International Union for Conservation of Nature Oceania Regional Office

Oceania is geographically one of IUCN’s largest regional programmes, covering over 100 million square kilometres of the Pacific Ocean.

IUCN's Oceania region covers Australia, New Zealand and the 22 countries and territories of the Pacific Islands making up Melanesia, Micronesia and Polynesia.

The region stretches almost 12,000km from East to West and 6,000 km from North to South, with a combined Exclusive Economic Zone  of close to 40 million square km. In contrast, the total land area is just over 8.5 million square km, with the larger islands of Australia (7 million square km), Papua New Guinea (463,000 square km) and New Zealand (268,000 square km) accounting for approximately 93% of this total land area.

The total human population is estimated at 35 million, with just over 22 million in Australia and 4 million in New Zealand. Approximately 9 million people inhabit the various Pacific Island countries and territories, with differences observed according to the size of the country: for example over 5 million people in the largest land mass of Papua New Guinea and populations under 2,000 in countries such as Niue and Tokelau. The Pitcairn Islands have less than 50 inhabitants. Each year as many as 3 million visitors to the region increase these figures.