World’s First Indigenous-led Ocean Reserve - And It's Vast
- Editor OGN Daily
- Jun 20
- 1 min read
Plans have been announced to create a massive new 2 million square mile (6 million sq. km) ocean reserve, covering an area nearly as big as the entire Amazon Rainforest.
The governments of the Solomon Islands and Vanuatu have announced their commitment to create a massive multinational Melanesian Ocean Reserve, which will become the world’s first Indigenous-led ocean reserve.
Speaking recently at the U.N. Ocean Conference in Nice, France, representatives of both countries said 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.
Melanesia is one of the world’s most biodiverse regions, hosting an incredible diversity of both land and marine species, including an estimated 75 percent of known coral species and more than 3,000 species of reef-associated fish.
The announcement of the Melanesian Ocean Reserve in the South Pacific isn't the only good news about ocean protection emanating from the U.N. Ocean Conference, as 10 other new marine preserves have also been announced.
