Pacific island nations launch plan for world’s first Indigenous-led ocean reserve

The governments of the Solomon Islands and Vanuatu have announced their commitment to create a massive multinational Melanesian Ocean Reserve. If implemented as envisioned, the reserve would become the world’s first Indigenous-led ocean reserve, covering an area nearly as big as the Amazon Rainforest.

Speaking at the U.N. Ocean Conference underway in Nice, France, representatives of both countries said the vision for the ocean reserve is to cover at least 6 million square kilometers (2.3 million square miles) of ocean and islands. The reserve will include the combined national waters of the Solomon Islands, Vanuatu and Papua New Guinea, and extend to the protected waters of New Caledonia’s exclusive economic zone. All of the island countries, largely inhabited by Indigenous Melanesians, are located in the southwestern Pacific Ocean, within the region known as Melanesia.

“The Melanesian Ocean Reserve will give the governments and peoples of Melanesia the ability to do much more to protect our ancestral waters from those who extract and exploit without concern for our planet and its living beings. We hope our Indigenous stewardship of this vast reserve will create momentum for similar initiatives all over the world,” Vanuatu’s environment minister, Ralph Regenvanu, said in a joint press release.