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Image: World Economic Forum / Greg Beadl
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The sustainable blue economy approach is bringing a growing recognition of the importance of ocean health for the sustainable development agenda. This is crucial for many SIDS for whom most economic activities are ocean based and where climate action is primarily ocean action.
During the World Economic Forum Annual Meeting held in Davos last month, the ocean received a lot of attention. Five different sessions addressed topics like plastic pollution, the 30x30 ambition, blue carbon projects, businesses and nature-positive transitions, and finally the sustainable blue economy. During its G20 Presidency in 2022, Indonesia has launched the Ocean 20 (O20), an agenda aimed to provide policy recommendations and strategies to support the blue economy. India’s G20 presidency of 2023 also recognizes ocean health and prioritizes reduction in marine litter and marine plastic pollution and promotes a sustainable and climate resilient blue economy.
This increased recognition of ocean health by the international economic community, means that SIDS can work hand-in-hand with partners to protect and restore the health of the global ocean. For example, the development of research capacity and the transfer of marine technology can support a blue recovery by restoring the blue capital but also by creating sustainable livelihoods. In addition, collaboration with development partners and public-private partnerships can help build capacity to recover from shocks.
In reality, many SIDS are keen to sustainably harness the opportunities presented by a healthy ocean through the blue economy approach. UNDP has just published a policy guidance that seeks to unpack what the blue economy might look like for SIDS, advises on how to enable it, and provides guidance on how to develop and implement a blue economy strategic framework at the national level. The document is primarily intended for decision- and policymakers with responsibility for planning and delivering social and economic benefits and ensuring the long-term sustainability of the ecosystem services provided by the ocean.
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Image: Wikimedia
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As an essential part of their Bluer and Green recovery, SIDS are implementing innovative financial instruments to support climate action and digital transformation. However, the IMF found that 14 of the 20 SIDS evaluated were either in debt distress or at high risk of debt distress, highlighting the need for multiple debt reduction strategies and collaboration among the private sector, international organizations, and governments to ensure SIDS' recovery is not hampered by unpayable debt. However, the compounding ‘Triple C’ of crises and forecasted economic downturn raise concerns about debt relief mechanisms, as private capital is likely to flow out of developing countries.
Debt-for-nature swaps are one strategy that has attracted the interest of international institutions and SIDS such as Seychelles and Belize, reducing external debt by US$ 21 million and US$ 364 million, respectively, while also elevating Belize's sovereign credit rating. Due to their valuable biodiversity and carbon sinks, swaps can also generate additional revenue for SIDS, allowing them to charge others for protecting a global public good and creating carbon credits. The IMF emphasizes three key success factors for swaps: ensuring that the maximum amount of a country's debt is included, repurchasing debt at the lowest possible price, and minimizing the cost of funding the debt buy-back. Notably, in times of limited global resources, they can be expanded to supplement existing instruments and counteract natural biodiversity loss.
However, unless the swap includes a significant portion of the government's debt as well as significant relief, it will not be sufficient to bring a country back from the brink of insolvency. As numerous SIDS have stated in the Wadadli Action Platform, a comprehensive preventative debt restructuring strategy is required, and debt-for-nature swaps are critical tools in this strategy. However, restructuring, like debt-for-nature swaps, frequently relies on financial assurances from major creditor governments to finalize a deal, sometimes at the expense of more traditional forms of debt relief or subsidized financing.
The IMF's new US$ 40 billion Resilience and Sustainability Trust will provide affordable long-term financing for SIDS' resilience-enhancing climate-related policy reforms while also catalyzing additional official and private funding. Providing another resource that can be used to pay off high-interest debt. Strategic private sector creditors, strong coordination with development partners, and public-private partnerships can all help SIDS reconcile debt and recover from vulnerabilities and shocks, allowing them to build stronger, better, and more sustainable futures for all.
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Image: World Bank
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SIDS continue to build resilience to future shocks through economic diversification, improving digital and physical connectivity, enhancing disaster risk management, lessening dependence on imported fossil fuels, reducing trade costs, and collaborating across borders to achieve economies of scale. For SIDS to overcome their challenges of remoteness and connectivity which were exacerbated by the Covid-19 pandemic, it will be key to develop self-dependence and local resilience. Elevated energy and food prices remain a key barrier since food and fuel imports are equivalent to about one-sixth of GDP in small states, and prices are dependent on externalities such as war and other disruptions.
At the same time, loss and damage from disasters have been equivalent to 5 percent of GDP per year in small states, about 15 times the damages suffered by other Emergin Markets and Developing Economies. In some extreme cases, such as the 2017 Hurricane Maria in Dominica and 2004’s Hurricane Ivan in Grenada, damages have amounted to multiples of a country’s GDP. These cases will require more than just local resilience, but instead demonstrate the importance of the world coming together to address the worsening effects of the climate crisis.
This recent data analysis looked at small states through five different charts representing their shared challenges. Although this analysis presents valuable insight into the challenges that SIDS face which need more attention and innovation to address, we hope to emphasize the need for these data-driven analyses to focus on the strengths of SIDS in rising up to their challenges, and to illuminate pathways forward.
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The ocean and its ecosystems provide important goods and services and support numerous activities essential for economic development in SIDS. These include capture fisheries, maritime transport and ports, coastal tourism, coastal protection, and energy. At the same time, the ocean also provides non-market services that are critical for our survival, such as generating oxygen, absorbing excess heat, and providing nature-based solutions to climate change adaptation and mitigation. The ability of the ocean to continue providing these services has been threatened by a number of pressures such as pollution, overfishing, habitat loss, and climate change, driven by unsustainable economic activities.
Through this action brief, UNDP seeks to strengthen the knowledge base of the blue economy, challenge views on what it means, and clarify how SIDS can benefit from it. More specifically, it provides a blueprint for a multisectoral, integrated approach to the blue economy.
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Image: Green Climate Fund
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This report updates and expands the findings of the UNDP's NDC Global Outlook Report for 2021 in order to shed light on climate ambition in SIDS. When compared to the worldwide aggregated outcomes provided by 122 countries, SIDS' progress on implementing the core "building blocks" of the NDC is encouragingly comparable. The UNDP's Climate Promise helped 70 percent of the 40 SIDS develop stronger NDCs. 75 percent of these have submitted improved NDCs as of December 9, 2022. In order to clarify objective alignment with Paris goals and SDGs, this report highlights the new commitments made through SIDS from these newly amended NDCs. It is notable that only 33 percent of the revised NDCs include quantitative or qualitative adaptation targets and provisions for a monitoring and evaluation mechanism, providing direction for future assistance and improvement.
The report also examines NDC quality across three categories: robustness, feasibility, and ownership and inclusivity, all of which can be utilized to better assess future potential. Impressively, SIDS enhanced NDCs scored significantly higher on robustness compared to other regions. While ownership and inclusion levels were comparable to the worldwide norm. However, because SIDS' NDCs are fittingly ambitious, they are less feasible than the conservative global average. Also, despite the fact that SIDS face barriers attracting adequate levels of private finance, they demonstrate an unprecedented ability to mobilize and utilize public finance towards NDC implementation. To empower SIDS to fully implement NDC commitments, the report highlights the need for support strengthening NDC coordination and engagement, capacity building and technical assistance to implement measures, and financial and investment planning and procurement.
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Ocean Governance and the BBNJ
The 5th Session of the Intergovernmental Conference (IGC) on the BBNJ will resume next week at UN headquarters in New York. We share here two papers co-authored by Siddharth Shekhar Yadav, the Advisor on Climate Change, Oceans and BBNJ at the Permanent Mission of the Republic of Vanuatu to the United Nations. The first article discusses how to apply the principles for building socio-ecological resilience, developed by the Stockholm Resilience Centre, to high seas governance. The second article suggests ways through which a BBNJ Agreement could foster coordinated and integrated action at both global and regional scales.
Image: NOAA DeepCAST
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The Ocean and the Sustainable Development Goals
The ocean flows through all 17 of the UN Sustainable Development Goals—including poverty, hunger, gender equality and climate change. While the ocean fits neatly into SDG14: Life Below Water, it also plays a vital role in achieving the entire UN sustainability agenda. This new analysis draws connections between the ocean and all 17 SDGs, creating vital interlinkages which demonstrate the essential importance of improving ocean health and addressing the root challenges facing our oceans in the form of global climate change. This analysis helps to support the integrated approach that SIDS are taking to advance their development through resilient and sustainable solutions.
Image: Karina von Schuckmann
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Midterm review of the implementation of the Sendai framework for disaster risk reduction - Pacific Region 2015-2030
The people of the Pacific SIDS (P-SIDS) have an undeniable connection with their environment and its resources, and have deep cultural and traditional knowledge linked to the natural world and their livelihoods. Although it is often noted that the P-SIDS have extreme vulnerabilities to climate change and natural disasters, it is important to recognize that they are not passive victims in the face of these challenges, but are rising up to confront their vulnerabilities and innovate solutions. Through traditional knowledge systems that have always placed resilience at the forefront, the P-SIDS continue to strengthen efforts to develop resilient development alternatives to address the root causes of risk. The indigenous people of these islands are data scientists in their approach, gathering data and information over generations to understand and analyze their environment, and these approaches are central in development and implementation of proactive planning, especially when considered in parallel with modern technologies such as remote sensing and machine learning which can support vulnerability analyses. This recent report advances the current state of these approaches, and lays out the pathway forward to 2023 for the Pacific region to continue advancing their resilience.
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Development inclusive insurance and risk financing diagnostic study
UNDP in the Maldives through its global initiative Insurance and Risk Finance Facility (IRFF) has carried out a diagnostic exercise to identify and develop opportunities in the areas of inclusive insurance and risk financing in the Maldives. The focus is on supply, demand, and the enabling environment, in order to help develop recommendations to inform further collaboration in development of appropriate insurance and risk finance solutions to build resilience for individuals and communities. The report demonstrated the climate risks which need to be integrated into the foundation of insurance, and illustrated gaps in the insurance sectors in tourism and agriculture, as well as in insurance for natural capital such as coral reefs.
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Upcoming Opportunities & Events
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This three-day co-organized virtual course will look at the origins of the Blue Economy and how it is governed at the international, regional, and national levels, with an emphasis on how the trade context influences and is influenced by the Blue Economy Agenda. The study will also analyze case studies to determine how the Blue Economy can benefit SIDS and identify the most effective techniques for integrating the Blue Economy and its sustainable development into national and regional development strategies. Participants from Barbados, Grenada and Saint Vincent and the Grenadines are especially encouraged to register for this course, rewarding a recognized certificate of completion.
*Limited Space Available
Register here
When: 27 February - 1 March 2023 at 8:00 am EST
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Timeline-wise, the events of Our Ocean 2023 occur as global warming, ocean pollution, and marine species extinction all reach critical proportions due to human activity. The Conference is founded on the determination of many different levels of government, business, and civil society to promote and defend the health of our oceans via policy advocacy. V oluntary, measurable, and significant actions within a defined time frame are what make these commitments meaningful. Almost five million square miles of ocean have been protected thanks to the over a thousand eight hundred commitments made by delegates from over seventy nations since the first Our Ocean Conference in 2014. Our Ocean continues to provide updates on everyone's pledges and collaborations, as well as updates on earlier commitments. At Ocean 2023, world leaders, business owners, nonprofit representatives, and students will explore how to protect marine life, promote responsible consumption, and educate the public. Most notably, it will draw attention to the critical necessity for implementing interconnected networks of effective area-based management measures, expanding the global blue economy, and creating novel approaches to combating marine pollution.
When: 2-3 March 2023
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The 2023 Ocean Visions Biennial Summit will be a valuable opportunity to advance the sharing of knowledge and solutions to critical challenges at the ocean-climate nexus. This summit will bring together solutions to address the threats to our oceans, especially the challenges of greenhouse gas pollution which drives overheating and acidification. Ocean heating is in turn causing deoxygenation, sea level rise, and disruption of critical marine ecosystem functions and services. We need to establish a new vision of the oceans, in a future where we can support its health and continue to make sustainable use of this essential resource while preserving it for generations to come. Summit participants will share and discuss cutting-edge advancements in ocean sciences, engineering, policy, governance and economics that support innovative solutions that can be scaled effectively and quickly to address the urgent threats to our oceans.
Register here.
When: 4-6 April 2023
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