Caribbean Urged to Capitalize on Blue Economy Financing

Use it or risk losing it is the advice Racquel Moses, chief executive officer of the Caribbean Climate-Smart Accelerator (CCSA) has for countries in the region now not taking full advantage of blue economy financing.

Moses, who organisation connects entrepreneurs and the private sector with sources of climate finance, shared that there was “a lot of blue economy . . . money that’s looking for projects”.

“So I have more investors that are interested in the blue economy than I have projects that are blue economy projects, and that’s a really excellent place to be in. And if we don’t quickly capitalise on that money, then we will lose it,” she warned “There is Builders Foundation that has an investment arm that’s looking for blue economy projects, there is Bloomberg Blue that’s also looking for blue economy projects, Caribbean Biodiversity Fund looking for blue economy projects, they have a US$2 million objective per project from [German agency] GIZ, and these are the things that we really need to just snatch and run with, because we have more ocean than we have land.

Be strategic

“So, where else are you going to find a critical mass of blue economy projects? It should be the Caribbean,” she added.

Speaking yesterday during The Breakfast Exchange: A Climate Talk On The Global Economy held as part of the Caribbean Development Bank’s (CDB) 56th annual meeting in Nassau, The Bahamas, Moses also urged the Caribbean to be strategic in how it tried to access funding and the way it used such financing, including grants.

“We need to be more judicious about how we use grant funding, because at best case it’s nine per cent, at worst case, it’s four per cent of climate finance globally, and we know that in the Caribbean, not only are we not an exception, we’re probably an extreme,” she said.

“So it means that we don’t have enough grant funding available, and if we’re going to use grant funding, we have to use it to unlock commercial capital. And I see a lot of times projects are attracting grant funding that are ready to graduate to commercial funding, but they are accessing it because it’s available.”

“If we are being smart, we need to look at where the money [is], rather than creating solutions and hoping to find money. Let’s find the money that’s already available that we aren’t accessing, like the blue economy funding. And then let’s create solutions to access that money,” Moses recommended. (SC)