Prime Minister Jeremiah Manele has reaffirmed his government’s commitment to the creation of the Melanesian Ocean Reserve (MOR), pledging ministerial resources to advance the world’s first Indigenous-led, multi-national ocean reserve.
The announcement was made on the margins of the 54th Pacific Islands Forum in Honiara, where Manele emphasised the Reserve’s groundbreaking approach to ocean governance, blending Indigenous knowledge, modern science, and regional political leadership.
Expected to span more than 6 million square kilometres — an expanse as vast as the Amazon rainforest — the Reserve will operate across the Exclusive Economic Zones (EEZs) of the Solomon Islands, Papua New Guinea, Vanuatu, and New Caledonia. It will safeguard some of the most biologically rich and culturally significant seas on Earth.
“Never before have countries united across entire EEZs to enshrine Indigenous governance, constitutional authority, and ancestral stewardship as the foundation of large-scale ocean protection,” Manele said. “The ocean has always been our garden, our market, and our home. Today, we take further steps toward making that truth the law.”
From vision to delivery
The intention to form the Reserve was first announced earlier this year by Manele at the United Nations Oceans Conference in Nice, France, with backing from ministers representing Papua New Guinea, Vanuatu, and New Caledonia.
This week’s declaration established a Ministerial Platform to accelerate negotiations on the MOR Declaration and to coordinate with development partners for financial support. Officials described the platform as a mechanism to ensure the initiative moves beyond words to tangible delivery, with Indigenous authority embedded at its core.
The Four Paddles
Two senior ministers — Bradley Tovosia, Minister for Fisheries and Marine Resources, and Polycarp Paea, Minister for Environment, Climate Change, Disaster Management and Meteorology — unveiled the “Four Paddles,” the core programmes that will drive the Reserve forward.
These include:
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Monitoring and management of the ocean
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Indigenous-led investment in sustainable ocean economies
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Sustainable transport and reconnection of island peoples
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Integration of modern science with customary wisdom
Minister Paea said the approach represented a unifying vision. “We eat from and live in the ocean, but we have been retreating from it as other ways of life start to dominate. The MOR is a unifying approach that makes sense of the different ways of protecting our Ocean.
“The paddle for knowing the ocean uses science and research to build from our existing ancestral knowledge, rather than replacing it. The transport and reconnection paddle will ensure that our people return to the ocean for transport and movement, filling it up with our life and our attention.”
For Minister Tovosia, the Reserve is also an economic blueprint: “The Melanesian Ocean Reserve is a framework to mainstream the ocean in our economic thinking. Through the ocean transparency paddle, we aim to observe our full ocean space, so we can see who is doing what, and leverage our population across the islands in monitoring and reporting. With the indigenous investment paddle, we look forward to our indigenous Solomon Islanders becoming direct participants in the fisheries value chain, instead of being spectators.”
Taking momentum global
Led by the governments of the Solomon Islands, Papua New Guinea, and Vanuatu — in partnership with the Islands Knowledge Institute (IKI) and Nia Tero — Pacific leaders are set to take the MOR’s momentum to Climate Week in New York later this month to engage with partners on financing and scaling up the initiative.
For Manele, the Reserve represents more than a conservation tool. It signals a turning point for ocean governance itself — one where Indigenous voices and traditions take their rightful place at the helm of global sustainability.
