole”, he stressed.
For her part, the general coordinator of COPLA, Frida Armas Pfirter, provided details of “the odyssey it was to demonstrate how far the Argentine territory naturally extended under the sea”.
“It was agreed that the limit of the continental shelf is not a fixed measure, but in order to tell how far it extends it is necessary to demonstrate that natural extension of territory under the sea. That limit had to be demarcated, its extension was unknown. In 1997 the COPLA was created, headed by the Foreign Ministry because it dealt with country borders, and made up of the Naval Hydrography Service and the Ministry of Productive Development”, she explained.
“In 1997 we did not know how to do it, no one did”, admitted the general coordinator before stating that the Argentine specialists worked “with all kinds of data and carried out many campaigns just to get information for COPLA. In this way, many unknown formations, terraces, and canyons were discovered. Argentina has been greatly enriched with all this knowledge of our resources”, she added.
Subsequently, Armas Pfirter specified that in 2009 Argentina made a submission to the Commission on the Limits of the Continental Shelf (CLCS), a body created by the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS). “The analysis of this submission began in 2012 and has been carried out for almost four years. In 2016 and 2017, the CLCS gave us very positive recommendations and the criteria used were all approved”, she assured.
During the meeting, other people who worked at COPLA also spoke, such as engineer Marcelo Paterlini, who served as scientific coordinator; Martín De Isasi, from the Hydrography Group; the surveyor Edgardo Monteros, from the Cartography team, and Paula Vernet, specialist in Public International Law.
