Transcript
Jennifer Koskelin left her advertising and marketing career in New York a decade ago when she could no longer resist the call of home in Palau.
Her commercial background in fast-moving consumer-goods led her to start selling the idea of a fully protected, no-take marine sanctuary to the government.
That was signed into law in 2015, and half a million square kilometres are now protected.
"I took on the task because I really felt that we needed a way to protect the tourism assets in Palau and that tourism asset is not just the beautiful space but it's also our language and our culture. And my goal is to leave Palau the same way I saw it when I was young for my own kids and for their kids."
Similar motivation has led others to projects in their own Pacific countries, which in turn has brought them to Island Voices in Tahiti.
Ms Koskelin says they have so much to learn from one another.
"We all have some really good parts of our culture that we're able to preserve and others that we're trying to revitalise and revive. So I think we fill each others' gaps and one of the ways we fill each other gaps is really to encourage our traditions and our knowledge. That needs to be every day practice."
In Palau a protected marine area is known as a 'bul'. The eastern Polynesian version is a 'rahui'.
The head of Rapa Nui's Te Mau o Te Vaikava, Ludovic Burns Tuki, has worked in marine conservation for over 10 years and in 2017 a rahui was created.
At 740-thousand square kilometres the Rapa Nui Marine Sanctuary is one of the world's largest.
"All the industrial activities that are not in the traditions and use of the Rapa Nui people will be prohibited."
Ludo Burns Tuki says this allows for traditional artisanal fishing but bans seabed mining and other commercial interests.
He says despite being part of Chile, the rahui area is controlled by a Rapa Nui council for ancestral, traditional and sustainable uses - including tourism.
He says environmental education is key.
"The community has to understand and be part of this process and not to make only a political process. The society of each country, of each island, has to be in this process and so that this process belongs from him."
Jerome Petit of the Pew Charitable Trust, which helped organise Island Voices, says they are working on a message to share with the rest of the world.
"This message will be shared with the international negotiations for example in the framework of the UN Convention for Biodiversity. So the idea is to have a call from the Pacific Islanders to call for a protection of the ocean and the target is a 30 percent protection of every marine habitat all around the planet."
Only three-percent of the world's ocean habitat is currently protected.
Jennifer Koskelin says marine protected areas offer huge commercial benefits and her country now acts as a giant fish- aggregating device, which attracts species to it for protection.
She says marine species have space to recover.
"When you create a fully closed area around the space that you want to preserve, you get a lot of spill over. And so for us the goal is, in that large marine protected area we are anticipating a spill over so that in the space closest to the islands that we live in, it becomes easier to catch fish."
Ms Koskelin says Pacific Island countries can't work in isolation, so people around the world need to call on their governments to listen to - and join - Island Voices.
