Tommy Remengesau Jr.

Who is Tommy Remengesau Jr.?

Thomas Esang "Tommy" Remengesau Jr. is a Palauan statesman who served multiple terms as President of the Republic of Palau, from 2001 to 2009 and again from 2013 to 2021, after earlier serving as Vice President in the 1990s. Born in Koror in 1956, the son of a former Palauan Vice President and acting President, he was educated at Grand Valley State University in Michigan before returning home to enter politics, becoming the youngest senator in Palau's history when elected to the national legislature in 1984. As President, Remengesau became internationally recognized as one of the Pacific's leading voices for ocean conservation. In 2015 his government established the Palau National Marine Sanctuary, which fully protects roughly eighty percent of Palau's exclusive economic zone from fishing and extractive activity, making it one of the largest fully protected marine areas in the world at the time of its creation. He also championed the Palau Pledge, a 2017 initiative stamped into every visitor's passport asking tourists to act as environmental stewards during their stay, one of the world's first eco-focused immigration policies of its kind. For this record, the United Nations Environment Programme named him a Champion of the Earth in 2014, and he later received the Peter Benchley Ocean Award. His leadership positioned Palau as a global model for small-island ocean governance.

Sources: Thomas Remengesau Jr., Wikipedia (accessed 2026) · UNEP Champions of the Earth 2014 laureate profile · Palau Pledge, palaupledge.com