The Republic of the Marshall Islands was once used by the United States as a convenient place to explode nuclear bombs, with little regard for local interests. But these days, the expectations of the islands’ Indigenous residents is the standard by which conservation success is measured.
The site of US bomb tests at Bikini Atoll in the mid-20th century, the Marshall Islands covers only 181 square kilometres of land. However, it also oversees an “exclusive economic zone” which covers two million square kilometres of the Pacific Ocean, roughly 2,000 kilometres due east of the Philippines.
With a population of fewer than 40,000 people, but more than a thousand land masses and many more atolls, the republic faces unique conservation challenges.
The history of atomic testing, which involved depopulating Bikini and other atolls, as well as the long travel times between islands, have served to limit human activity and preserve biodiversity. But, like many other Pacific nations, the Marshall Islands has limited resources to fund scientific research or to enforce conservation decisions across its massive ocean territory.
An atoll is a naturally formed ring in the ocean, with a lagoon at its centre. An island can be an atoll, as can a series of islets that form a ring, or a ring-shaped coral reef. The Republic of Maldives, for example, is a grouping of atolls.
And there is a lot to protect. Unique corals and fish, giant clams, sharks, sea turtles, as well as land plants and animals are found across the Marshalls. There are thought to be many species living there that have yet to be formally described by scientists.
A 2023 research expedition described a pair within the thousands of atolls, Bikar and Bokak, as “an ecological jewel” and “among the most – if not the most – pristine in the Pacific”. The visiting scientists ran out of superlatives to describe the atoll lagoons.
In early 2025, the area encompassing Bikar and Bokak was declared a marine sanctuary, adding 48,000 square kilometres to the Marshall Islands’ protected areas. But the Bikar and Bokak atolls account for just over 2% of the Marshallese ocean, and this region is among only a few protected areas in the nation. The country remains well short of a globally agreed goal of protecting 30% of land and sea by 2030.
Efforts to protect more of the territory are being made under the framework of the Micronesia Challenge, named after the region that includes the Marshall, Caroline, Gilbert and Mariana islands. The first commitments to this international agreement were made in 2006, and its current aim is the “effective management” and conservation of 30% of the land and 50% of the marine areas of Micronesia by 2030. This conservation work led to the enactment of the Protected Areas Network Act in 2015, which established a national network of protected areas overseen by the Marshall Islands Marine Resources Authority (MIMRA).
The Protected Areas Network coordinator, Alicia Edwards, says successes so far are partly due to a Marshallese conservation process called Reimaanlok, meaning “looking towards the future, together”.
“Reimaanlok doesn’t treat science and tradition as separate. It brings them together to create a more grounded, informed and culturally appropriate approach to conservation,” Edwards tells Dialogue Earth.
‘Looking towards the future, together’
The Bikar and Bokak conservation area was created using Reimaanlok. This process is a formally defined system that the MIMRA uses to find, negotiate, establish and ultimately help monitor and enforce conservation zones.
The Reimaanlok framework emerged more than 15 years ago, when a team of community leaders, local and foreign scientists, facilitators and government officials got together to design a collaborative conservation process.
One of the facilitators was climate and nature strategy and policy advisor Nicole Baker from Australia, who had already spent years working on the islands as a conservation volunteer when she became involved. She says honouring and valuing local knowledge and priorities was at the heart of developing Reimaanlok, but the team also wanted to ensure global funders would be able to relate to its conservation goals: “International development practitioners in the conservation sector tend to privilege modern scientific knowledge. We were extremely deliberate about holding both [in mind] and asking them to talk to each other.”
Baker continues to monitor the Reimaanlok process while she works as an environmental consultant on other projects. She says Reimaanlok could certainly be adapted to other places where local and Indigenous concerns and knowledge are tied up with the environment.
“The whole idea was that it be ground-up, but the idea is that something like this will work in other Pacific [islands] and Indigenous communities around the world,” Baker adds.
“You wouldn’t want to pick it up and apply it as a predetermined process: ‘Here’s how you do it’. You would want to go through the process we went through to co-design it with local institutions, in the context of their deep cultural knowledge.”
How it works
One Marshallese concept that has been deployed in Reimaanlok is mo, and another known as Jikin Kojparok. Edwards says mo has long been used to “temporarily restrict access to certain areas – land or sea – for conservation, respect, or spiritual reasons”. Mo is a power reserved for use by Marshallese chiefs. For example, an area could be protected by mo to build up resources ahead of significant gatherings. Jikin Kojparok is a more general term that denotes a protected area.
Using such concepts not only supports more direct protection action, such as difficult-to-maintain patrols, but “reinforces the idea that conservation isn’t a foreign concept”, Edwards says.
When communities recognise their own customs in the management plan, it builds trust, respect and stronger complianceAlicia Edwards, coordinator of the Protected Areas Network
“It’s deeply rooted in Marshallese culture. When communities recognise their own customs in the management plan, it builds trust, respect and stronger compliance.”
One principle of Reimaanlok is that areas to be conserved must be not only scientifically valuable, but valued by the people “on the ground” – or on the water.
Edwards says that, ultimately, local Marshallese make the decisions, in meetings held in the relevant communities.
“It’s strictly up to them… they tell [the MIMRA] what they want”. At the end of the Reimaanlok development process for an area, with conservation goals defined and any legal regulations in place, the ongoing protection process is then handed back to the local community, with the MIMRA’s support.
Resource challenges
Funding is a challenge in the islands, but so is local capacity, both for enforcement and for deepening knowledge of the environment.
The Reimaanlok story highlights how important international support can be. The initial creation of the framework was assisted by funding from the Australian government, the UN Development Programme, the Global Environment Facility and non-governmental organisations. The 2023 study of the Bikar and Bokak atolls was supported by the National Geographic’s Pristine Seas project, which made hundreds of hours of diving and observation time possible.
But money for conservation support is not ongoing: Edwards says the islands may be looking to more support from the World Bank’s PROPER ocean resilience project next.
Edwards adds that the Marshall Islands currently does not have the right number of people trained to enforce conservation rules, nor the resources – such as scientific equipment and satellite access – to quantify all its environmental treasures. Challenges include getting to the far-flung locations, which require the use of boats and proper training.
“Local capacity is growing, but we still face challenges… additionally, there’s often a gap between research findings and how they are used in policy or management,” Edwards says.
Nicole Baker is frank about the challenges, including resources and pressures on the Marshallese population.
She points out that even if there is more scientific monitoring of biodiversity and other environmental metrics in the newly protected areas, it will be difficult to define the effects of the conservation zones, given climate change and other pressures.
“The billion-dollar question for all environmental action everywhere in the world right now is: the pressures on the environment are so phenomenal and so great, how can we measure the impact of conservation measures?”
But Baker sees hope, including in the “generational” impact of Reimaanlok: a new generation of young Marshallese are gaining scientific expertise overseas and returning to work in the islands.
“I think the success is that there’s ownership; there’s self-determination around how resources are managed in the Marshall Islands.”
