An innovative exchange of sovereign debt for marine protection, backed by the likes of Leonardo DiCaprio, could pave the way to saving large swaths of the world’s oceans.
The tropical island nation of Seychelles is to create two huge new marine parks in return for a large amount of its national debt being written off, in the first scheme of its kind in the world.
The novel financial engineering, effectively swapping debt for dolphins and other marine life, aims to throw a lifeline to corals, tuna and turtles being caught in a storm of overfishing and climate change.
If it works, it will also secure the economic future of the nation, which depends entirely on tourism and fishing. With other ocean states lining up to follow, the approach could transform large swaths of the planet’s troubled seas.
The challenge for the Seychelles is clear on the coral reef fringing Curieuse Island, once a leper colony and now a national park. The mass bleaching caused by warming waters in 2016 has left the white limbs of branching corals lying like bones in a ploughed graveyard, with rare flashes of the cobalt-blue coral survivors.
“The biggest changes are climate change,” says David Rowat, a marine scientist and diving school owner for 30 years, who says storms and bleaching events are becoming more frequent.
Some clownfish have never returned since the major bleaching in 1998, he says: “The ‘nemos’ all went.” As the reef recovered, the 2016 bleaching was a “kick in the teeth”, Rowat says.
Overfishing, and the killing of dolphins, sharks and turtles as bycatch in tuna nets, is also taking its toll across the Seychelles’ vast ocean territory. The new marine plan bans fishing around biodiversity hotspots, keeping them healthy and better able to resist climate change.
Size of Scotland
The new protected area around Aldabra is 74,000 square kilometres – almost the size of Scotland – and bans all extractive uses, from fishing to oil exploitation. The second new protected area is 134,000 sq km, centred on the main Seychelles island of Mahe. It allows controlled activities but is, for example, banning “fish aggregating devices” – rafts that concentrate fish but drive up bycatch.
Together, the parks cover 15% of the Seychelles ocean and the government will double this by 2021, putting it far ahead of an international target of 10% by 2020.
The parks resulted from the first ever debt-swap deal for marine protection in which $22m of national debt owed to the UK, France, Belgium and Italy was bought at a discount by The Nature Conservancy (TNC), the NGO that has assisted the Seychelles.
TNC also raised $5m from donors to pay off part of the debt and cut the interest rate charged to the Seychelles government on the outstanding loan. This has freed up $12m over the next 20 years to help implement the new marine plan.
“The Seychelles is positioning itself as a world leader in ocean governance,” says environment minister, Didier Dogley. “But we are not doing this because we have such a great ego but because we truly believe these initiatives will create prosperity for our people, conserve critical biodiversity and build resilience against climate change.”
Leonardo DiCaprio, whose foundation donated $1m towards funding the debt swap, said: “These protections mean that all species living in these waters or migrating through them are now far better shielded from overfishing, pollution, and climate change.”
However, despite the biggest consultation since the Seychelles nation was founded, some islanders have not welcomed the new plan.
On Praslin island, as he unloads his catch of job fish and white spotted snappers onto Grande Anse beach, fisherman Richard Bossy, says: “We are worried. They want to make a lot of regulated areas where we can’t fish. Fishing is already harder and we are going to lose a lot. If there is not enough enforcement, it will never be implemented.”
Read the full article at The Guardian.
Tags: Climate change, Coral Reefs, Dolphins, Fisheries, Islands, Management, MPA, Protection, Turtles