Micronesia Conservation Trust — Regional Endowment for Protected-Area Ecosystem Services

The Micronesia Conservation Trust (MCT), founded in 2002 and headquartered in Kolonia, Pohnpei (Federated States of Micronesia), provides long-term financing for biodiversity conservation across five Micronesian jurisdictions — Federated States of Micronesia, Palau, the Marshall Islands, Guam and the Northern Mariana Islands — spanning more than 600 islands over 2.5 million square miles of ocean.

MCT was established to give this vast, fragmented ocean region a sustainable long-term financing vehicle for conservation, and it now serves as the principal financing mechanism behind the Micronesia Challenge, a 2006 regional commitment to conserve at least 30% of near-shore marine and 20% of terrestrial resources by 2020.

MCT has mobilised USD 100 million in total, including a USD 50 million endowment it manages directly, drawing on contributions from The Nature Conservancy, Conservation International, the Global Environment Facility and, more recently, MacKenzie Scott grants. It holds Adaptation Fund accreditation (since 2015) and Green Climate Fund accreditation (since 2017), receiving its first GCF-funded project in 2021.

MCT now supports more than 150 protected areas region-wide, and NOAA's Coral Reef Conservation Program credits MCT-funded fisheries-monitoring data with directly informing changes to fisheries regulations. In July 2025, MCT joined The Nature Conservancy and the governments of all five member jurisdictions in signing a memorandum of understanding to explore a Project Finance for Permanence structure, a mechanism pioneered in Bhutan and Costa Rica.

Publicly available sources give funding totals and accreditation milestones but do not report hectare-level or species-level outcome data for individual sites.