The Debate | Environment | Opinion | Oceania

A Golden Chance to Protect the Pacific’s ‘Blue Corridors’

If Albanese is serious about a Pacific COP, he must heed the region’s call on oceans.

The next few months will see a flurry of climate diplomacy involving the Pacific Islands. Later this week, regional leaders are heading to Palau for the Pacific Islands Forum, with this year’s meeting expected to put ocean protection at the forefront. In early October, the world will travel to Fiji and Tuvalu for the pre-COP meeting; in November, Australia will preside over COP31 in Antalya, Turkiye.

Between now and then, Australia has a rare opportunity: to use its COP31 presidency and the new High Seas Treaty to help create connected protection across the Pacific and the high seas.

The idea behind this connection are the Blue Corridors, the migratory pathways used by whales, sharks and other marine species as they travel thousands of kilometers across multiple jurisdictions. To better protect these dynamic habitats, governments must connect networks of marine protected areas across borders and the high seas, while reducing the growing risks species face along their journey.

Consider the humpback whale. This month, humpbacks breeding off Queensland migrate toward Antarctic feeding grounds, while those in Tonga travel through the Cook Islands, Niue, and New Zealand to the same destination. To the whale, Australia, the Pacific Islands, and Antarctica are a single living system. 

Marine life depends on connectivity; protecting isolated marine parks is not enough. We must protect the pathways species travel.  

For years, this was impossible without an international law to protect waters beyond national jurisdiction. That changed in January, when the High Seas Treaty entered into force, enabling governments to protect the two-thirds of the ocean beyond any single nation’s control. Now, COP31 presents an opportunity to put oceans at the heart of the climate agenda, recognizing that the climate and ocean crises are inseparable.  

Science, law, and political leadership have aligned. Thirty years of migration tracking, complementing thousands of years of Indigenous knowledge, have revealed these ocean pathways, and governments now have the tools to protect them. Pacific nations are leading ocean conservation, consistently translating ambition into policy, diplomacy, and action.  

In May, Papua New Guinea, Fiji, and Vanuatu signed the Melanesian Ocean Corridor of Reserves, the first Pacific-led declaration linking national waters into a shared corridor of protection. Tonga has announced a National Ocean Policy with a vision for 30 percent protection and is signaling a further step: protecting the Pacific Blue Corridor that humpbacks travel, from Tongan breeding waters south through Cook Islands, Niue, and New Zealand toward Antarctic feeding grounds.  

This is the leadership nature demands, grounded in the millennia-old Pacific knowledge that the ocean is a pathway, not a barrier. The Blue Corridors concept shows how solutions can be locally led,........

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