So reads the first line of the Palau Pledge, a declaration that is stamped into the passports of all arriving visitors to the Roman Tmetuchl International Airport on Babeldaob Island. Adjusting my glasses, I scanned the rest of the page:
I VOW TO TREAD LIGHTLY, ACT KINDLY ANDEXPLORE MINDFULLY. I SHALL NOT HARM WHATDOES NOT HARM ME. THE ONLY FOOTPRINTS I SHALLLEAVE ARE THOSE THAT WILL WASH AWAY.
It all sounded entirely reasonable.
“Please sign at the bottom, sir,” instructed the immigration officer. I did. “Welcome to Palau,” she beamed.
A tiny Pacific island nation at the western edge of Micronesia, Palau became the world’s first country to write environment protection into its immigration policies when it instituted this pledge in 2017. Back then, tourist numbers had increased to around 150,000 a year, a staggering amount considering Palau has just 18,000 inhabitants. Not for the first time, the government devised a novel — if largely symbolic — response to help safeguard the islands’ fragile ecosystems.
Environment management is nothing new to Palau. For countless centuries, islanders practiced sustainability through a system called , whereby chiefly councilspresident Tommy Remengesau Jr., who governed the country for most of the last two decades, has long been a passionate advocate for the environment. In the early aughts he championed the establishment of a Protected Areas Network to conserve swaths of forested land and coastal waters. He then invited his neighbors — Guam, the Northern Mariana Islands, the Federated States of Micronesia, and the Marshall Islands — to follow suit. They all accepted his Micronesian Challenge, which set goals for protecting 30 percent and 20 percent of near-shore marine and terrestrial resources, respectively, by 2020. (The program was a success, and has been extended to 2030).
