GNV News 2025/6/6

On 2025/6/3, the Government of Samoa announced that it had enacted a law to establish a Marine Spatial Plan (Marine Spatial Plan, MSP) to sustainably manage its entire exclusive economic zone (EEZ) by 2030 (effective date: 2025/5/1). Samoa is an island nation in the South Pacific where the ocean accounts for 98% of the country’s total area, including its EEZ. Its environment includes deep ocean trenches, seamounts, and coral reefs that support diverse ecosystems, and many valuable species live there, including the endangered hawksbill sea turtle. The benefits provided by marine ecosystems—such as fisheries and tourism resources and climate regulation—form the foundation of people’s lives and the economy.

In Samoa, following a devastating tsunami in 2009, village-led community fisheries management areas were established to help coral reef recovery, and in 2012 the government established coastal marine protected areas (MPA). However, in recent years, overfishing, pollution, climate change–driven ocean warming and acidification, and sea-level rise have increased coastal flooding and intensified threats to food security and livelihoods. In response, the “Samoa Ocean Strategy (SOS)” was introduced in 2020, and the development of an MSP was planned. At the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) 15th Conference of the Parties (COP15) in 2022, the “30×30” target (to conserve 30% of the world’s land and ocean by 2030) was reaffirmed, and, ahead of the UN Ocean Conference scheduled for 2025/6/9, this legislation was enacted.

The main feature of this legislation is that it mandates sustainable management across Samoa’s entire EEZ and, by law, designates at least 30% of it as 9 new strictly protected MPAs. While MSPs have been introduced and legislated in other Pacific island countries, Samoa is the first to legislate at this scale. In the newly added MPAs, activities such as fishing, mining, and drilling are prohibited, with particular focus on protecting humpback whale migratory routes, biodiversity-rich seamounts, and coral reefs. The methods for designing and managing the protected areas also reflect scientific evidence, the views of local communities, and traditional ocean management practices.

Learn more about the Pacific Islands and climate change→“Pacific Islands and Climate Change”

“A big step on climate change: Taking the issue to the ICJ”

Learn more about the biodiversity crisis → “International reporting that overlooks the biodiversity crisis”

Learn more about the impacts of climate change on ecosystems → “1.5°C The reality of exceeding: Global climate change issues, countermeasures, and Japanese media coverage”

Coral reefs of Samoa
(Photo: Rickard Törnblad/Wikimedia Commons [CC-BY-SA-4.0])