Blue Bonds: An Audacious Plan to Save the World’s Ocean

Is the Blue Bonds Model Effective?

The idea might be audacious, but we’ve seen that it can work. Cabo Pulmo National Park in Mexico's Baja Peninsula demonstrates what can be achieved when we give ocean environments an opportunity to heal: 10 years after the park’s establishment as a marine protected area; it has reversed the toll of decades of overfishing and increased fish stocks by over 400%.

The Blue Bonds debt conversion model has a proven track record of producing conservation outcomes beginning with a pilot in the Republic of Seychelles. In 2016, Seychelles worked with TNC to refinance part of its national debt, generating up to $430,000 per year for marine conservation and climate change adaptation. As of 2020, the Seychelles government has protected 86 million acres of ocean—exceeding their goal to protect 30% of Seychelles’ Exclusive Economic Zone and Territorial Sea by 2020. In 2021, we expanded the initiative with a successful Blue Bonds transaction in Belize, and in 2022, we announced a project in Barbados. And the success of this approach has led TNC  to begin looking at how this work can be expanded to also protect freshwater and terrestrial systems in line with global protection commitments.

Scaling the Opportunity

Blue Bonds benefit people and nature: the national governments get significant financial savings to invest in natural resources that support their economies; local communities, in turn, see their livelihoods and cultural heritage protected; and the donors who provided the original seed funding realize incredible leverage on their philanthropic investment—a multiplier of up to 40 times.

TNC is working with island and coastal countries in the Caribbean, Africa, Latin America, the Pacific Islands and the West Indian Ocean to improve marine area management and create new marine protected areas.

The governments’ new marine protections will provide improved management and conservation for 4 million square kilometers of ocean—a 15% increase in the amount of ocean that currently exists. The oceans goal includes approximately half in high protection status to protect marine biodiversity and ecosystem function, and half in biodiversity and sustainable use zones to ensure biodiversity and sustainable livelihoods. 

These territories are home to 13% of the world’s coral reefs, and customized marine protection plans would ensure the reefs are protected and restored. Those healthy reefs in turn provide habitat for fish, sea turtles and other marine species; they can also “seed” surrounding reefs by spreading coral larvae through ocean currents. And protecting these areas will ultimately benefit the more than 2.4 billion people living in coastal regions through more sustainable economies and stronger resilience to climate change.

A Pivotal Moment for Ocean Conservation

A 15% increase in conserved ocean already represents an ambitious plan—but the potential scale is even greater. 

The size of this opportunity is matched by the urgency of our current moment; however, we’re at a pivotal moment where governments’ ocean conservation goals and other interventions can have a significant impact on the state of the world’s fisheries, ocean biodiversity and coastal resilience. But the window of opportunity before ocean degradation becomes irreversible—especially in coastal areas—is growing ever smaller.