Manus Island lies 300km east of the mainland of Papua New Guinea. The Great Central Forest in Manus Island, one of the largest remaining areas of unlogged forest in the Bismarck Archipelago, and is a globally recognized biodiversity hotspot. The forest’s immense carbon stocks are a vital part PNG’s commitment to mitigating climate change, and itsprovides local communities with most of their subsistence and livelihood needs. All lands are recognized in the PNG constitution as being owned by traditional communities, who value them not only for the natural resources that are the foundation of their local economy, but also for the cultural meaning their forest heritage conveys. Lack of capital to invest in sustainable economic development has left some traditional communities no option but to sell their land to international timber companies and agri-businesses. Today parts of Manus Island have some of the highest rates of deforestation and forest degradation in the country. With support from the Australian Government, and in partnership with the local and provincial governments, WCS worked with 50 clans from 9 traditional communities to prepare sustainable developmentplans. Created through a highly participatory process that included men and women from each clan and representatives of the Provincial Administration and the Local Level Government, these plans were a prerequisite for communities to receive support for priority sustainable development projects. As one component of their development plan, each community decided to create formal conservation agreements setting aside areas of forest where industrial scale logging and agriculture would be prohibited, which would be reviewed every two years. Today conservation agreements protect 28,000 ha of forest. These agreements cover 2/3 of the Great Central Forest and provide a mechanism that could be scale up to dozens even hundreds of communities, saving highly biodiverse forests and the cultural heritage of traditional Papua New Guineans.