PROJECT LEAD: Cabal

Summary

The Treaty of Waitangi, signed by the British Crown and Māori in 1840, gives rise to an unprecedented partnership between indigenous and colonial power structures. This legally commanded and necessary collaboration is embedded deeply within New Zealand society, and offers a powerful framework for an integrated, holistic approach to restoring health and wellbeing across ecosystems and communities.

The focus of this action plan is on the regeneration of the waters of Auckland. where water is seen as a primary resource and spiritual substance flowing through and uniting all living things. Regeneration of Auckland’s harbours and tributaries represents a unifying image that can unite multiple cultural value systems and perspectives. In this way, the unique hydrological systems of Auckland offer a compelling narrative about the common connection to place as a source of new energy and will to drive regeneration. 

Many key partners are part of this effort. These include the Auckland Council, Panuku Development, e The Big Shift Ecosystem (a cross-sector collaboration), Callaghan Innovation (a New Zealand government agency), Living Future Aotearoa New Zealand and a wide range of other organizations, businesses, and initiatives. Cloudburst Foundation and the Commonwealth Secretariat’s Common Earth programme is critical to scaling these efforts. 

Local Conditions

Auckland is New Zealand’s largest city. It is located on a narrow isthmus shaped by the Hauraki Gulf and the Manukau Harbour, which, together, form the heart of Auckland’s geography and spirit. The twin harbours are minimally separated by 1km portages in two locations. These complementary waters systems have evolved as prime areas of breeding, nursery and migration routes for sea life, such as fish and birds. The isthmus itself combines ancient sedimentary layers with very recent volcanic cones and craters. The resulting fertile clays and soils support lush, bio-diverse plant communities. Taken together, these natural systems have provided the historical basis for local culture, food production and economy.

Industrial development has placed this vibrant ecosystem under severe stress, and Auckland’s already degraded ecologies face further challenges due to intense growth pressures. Yet the city has ambitious goals toward realising a just, prosperous, and ecologically sustainable future as outlined in the Auckland Plan 2050. Within this context, a collaboration among the city’s diverse cultures, including an unprecedented coalition between Māori and regenerative practitioners, is being explored and purposefully advanced at all levels of city-making.

Regenerative Approach

For the last six years, a small group of local leaders has invested significant energy to recruit and train a diverse and fast-growing community of well-placed professionals (both Māori and “Pakeha”) to the methods and practices of regenerative development. These practitioners work in local and national government agencies, universities, companies large and small, community organizations, environmental groups, and Māori advocacy groups.  Working separately and in collaborative teams, they are advancing hundreds of projects designed to heal social, commercial and ecological systems, evolve local practice, and shift their nation to a new paradigm. 

These activities can be best understood within the following three-tiered rubric:

• At the physical and functional level, practitioners are building on past initiatives to clean up the streams and harbours, restore the forests, estuaries, and other ecosystems that maintain marine health, and change the infrastructure and practices that led to decline in the first place. These efforts address everything from sewage to agricultural sediments, industrial pollutants to the impacts of shipping.

• At the next level, practitioners are addressing themselves to the profound cultural shift needed to sustain a healthy relationship between people and water long into the future. This shift is built on public education, capability development (including training more regenerative practitioners), and integration of traditional Māori wisdom and approaches into a broad array of government and private sector decision-making and measurement of value and impact. It is also built on the ways people make meaning through art and public celebrations.

• Finally, these practitioners are endeavouring to reawaken and reconnect people across every sector of society to the mauri (the Māori word for ‘life force’) of this special place. Mauri is an integral expression of the spirit of Auckland. Experiencing connection at this level will be central to helping the city make the deep systemic changes it aspires to.
  

Building Partnership Capability

The aim of the Waiora project is whakapapa oranga - regenerating kinship relationships - growing the consciousness and capability for all Aucklanders to restore balance with nature and one another through a shared experience of relatedness. This experience derives from an understanding of place that integrates both western and indigenous ways of knowing as a way to achieve kotahitanga or unity.

Pacific Connecting

As one of the most culturally diverse urban areas in the world, Auckland is home to an unparalleled concentration of Pacific Islanders. Thus, ancestral connections to the Pacific are very strong, positioning Auckland as an excellent place from which to develop and disseminate new ideas and approaches. This means that the city has potentially important contributions to make toward the aims of the Commonwealth Blue Charter, to which New Zealand is a signatory and other Commonwealth-wide initiatives. 

Through partnership with Common Earth and the Commonwealth, Waiora aims to contextualise Auckland’s role within a global transformation process, calling forward our unique partnerships and increasing our role in service to the wider Pacific and the world.

PROJECT LEAD: The Kalinago Institute for Global Resilience and Regeneration

Summary

The Kalinago Institute for Global Resilience and Regeneration has a mission of creating a thriving Kalinago Territory as one of the first low carbon / high resilience societies designed to enable its citizens to live and thrive within the carrying capacity of its ecosystems for multiple generations into the future. The Kalinago aspire to constantly protect and regenerate positive ecosystem services from Dominica’s (Waitukubuli’s) natural environment even under the threat of climate change and other broader exponential global changes. The Kalinago Resilience Initiative’s present programs under the Kalinago Institute are focused on eight components: 

Resilience Hubs
Kalinago Resilience Hubs are being built to provide physical climate-resilient centers with multiple functions under normal times and acute emergencies. Resilience Hubs are being developed in each of the eight Kalinago hamlets all linked with each other and a central nexus Hub in Salybia, the administrative center for the Kalinago Territory. 

Climate Smart Housing and Permaculture Gardens
Suitable, affordable and climate-resilient housing is being developed for each Kalinago family with approximately one-acre contiguous permaculture gardens supplemented with multi-acre shared community gardens to further ensure food security and create a vibrant and sustainable circular agricultural economy following permaculture principles. 

Agroforestry and Agriculture
An agroforestry landscape is being designed within the 3,700 acres of the Kalinago Territory to regenerate wild tropical rain forest lands with high levels of biodiversity along with forest and agricultural buffer zones surrounding the built environments within each hamlet. Forest and agricultural lands are being developed to optimize a balanced circular timber and homebuilding economy considering the perpetual regeneration of natural systems with high ecosystem services. The Kalinago agroforestry program will include ecotourism and cultural tourism economic activities that reinforce the re-wilding of the tropical rain forest and local craft industry based upon indigenous cultural principles and value chains. 

Distributed Collectively Intelligent Grid
A scalable, distributed collectively intelligent and multi-modal mesh network infrastructure is being built, including distributed renewable energy systems, Internet services, communications, environmental sensors, alerts and warning systems, smart management system, transportation sharing economy, Kalinago vernacular housing sharing economy (e.g. AirBNB) connected to ecotourism and cultural tourism, as well as digital banking. 

Water Resource Systems
River and ocean resources monitoring and management systems are being developed to provide for livelihoods and excellent sustainable marine protein sources for the Kalinago people in a manner that regenerates and preserves the ecological foundations for multi- generational resilience and sustainability in the transition toward a Blue-Green post-petroleum political economy recognizing the centrality of clean water to healthy life on Earth. 

Health and Wellness 
Historically, with a lifestyle of hard work on mountainous land, drinking clean water from springs, and eating fresh fish and vegetables, a portion of the Kalinago people have been living long and healthy lives with little modern medical intervention. They wish to share their health and wellness knowledge, including their knowledge of medicinal herbs and chemical-free agriculture, while helping more of their own people enjoy the benefits of living long with high-levels of health and well-being. The goal of this program is to raise awareness of what determines health status and happiness within the context of resilience and sustainability with social equity across the entire Kalinago population, and those that are embracing Kalinago values and principles. 

21st Century Kalinago Culture, Learning Systems, & Innovation
The Kalinago people intend to build one of the world’s most resilient and vibrant low carbon, ecologically-regenerative cultures based upon their indigenous roots as the once dominant society in the Caribbean Lesser Antilles. The Kalinago realize that they must now dig deep into their cultural heritage as well as build 21st century learning and innovation traits to thrive in the years and decades ahead despite the challenges of exponential global changes - including but not limited to climate change. This program within the Kalinago Institute seeks not only to benefit the Kalinago within the Territory, but also to create means to help others in Dominica, the Caribbean, and beyond through Kalinago Blue-Green innovations. The goal is to help all to live well within one’s own ecological footprint in a world coming back into a healthy regenerative balance. 

Governance Within a Blue-Green Political Economy 
The Kalinago have throughout their history lived in intimate partnership with their green earth and blue ocean and sky environments. They are seeking to build and share an ecologically regenerative circular economy in balance with the earth, the sky, and the water. They seek to form policies, economic principles, and trade relations that are based in social justice and economic well-being, while maintaining a seven-generation sustainability — living as positive interactive elements of their ecosystems. They are embracing a process to upgrade their constitution and practice a form of governance and Blue-Green economy sufficient to achieve their 21st century resilience and regeneration goals. 

The Kalinago seek to work with all other societies, organizations, and individuals to collaboratively establish climate-resilient and regenerative Kalinago approaches to preserve pristine riverine and ocean water within and adjacent to the Kalinago Territory, Dominica, the Caribbean, and throughout our Blue-Green planet.

PROJECT LEAD: Maya Mountain Research Farm and Toledo Institute for Development and Environment 

Maya Mountain Research Farm (MMRF) is a registered NGO in San Pedro Columbia, Toledo District, Belize. The farm does ongoing work in agroforestry and permaculture. The NGO was founded in 2005, but the farm on which it is located has existed since 1988. MMRF is now expanding its localized success to have an influence on the larger watershed. 

The RGW in Belize’s Toledo District, is the most intact watershed in the country. Originating in the protected areas of the Columbia Forest Reserve in the limestone hills of the Maya Mountains, RGW flows to the Port Honduras Marine Reserve. The Marine Reserve is a biologically important protected area for fish spawning managed by Toledo Institute for Development and Environment (TIDE). While intact, Toledo District is the most impoverished district in Belize, holding 9% of the population of Belize. 90% of Kekchi and Mopan Maya communities are classified as living in poverty and 56% are classified as being “indigent”. 

This area is often referred to as the “forgotten district”, development has not arrived which provides a promising opportunity for sustainability and regeneration. There are no banana, sugar cane, or palm oil plantations in operation. Influenced communities include four upland Maya communities, Crique Jute, San Pedro Columbia, San Miguel, Silver Creek, and two lowland Maya communities, Big Falls and San Marcos. Yemeri Grove and Jacintoville feed into the RGW and Elderidgeville and Forest Home have activities along the river. All of these communities show signs of degradation and downstream sedimentation tied to land use, and are subject to climate change effects such as drought and flooding. Roughly 9,000 people live in these communities, and are comprised of Mopan Maya, Queq’chi Maya, East indian, Kriol and Mestizo people. 

MMRF and TIDE are looking to scale their localized success up to a watershed-level project involving at least 10 key communities. This effort would focus on repairing the riparian zone of the target communities, creating less vulnerable food models using tropical staple trees in multistrata agroforestry systems, regenerating degraded land, reducing runoff and siltation, and establishing a processing centre to allow centralized purchasing from smallholders for export. There is intention to build “Cool Lab”, which is a biochar pyrolyzer that can make a variety of products ranging from water filters, soil amendments, and building materials, using abundant crop residues, such as rice hulls, corn trash, coconut husks and sawdust converted to non-labile carbon, while generating electricity. 

Maya Mountain Research Farm (MMRF) is working with local partner Toledo Institute for Development and Environment (TIDE) and global partner Common Earth to develop a project that is feasible in the RGW and would be replicable across the Commonwealth and CARICOM region. The proposed project will address Sustainable Development Goals 1-15.

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PROJECT LEAD: May East and Gaia Education 

Covering much of the Zambia Central Province, the Miombo woodlands are home to a diverse ecosystem that includes antelopes, elephants, rhinos, giraffes… and bees! Amongst its 8,500 plant species include the Brachystegia, Julbernardia and Isoberlinia trees, which provide an abundant source of nectar for bees. The Miombo woodlands support the livelihoods of 150 million people across the region, including enterprising young people who are harnessing the woodlands and its natural resources to create a sustainable and regenerative future for themselves. 

Some of them are engaged in a three-year youth-focused project, the Zambian Youth for Conservation, Agriculture and Livelihood Action (ZYCALA), funded by The Scottish Government and led by Gaia Education, Young Emerging Farmers Initiative and WWF Zambia. The project is empowering a generation of young farmers, in particular women, with a whole systems ecological design approach in conservation agriculture which includes organic demonstration gardens, poultry and, in particular, beekeeping. 

Wild honey has been collected and consumed across the region since pre-colonial times. Due to cultural and social factors, beekeeping in Zambia has traditionally been a predominantly male occupation - but not in the ZYCALA project, where women are achieving surprising results. Working side-by-side, young women and men are joining efforts and learning the skills needed to monitor and manage the 174 occupied beehives the group has built.

As consumer demand for locally-sourced organic foods – including honey – increases in Zambia, so the ability of ZYCALA members to influence the producers and regenerative food growing practices of their districts has grown over the last two years. And the financial results have been promising. Utilising their recently acquired collective decision-making skills, youth groups are generating income to then buy seeds for the next season or increase their animal stocks. Many are saving for their studies.

There is a dynamic link between sustainable forest management and beekeeping. Although relatively intact, climate change, higher demand for fuelwood, and unsustainable practices of agri-business are starting to impact this unique Zambian ecosystem. The conservation agriculture and beekeeping activities promoted by ZYCALA have been developed as a regenerative strategy to support rural youth through value addition and forest conservation. The project has adopted a ‘beyond-aid’ model of sustainable development. This approach promotes a shift in language and intention from ‘beneficiaries’ to stakeholders and partners. Our ZYCALA partners are now active in the decision-making process, shaping policies and cooperatives informed by their local needs. So, here is a project that will be contributing to Zambia’s current annual production of honey, worth over US$2 million a year and driven by an estimated 30,000 smallholder beekeepers selling 2000 tonnes a year. ZYCALA honey production will be offered in both national and international markets from December 2019.

Zambia, in the heart of southern Africa, has a rich history of conservation and cultural heritage. Chitambo, in particular, nestled in the Miombo woodlands, is the land where the Scottish missionary and explorer David Livingstone passed away in 1873. In fact, the first written records of Zambian bee-hives date back to 1854, when Livingstone described log and bark hives, suspended from branches, used by the Central Province people. 

Beekeeping first became a commercial activity in Zambia when Portuguese traders from Angola came searching for beeswax in the 1890s. Recently, 130 years later, a Portuguese/Angolan honey buyer came to inspect the honey house that is being built to process ZYCALA honey, paving the way for the export to European ethical markets. History has come full circle for the young people of ZYCALA.

The ZYCALA story is indicative of the new ways in which international development work is increasingly conducted. No longer passive recipients of aid, communities instead seek new ways to fund development such as impact investing, crowdfunding, transparent giving, social enterprises and community-led cooperatives. 

The ZYCALA team is also outward looking. The EU, the largest global consumer of honey, has strict food and safety regulations. Accounting for more than 20% of the total global consumption, the EU also buys the unique Miombo honey. The ZYCALA honey house has therefore been built to meet Zambian and EU regulations. 

The project has been showcased in several Central Province agricultural fairs. Through social media, their films have reached out to 300,000 young people, sharing their applied learning on ecosystems regeneration and advocacy campaigns to others so that they too can raise awareness about the need for innovative social and natural systems management.

As well as contributing to the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) – in particular SDG 1, which aims to end poverty and hunger, and SDG 15, which promotes life on land – the project is also empowering young women SDG 5. As one young female ZYCALA member shared: “I have learnt a lot about what it means to be a leader and how we as young people should lead initiatives such as conservation farming and beekeeping to redress generational cycles of poverty and malnutrition and create livelihood opportunities for ourselves.”

Giving young women – and men – the power to shape their own futures might be the most important legacy of ZYCALA.

Text by May East. 

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PROJECT LEAD: Eduard Müller and the University for International Cooperation 

According to the planetary boundaries approach we are at risk of losing the “safe operating space for humanity” – the conditions required for human societies to develop and thrive, based on the biophysical processes that regulate Earth’s systems. According to Global Footprint Network, we now require 1.7 planets to support humanity’s demand on ecosystem services. Four of nine planetary boundaries have been crossed: loss of biosphere integrity, biogeochemical flows, land system change and climate change, putting the future of humanity in danger. There are many factors involved, but regenerative agriculture is a nodal point of healing that has cascading ecological, economic and cultural benefits. This is what regenerative development is about – regeneration through systems change. 

Regenerative development is a site-based holistic approach based on systems thinking and nature-based solutions. In a changing planet, solutions must be local, appropriate for every bioregion and the inseparable local culture.  Regenerating local cultures is a primary path to transformation. The culture is what makes a community unique, strengthens the social network, and leads to pride and self-determination of a place. Regeneration at a land- and seascape level is part of this as so many cultures are deeply tied to their environment. Regeneration requires that we abandon chemicals and move to regenerative agriculture therefore fixing carbon soil and biomass. Holistic cattle grazing is an impactful technique to restore ecosystems and many of our communities are developing these ancient practicers. Spirituality is an utmost component of regeneration because humans will only truly change if we work on expanding our consciousness and mindfulness at individual and collective levels. 

These diversified aspects required for regeneration can be understood as “layers” over a specific territory. Our focus cannot be the individual “layer” but the nested interactions and relationships between them. 

The Regenerate Costa Rica initiative began by bringing national and international regenerative thinkers and organizations together to advance a conceptual framework for this work. Our partners included Capital Institute, Savory Institute, Natural Capitalism Solutions, Economy for the Common Good, Gaia Education and others. We set out to identify and map all the regenerative efforts being brought forward throughout the country. Some of these included permaculture training centers, regenerative farming families, farmer associations, farmer markets, and institutions working with agriculture and cattle, among others. We now work with the most relevant producer organizations and cooperatives that represent over 90% of beef and dairy producers. Our aim is to co-develop capacities for the country-wide shift to regeneration. 

The Regenerate Costa Rica effort is not limited to agriculture. We are also identifying efforts in conservation, including communitarian watershed management, biological corridors, protected areas, and regeneration of forests. We have also identified partners that have expertise in technology and communications. For example, we are developing local currency for the Water and Peace Biosphere Reserve, one of the seven territories we have prioritized in Costa Rica. We understand that a better future with full inclusion of all citizens will be based on local development, allowing for truly regenerative economies to thrive. A local currency will enable producers, consumers and other service providers to develop businesses that go beyond the current economic system. We have also established agreements with high tech companies in Israel and elsewhere as a means to engage youth in transformation. Regenerate Costa Rica is advancing a youth-based working group to develop a peace and wellbeing strategy for Costa Rica. This group is exploring various political strategies that can bring fresh air into a method of policy making that no longer serves us. 

We are currently consolidating a network of learning sites, providing technical and knowledge where required. We are running programs where local and international students, farmers and regenerative experts come and co-create solutions at micro and macro levels. This national network will be linked to the Regenerative Communities Network that was established by Capital Institute together with many collaborators. 

Being a country-wide initiative with global projection, we have now expanded our partners to include government institutions, cooperatives, universities, tourism chambers, hotels, and even indigenous communities. We have launched our first global joint online program on regenerative entrepreneurship with 45 world-renowned experts from five continents.  

The best way forward is to create the world we want. Through regenerative development, we can coalesce the solutions capable of restoring peace and wellbeing to the planet. Using cultural-ecological techniques such as regenerative agriculture, holistic cattle grazing, re-naturalization of land and regeneration of biodiversity and ecosystem services, we can pull enormous amounts of carbon from the sky and bury it beneath our feet. This holistic process has proven to uplift the potential of places and the communities that inhabit them. 

PROJECT LEAD: Bring PIPA Home 

Summary

Kiribati is already confronting the adverse impact and threat of rapid climate change, an unintended consequence of global industrialization whose benefits to the developed world have for the most part not been enjoyed by the Kiribati people. The current drive to develop a comprehensive domain spatial plan, turns the primary threat of climate change in Kiribati—rising sea levels—into an opportunity for regenerative transformation. Kiribati will be the world’s first nation to create a regenerative-three dimensional domain spatial planning starting from the Phoenix Islands Protected Area (PIPA) with possible gradual extension to Kiribati’s entire marine area. Generally, ocean resources are divided across ministries and agencies resulting in cumbersome overlaps and management inefficiencies. Kiribati’s integrated model will serve as an example for the larger region and demonstrate the impact of holistic strategic planning.

Bring PIPA Home

In 2010, Kiribati created the Phoenix Islands Protected Area (PIPA), one of the largest protected areas in the world on land or sea. While seen as a major environmental accomplishment abroad, many of the inhabitants of Kiribati are not directly involved in its management or cultural story partly because they live mainly on the Gilbert and Line Island archipelagos. For this reason, PIPA Trust, the government-supported in-country NGO tasked with leading conservation and ocean management in Kiribati, created the initiative “Bring PIPA Home” (BPH) to help enable the values of biodiversity and sustainable ecosystem management to become more meaningful and visible for the Kiribati public. BPH initiative should cover the ‘secondary activity’ and other development needs of Kiribati in accordance with the ‘BPH Framework or Guideline’ that will be developed pursuant to the PIPA Conservation Trust Act 2009 (as amended) and in line with Kiribati development priorities and policies. The actual design and scope of the plan will be based on the outcome of joint consultations and collaboration with the relevant authorities and local communities to ensure the project is well aligned with Kiribati priorities and policies.

Status Update

Developed by BPH, the domain spatial plan will be designed in close collaboration with the relevant government authorities and local communities of Kiribati including the Council of Old Men and the Council of Old Women. The strategy of the new spatial plan is, using the best science available, to build out a map that embodies the culture and larger ambitions of the people of Kiribati while securing a resilient economic future for its inhabitants. Importantly, this map will take into account the vast three-dimensional view from the surface waters to the deep abyssal plains and seamounts, some 4-5 km down.

Over time, Kiribati has generated many of the core elements of this spatial plan. The nation is now in a position to assemble these elements into a comprehensive vision for the future of its ocean territory starting from PIPA. The nation is geographically divided into three island groups, each with a unique potential and purpose. The plan will elaborate uses based on these differences.  

The Gilbert Islands are where most people live and where industrial tuna fishing is strongest; the Phoenix Island is a successful experiment in pelagic conservation through the implementation of PIPA, which has been proved by scientific research as spawning ground for ‘big-eye’, skipjack and yellowfin tuna and potential ‘Jewel in the Crown’ of Kiribati tourism industry targeting low volume high yield eco-tourism; and the Line Islands are destined to be a tourism center and near-shore coral sanctuary for heat-resistant “super corals”. Research in PIPA had found that its corals, uniquely influenced by periodic natural El Nino oscillations, have evolved to better withstand the oncoming onslaught of warming from climate change. These unique heat-resistant corals not only within PIPA but throughout Kiribati, if protected and regularly monitored, could ensure the security and longevity of coral communities around the world. 

Scaling BPH Values in the Pacific 

The Kiribati team will comprise of PIPA Trust’s representatives on the one hand, and representatives from the Kiribati Government led by Hon. Vice President and accompanied by officials from the Ministry of Fisheries, Marine Resources Development, and the Ministry of Environment, Lands and Agricultural Development. The Kiribati prototype will share strategies for holistic marine management starting from PIPA and including information on the participatory development process of Bring PIPA Home and the importance of building local capability and capacity. 

Large opportunities lie in restoring the Port Elizabeth catchment area. The area in South Africa covers 500,000 hectares and consists of the Baviaans, Kouga, and Krom catchments. These catchments supply 70% of the water to the one million inhabitants living in the city of Port Elizabeth, and the areas surrounding the Kouga and Krom are crucial for food production for South Africa.

However, the catchments are suffering from the effects of decades of overgrazing and unsustainable land management, leading to decreased water absorption by the land. Along with the changing climate and invasive plants and trees, this overgrazing and unsustainable land management has accelerated the impact of droughts and floods, both in the catchments and downstream in Port Elizabeth. This has led to loss of carbon capture, biodiversity, and soil fertility – all of which reduce agricultural potential. It puts farmers, the existing industry of Port Elizabeth, and the employment of local people at risk.

Commonland’s local implementing partners Grounded and Living Lands have been working together with the farmers, local business and government partners and identified a number of opportunities to contribute to the restoration of the Baviaans, Kouga and Krom catchments, with a business case. A business was established with the farmers to transition from traditional goat farming to more sustainable and profitable farming practices, a partnership was created to identify business opportunities for improved water security through ecosystem restoration on a large scale, and a large corporate partner has committed to support the active restoration of degraded hillsides through planting trees. This builds on the areas that have already been restored in collaboration with the South African government over the past years.

The partners worked with Commonland’s holistic restoration approach that combines and connects 3 different landscape zones (natural, combined, and economic) delivering 4 returns (return of inspiration, return of social capital, return of natural capital, return of financial capital).

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Seychelles is an archipelago nation of 115 islands in the Western Indian Ocean about 1,000 miles off the coast of East Africa and north of Madagascar. Its “Blue Economy” is based on tuna and tourism, which, along with its low-lying island geography, makes its people and economy particularly vulnerable to the threats of climate change.

Island countries, such as Seychelles, and coastal nations the world over are bracing for threats already underway—more severe storms and rising sea levels are battering coastal areas that attract important tourist dollars to their economies; warmer ocean temperatures are diminishing fish stocks; and increasing ocean acidity from rising carbon levels are destroying coral reefs that not only buffer the force of storms but also provide vital nurseries for numerous marine species.

The Leonardo DiCaprio Foundation led private-sector investments to support the Nature Conservancy in the world’s first debt swap aimed at ocean conservation and climate resiliency. The deal increases protection for the Seychelles’ waters from less than 1% to more than 30% and supports the creation of the second largest Marine Protected Area in the West Indian Ocean, an area equal to 400,000 square kilometers. Half of this area will be designated as “no-take” zones to protect fish breeding sites and scientifically identified priority biodiversity areas.

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.

Additionally, to balance the growing demand for development with the need to preserve the Seychelles’ marine environment, the project will develop a comprehensive, nationwide marine management plan. The debt swap will also generate funds for local priority marine conservation and climate adaptation activities and create a permanent endowment to sustain these activities over the long-term.

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