Countries are finding smart ways to fund nature protection - debt swaps let them trade expensive loans for cheaper ones and use saved money for green projects. These deals help fix both money and nature problems at once
The newest deal comes from Barbados‚ which is gonna use almost $300-mil debt swap to build better water systems (something they really need in todays climate). The Inter-American Development Bank helped with this one: its gonna put $165-mil into food and water projects
The Bahamas just did something cool last month - they got $120-mil for ocean stuff through a $300-mil swap. Theyʼre using it to fix up mangroves that got hit by storms; theyve got like 6.8-mil hectares of ocean to look after
Here are some other recent swaps:
- El Salvador got $352-mil in Oct-24 to save its biggest river
- Ecuador did a huge $1.6-bil swap for the Galapagos last year
- Gabon made a $500-mil blue bond deal to protect sea turtles
- Barbados earlier did a $150-mil swap for ocean protection
- Belize spent $533-mil to save coral reefs back in 21
- Seychelles started this trend with a $21.6-mil deal in 16
The money from these swaps goes right into fixing things - like El Salvador using JP Morgans help to protect Rio Lempa (their main water source). Some deals are pretty creative; like Gabon promising to stop bad fishing and protect 30% of its waters
Most of these deals work the same way: big banks or groups like The Nature Conservancy help countries buy back their expensive debt. Then they make new cheaper loans - the difference goes to saving forests oceans or whatever needs help in that place