Melanesian Ocean Sovereignty in Action

The Melanesian Ocean Reserve is a powerful step to safeguard the ancestral waters, homelands, and people of the southwestern Pacific.

It is a multinational, Indigenous-led initiative rooted in cultural unity and regional cooperation and affirms the constitutional authority of Indigenous Peoples to govern their ocean spaces and ensures that national policies reflect this truth. It will operate across the Exclusive Economic Zones (EEZs), territorial, and archipelagic waters of Solomon Islands, Vanuatu, Papua New Guinea, and New Caledonia, and when complete, it is expected to span over 6 million square kilometres of oceans and islands.

The Melanesian Ocean Reserve is not itself a single Marine Protected Area, but includes each nation’s existing marine protected areas (MPAs), locally marine managed areas (LMMA), and community based resourced marine managed areas (CBRMs). Grounded in Indigenous-led ocean governance and aligned with the global framework of other effective area-based conservation measures (OECMs), the Reserve creates an enabling national and regional framework that protects localised Marine Protected Areas efforts from political reversal, fragmentation, or lack of scale. It connects community efforts to broader ocean governance and development goals.

This is a framework for system-wide ocean governance that keeps control in the hands of those whose lives and cultures are tied to the sea. It highlights Indigenous custodianship as the most effective and enduring form of marine conservation.

Exploring the Melanesian Ocean Reserve