In 2021 Belize's Blue Bonds were finalized as a debt restructuring agreement to support marine conservation and reduce the country's debt burden. We committed to protecting and designating 30% of our territorial waters as Marine Protected Areas by 2026. And with that we began to develop our Marine Spatial Planning Project to sustainably manage our marine resources. This week The Nature Conservancy along with other conservation agencies are partaking in a knowledge exchange with representatives from Barbados' Coastal Zone Management unit, who are also new to the concept of reducing their country's sovereign debt with conservation bonds, in their case "Nature Bonds." We spoke with a representative from their team this morning about the exchange.

Dr Leo Brewster, Barbados Director, Coastal Zone Management Unit
"There is very close similarities in the approach that was taken I think the biggest thing obviously relates to how the debt itself was cofinanced and the approach taken in our instance we differ from Belize that the majority of the debt was taken up by the inter American development bank and then the TNC took up the other portion of the significant debt Together with credit Swiss and the first Caribbean bank also took up. The minor shares that remained, and therefore the approach is still a lot more rounded in its approach and application after that."

"Our Actual Debt swap was signed in September 2022 and at that time we were now getting into the process so we officially started ours in January 2023 so we are very young in this process. We have already started to approach where we have started off public consultations to get feedback from the public as well as what their major concerns are. We have been having key informant interviews where we have been dealing with different sectors along the way to try and capture information as well. We have also been working very assiduously to try and make the public aware about the Marine spatial planning process and the approaches that we are taking so we had a song created. We had jingles we've used the jingles for advertising more or less spread the word and get a reach we have done things like road banners and stuff to heighten up our awareness and I think it is important that the barbarian public gets a real feel for how big our ocean space is right now as it has always been defined is about 432 times larger than the size of Barbados which is 183,800 and something square kilometers about the size of Florida so it is a huge space to understand what is out there."

There's a lot Brewster and his 6 member team can learn from Belize's Marine Spatial Planning. The Director for Belize's Blue Bond and Finance Permanence Unit says that there are numerous approaches to finding what works best.

Beverly Wade, Director, Blue Bond and Finance Permanence Unit
"So Belize is quite advanced with its Marine Spatial Plan we launched the Marine special plan back in 2023 and we are expected to deliver on it in 2026 at least to deliver the actual plan it has several components in that are associated with it and so far what we have been delivering on are the conservation areas the biodiversity protection zones but the plan is more than that the plan is meant to be like a print for our blue space and so it's a plan that looks at how do you approach Belize's blue space in general how do we approach it from a development perspective and also from a people perspective and also from a conservation perspective."

Not only does the exchange seek to deepen the understanding of key steps within the marine spatial planning process but it also highlights the challenges and issues encountered in the field of conservation. For Belize one of those threats to our marine resources is Transboundary fishing

Julie Robinson, Belize Program Director, TNC
"So Transboundary fishing has and will continue to be a challenge that we face so one of the things that we are doing is we are working with the government of Belize and this actually being facilitated by the Blue Bonds and Finance permanence unit to look at a national strategy not just do fisheries enforcement but also conservation initiatives across the country. We have a lot of incredible NGOs called managers who are managing multiple parts and multiple protected areas. We have the fisheries department we have the Coast Guard so what we are working on now is really bringing everybody together. How do we improve on collaborating, improve our efficiencies and work with each other so that we have additional resources to be able to deal with things like illegal activities such as fishing and transboundary fishing that is taking place in our waters."