Barbados has signed a landmark agreement with Ireland’s Marine Institute, marking a significant step towards enhancing its marine spatial planning efforts.
The partnership, which includes a specialised seabed mapping exercise set to begin in August, underscores the government’s commitment to environmental sustainability and the “blue economy,” crucial for the island’s economic survival.
The event brought together officials from the Ministry of Environment, National Beautification, and the Blue and Green Economy, the Coastal Zone Management Unit (CZMU), and representatives from the Marine Institute of Ireland.
Minister in the Ministry of Finance Ryan Straughn, who represented the government at the signing, underscored the project’s importance. He pointed to the Public Finance Management Act, outlined in Parliament during the Budget debate, as part of the government’s broader commitment to environmental sustainability.
He said: “We committed that we would pledge resources to environmental and marine sustainability efforts as primacy with respect to how Barbados can deal with its Roofs to Reefs Programme with the clear understanding of what happens onshore has a significant impact in terms of what happens offshore.”
Straughn also highlighted the government’s plan to set up the Barbados Ocean and Coastal Authority, which will be responsible for structuring and funding conservation efforts.
“I announce that we will be creating a Barbados Ocean and Coastal Authority whose work will be specifically to ensure that the conservation efforts can be properly structured and funded, such that outside of what we are committing to under the debt swap in this particular programme,” he said.
To support these efforts, the government has pledged to allocate up to 50 per cent of unclaimed bank account assets to the Barbados Ocean and Coastal Authority to accelerate conservation work.
Director of the CZMU, Dr Leo Brewster, underscored the importance of the agreement for marine research and conservation, given the vast marine space surrounding Barbados.
“The work that’s going to be done is going to be a catalyst for ongoing activities for the marine spatial planning process,” he remarked. “We are actually going into the phase where we’re going to be looking to establish and develop some draft scenarios as to what our marine space could look like. Our marine space stretches from the shoreline out 200 nautical miles to the exclusive economic zone boundary. It’s really far, and as we go further offshore, it gets very deep.”
Dr Brewster explained the necessity of engaging the Marine Institute of Ireland for this initiative.
“That’s the reason why we’ve had to hire the Marine Institute, because they are professionals in this sort of work, especially for deep sea surveying, and the importance of trying to identify areas of high conservation importance, areas of scientific significance, because we don’t know what’s on the sea floor.”
Another key aspect of the agreement is the training of local teams from the CZMU. Aodhán Fitzgerald, Research Vessel Operations Manager at the Marine Institute, highlighted the collaboration: “We had some team members from the CZMU down, learning hands-on training late last year on one of our vessels. And we really look forward as well to engaging with the team here from the CZMU, to increase the levels of experience and expertise, and to have a long-term sort of legacy as well from this work in terms of knowledge and ability to ocean data.”
Straughn stressed the importance of the “blue economy” for Barbados, noting the need for continued investment in marine sustainability.
“Coastal Zone [Management Unit] has been monitoring very actively the state of our beaches on the West Coast, on the South Coast, on the East Coast,” he said. “They’ve raised concerns with us to be able to alert us to what is possible down the road with respect to the increased rate of erosion, and therefore we have committed to setting up this body with the express purpose of doing the appropriate interventions with government, with private investors along the beaches, with all of our Barbados, as well as our visitors, in order to ensure that we have enough resources to be able to mount a credible defence with respect to the management of our coastal infrastructure.
“And that is going to be an important intervention which helps with the work that the Irish Marine Institute will be helping us with respect to the scientific research.”
Recognising the economic importance of marine sustainability, the Minister in the Ministry of Finance outlined the players who would be directly affected by coastal activities: “Whether you’re in fisheries, whether you’re in the business of hospitality, whether you’re a taxi driver taking people around the country, everything is connected to our coastline. Barbados survives predominantly because of our coastline.”
Elaborating further on the balance between land and sea management, he said: “The balance between what we do onshore and what we do offshore is going to be important moving forward with respect to us being able to ensure that the quality of lives that we live in Barbados can continue.”
(LG)
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