submerged lands are owned by the State and are inalienable.

 Section 2, Article XII of the

1987 Constitution provides: All lands of the public domain, waters, minerals, coal,
petroleum, and other mineral oils, all forces of potential energy, fisheries, forests or
timber, wildlife, flora and fauna, and other natural resources are owned by the State. With
the exception of agricultural lands, all other natural resources shall not be alienated. x x
x. (Emphasis supplied) Submerged lands, like the waters (sea or bay) above them, are
part of the State’s inalienable natural resources. Submerged lands are property of public
dominion, absolutely inalienable and outside the commerce of man. This is also true with
respect to foreshore lands. Any sale of submerged or foreshore lands is void being
contrary to the Constitution.

The cebu case relation

This is why the Cebu City ordinance merely granted Essel, Inc. an “irrevocable option” to
purchase the foreshore lands after the reclamation and did not actually sell to Essel, Inc.
the still to be reclaimed foreshore lands. Clearly, in the Ponce Cases the option to
purchase referred to reclaimed lands, and not to foreshore lands which are inalienable.
Reclaimed lands are no longer foreshore or submerged lands, and thus may qualify as
alienable agricultural lands of the public domain provided the requirements of public land
laws are met.

The Ponce Cases involve the authority of the City of Cebu to reclaim foreshore areas
pursuant to a general law, R.A. No. 1899. The City of Cebu is a public corporation and is
qualified, under the 1935, 1973, and 1987 Constitutions, to hold alienable or even
inalienable lands of the public domain. There is no dispute that a public corporation is not
covered by the constitutional ban on acquisition of alienable public lands. Both the 9 July
2002 Decision and the 6 May 2003 Resolution of this Court in the instant case expressly
recognize this.
However, in the instant case the PEA is not an end user agency with respect to the
reclaimed lands under the Amended JVA.
rationale for treating the PEA in the same manner as the DENR with respect to reclaimed
foreshore or submerged lands in this wise:
To allow vast areas of reclaimed lands of the public domain to be transferred to PEA as
private lands will sanction a gross violation of the constitutional ban on private
corporations from acquiring any kind of alienable land of the public domain. PEA will
simply turn around, as PEA has now done under the Amended JVA, and transfer several
hundreds of hectares of these reclaimed and still to be reclaimed lands to a single private
corporation in only one transaction. This scheme will effectively nullify the constitutional
ban in Section 3, Article XII of the 1987 Constitution which was intended to diffuse
equitably the ownership of alienable lands of the public domain among Filipinos, now
numbering over 80 million strong.