The world just added a marine protected area the size of France.

About a year ago, French Polynesia protected all of its waters, an expanse roughly the size of the European Union. Last week, they went further, announcing that another 520,000 km² of ocean surrounding the Austral, Marquesas and Western Society islands, some of the most biologically-rich waters on Earth, would receive the highest level of protection: no mining, trawling or industrial fishing permitted.

This brings the area of French Polynesia’s waters under full protection from extractive industries to about 1.4 million km² - the single largest contribution by any individual country to the global goal of protecting 30% of the planet’s lands and waters by 2030.

The problem of course, is how to make this more than just lines on a map: a vast area on paper, yet potentially unpopular with residents, ignored by commercial fishing fleets, and seldom patrolled by any boats. Fortunately, French Polynesia has put in the hard yards to make sure this doesn’t happen.

The new protections are built on rāhui, the closures Polynesian communities have used for generations to manage fish stocks, now hooked up to satellite monitoring and patrols.

And the process has been slow, deliberately so. Officials spent more than a decade getting fishers, scientists and elders on board before any of the maps were drawn, and easing industrial boats out of the coastal waters that local fleets depend on. By the time the plan was announced, 92% of French Polynesians supported it, and 95% in the Australs.

Then there’s the money, which is often where these things often fall apart. Something called the Te Moana Collective (a regional ocean conservation coalition) will cover the recurring costs - the boring, yet crucial stuff that makes an MPA work, things like patrols and scientific surveys and salaries.

What the government hasn’t figured out yet is enforcement, which to be honest is the part nobody has really figured out (although a lot of people are working on it). President Moetai Brotherson has asked France for more navy boats, and there’s still a loophole that lets foreign boats lurk just past the MPA boundaries.

But enforcement is a problem you only get to have once you’ve done everything else right, and French Polynesia has done an awful lot right here. This is one of the biggest conservation victories of this decade, the momentum is real, and there’s more on the way.

Take a moment to appreciate it.