President Obama announced on Tuesday that he will use his executive authority to expand environmental protections related to ocean life and coastal communities in effort to combat climate change.

As a result, the move would create the world's largest marine sanctuary in the south-central Pacific Ocean.

"Growing up in Hawaii, I learned early to appreciate the beauty and power of the ocean," said the president at the State Department's Our Ocean conference, according to the New York Times. "And like Presidents Clinton and Bush before me, I'm going to use my authority as president to protect some of our most precious marine landscapes, just like we do for mountains and rivers and forests."

He has also used his executive authority to designate 11 new national monuments on land to ensure that millions of acres of wilderness remain untouched.

"We've already shown that when we work together, we can protect our oceans for future generations," he said in a video broadcast, reports MSNBC. "So let's redouble our efforts. Let's make sure that years from now we can look our children in the eye and tell them that, yes, we did our part, we took action, and we led the way toward a safer, more stable world."

The new policies include an expansion of protected areas in the Pacific Ocean in addition to $102 million in funds to protect coastal communities against climate change. According to The Washington Post., the proposal would guard more ocean area from drilling and fishing and would double the area of ocean that is fully protected.

The president's remarks were part of a two-day conference on the ocean and climate change, hosted by the U.S. State Department. Secretary of State John Kerry. On Monday, Kerry kicked off the conference with a speech also emphasizing his "commitment to protecting the ocean."

"It's a vital security issue involving the movement of people, the livelihood of people, the capacity of people to exist and live where they live today," said Kerry. "The ocean today supports the livelihoods of up to 12 percent of the world's population. But it is also essential to maintaining the environment in which we all live. It's responsible for recycling things like water, carbon, nutrients throughout our planet, throughout the ecosystem -- 'system' is an important word -- so that we have air to breathe, water to drink. And it is home to literally millions of species."