SILMMA: Solomon Islanders Managing Their Own Marine Protected Areas

The Solomon Islands Locally Managed Marine Areas Network (SILMMA), coordinated by a secretariat housed within the Ministry of Fisheries and Marine Resources, connects coastal communities, provincial governments, and NGOs running locally managed marine areas (LMMAs) where villages set their own rules on fishing closures, tabu areas, and resource use. Because formal government-run marine protected areas remain rare in the Solomon Islands, community-based LMMAs are the backbone of the country's ocean conservation, drawing on customary tenure and traditional reef-closure practices. As of 2024, the country's network of designated ocean conservation areas totaled 79 sites covering about 956 square kilometers, still less than 1 percent of the Solomon Islands' exclusive economic zone. A government-led Marine Spatial Planning project now aims to expand protection to 15 percent of the EEZ, building on the community networks SILMMA has coordinated for two decades.