SYDNEY (Reuters) – The Pacific Island nation of Niue wants to raise $18 million by selling sponsorship of its ocean, a novel funding initiative that comes as the region struggles to mitigate the impact of climate change with economies battered by the COVID-19 pandemic.
Niue’s premier, Dalton Tagelagi, will launch the Ocean Conservation Commitments (OCC) programme in New York on Tuesday, by pledging the government will buy up to 1,700 units, or one for each resident of the island nation.
Each $148 unit represents the cost of protecting a square kilometre of Niue’s ocean territory for 20 years. There are 127,000 units available for sponsorship, representing the size of its marine protected area, the government said.
“As a small island nation, Niue’s vast marine territory holds immense ecological, cultural, and economic value to our people. Its ecosystem services also provide regional and global environmental benefits,” Tagelagi said in a statement.
Several non-government organisations and private donors have already committed to buying OCCs, including cryptocurrency company founder Chris Larsen and his wife, Lyna Lam, he said.
A regional meeting of Pacific Islands foreign ministers on Friday discussed the economic impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, which stopped the international tourism most nations rely on and worsened isolation.
Several Pacific Island leaders have raised concerns over how hard it is for small island states to access concessional financing, which is based on national income, in speeches at the United Nations in New York.
“COVID-19 and climate change have impaired and even reversed our hard-fought development gains,” Palau President Surangel Whipps Jr said on Monday.
Samoa Prime Minister Fiame Naomi Mataafa criticised the “archaic approach to finance” and said small Pacific Island nations “continually find ourselves in a revolving door between debt and reccurring debt” due to economic, environmental and social shocks caused by external factors.
The island states which have combined exclusive economic zones of 40 million square kilometres.
Niue, a self-governing state in free association with New Zealand, has marine territory that is 1,200 times larger than its land mass.
The OCC proceeds will be held in a charitable trust used to pay for conservation and sustainable development of Niue’s exclusive economic zone, Talagi said.
“Niue will now have the ability to implement monitoring and evaluation activities to assess reef health and fish stocks and strengthen coastal management plans for the island’s 14 villages,” he said.
(Reporting by Kirsty Needham. Editing by Gerry Doyle)
