The Bahamas introduced Friday that it’ll refinance $300 million of its exterior debt to liberate greater than $120 million for marine conservation initiatives and climate change mitigation.
It’s the fifth such debt-for-nature swap on this planet, with the Bahamian authorities signing the cope with The Nature Conservancy, the Inter-American Improvement Financial institution and different monetary companions.
“We see this venture not simply supporting the biodiversity and local weather aims of the nation, however finally the financial system and livelihoods of many, many people,” Shenique Albury-Smith, the Bahamas-based deputy director for The Nature Conservancy, advised The Related Press.
The deal includes shopping for again the present debt by way of a brand new mortgage by Customary Chartered with lowered rates of interest, a transfer anticipated to liberate some $124 million in funding. That cash shall be used for marine conservation initiatives for the following 15 years. An endowment fund additionally shall be created to safe financing for the initiatives after the 15 years are up. General, the Bahamas holds some $5.7 billion in exterior debt.
The Seychelles, Belize, Gabon and Barbados previously signed similar deals, stated Melissa Garvey, international director for The Nature Conservancy’s bond program.
Collectively, the offers defend conservation areas bigger than the Gulf of Mexico, she stated.
The settlement with the Bahamian authorities marks the primary time a non-public investor, Builders Imaginative and prescient, supplies a co-guarantee and a non-public insurer, AXA XL, supplies credit score insurance coverage. It’s additionally the primary time that the venture contains local weather change mitigation commitments, based on The Nature Conservancy.
Smith stated officers will doubtless use a number of the cash to guard, restore and handle the mangrove ecosystem, which shops carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gasoline, higher than tropical forests. Officers additionally want to defend different ecosystems together with seagrass, which additionally absorbs carbon dioxide, serving to counter global warming.
Defending marine areas additionally would guarantee the steadiness of commercially essential fisheries within the Bahamas, with the spiny lobster one alone producing some $100 million a yr, Albury-Smith stated.
As well as, local weather change mitigation would assist defend the low-lying archipelago that’s nonetheless struggling to get better from Hurricane Dorian, which hit as a strong Class 5 storm in 2019.
The Bahamas already has a robust conservation historical past: greater than 17% of coastal waters are protected, representing greater than 6 million hectares (16 million acres) of the world’s ocean.
In 1958, the Bahamas established the world’s first protected land and sea park at Exuma Cays.
—Dánica Coto, Related Press