In the mid-1990s, various community-based projects were underway throughout Southeast Asia and the Pacific. Meanwhile, three sites that were part of a Biodiversity Conservation Network project (supported by the Biodiversity Support Program to conduct an assessment of economic incentives for natural resource conservation) focused on community involvement in monitoring and evaluating marine resources. Two of these three sites – one in Ucunivanua Village in Verata district in Fiji, one at Dauwi Island in the Padaido Islands, West Papua, Indonesia – became pilot sites in the LMMA Network; the third, a site in Arnavon Islands in the Solomon Islands, later became an LMMA Network member.

In the late 1990s, staff from various organizations working throughout Southeast Asia and the Pacific recognized that although there were many initiatives involving community-based marine conservation taking place - and that many of them overlapped - they were not necessarily sharing resources or information, and thus not learning as much as they could from each others’ successes and shortcomings. From this, they proposed bringing such isolated projects together in order to learn collectively and improve their outcomes and conservation impact.

Thus the LMMA Network was born in 2000, and grew exponentially in the years following, exciting much interest and adding many new partners and members. The Network has evolved through several phases and is embarking on a Strategic Planning process in 2010 to consider our best way forward.

For a chronological summary of the Network's history, see Timeline.