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For most Pacific Island Countries, more than 98% of their jurisdiction is ocean. The ocean is vitally important to these countries, providing food and income, coastal protection, carbon storage, and essential habitat for marine plants and animals.

Fiji has committed to a national network of 30% marine managed/protected areas by 2020 at the Small Island Developing States meetings in Mauritius (2005, by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs) and recommitted to this at the SIDS meeting in Samoa in 2014 (Ministry of Strategic Planning, National Development and Statistics).

In 2006, Kiribati established the Phoenix Island Protected Area, one of the Large Scale Marine Protected Areas in the world, which constitute around 11% of Kiribati's Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ).

In 2015, the Government of the Solomon Islands through the Office of the Prime Minister and Cabinet hosted the inaugural National Ocean Summit.

In 2015, the National Committee on Maritime Boundary Delimitation, through the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, International Cooperation and External Trade, established the Ocean Policy Sub-Committee

The Tongan Government recognized the important of spatial management, including of its ocean, since 2012, with the launch of their National Spatial Planning Act.

In 2014, the Council of Ministers (Decision No. 172/2014) decided to start implementation of, amongst other things, a Marine Spatial Plan for the nation. This planning includes aiming to achieve the Convention on Biological Diversity’s (CBD) Aichi Target 11 which states, in part, that at least 10 per cent of coastal and marine areas are conserved through ecologically representative and well-connected systems of protected areas.

n April 2016, the Cabinet of the Solomon Islands Government endorsed the establishment of the Ocean 12 National Steering Committee (comprising the twelve Ministries relevant to ocean management and use) with the mandate to progress Integrated Ocean Governance for the Solomon Islands.

As countries across the Pacific grow concerned about the dwindling of,and damage to,resources in the world’s oceans, there is an effort to develop plans to sustainably integrate human use and marine conservation. Marine spatial planning (MSP) is a practical way of organising the human use of marine areas to balance the demands of human activities with the need to protect the health of the ecosystems on which those activities depend.