Cook Islands

The Cook Islands ratified the UNESCO World Heritage Convention on 16 January 2009, making both its natural and cultural heritage eligible for nomination.

Though it has yet to secure an inscription, its tentative list includes both cultural landscapes—such as the Maungaroa Valley on Rarotonga—and potential natural sites. Common nomination themes emphasize the preservation of Eastern Polynesian cultural landscapes, traditional settlement patterns, and the protection of tropical island ecosystems in their intertwined social and environmental contexts