Abstract
The adoption of sovereign blue bonds by the Republic of Seychelles, hereafter referred to as Seychelles, focuses on resource sustainability and illustrates options for island countries to use their ocean resources for years into the future. The fishing industry is one of the main pillars of Seychelles’ economy and is of crucial importance for domestic food- and employment-security. In order to promote long-term ecological sustainability and economic viability of domestic fisheries, accurate and long-term baseline information is required. Such baseline data were derived here with a reconstruction of the Seychelles’ domestic fisheries catches and fishing effort within its Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) from 1950–2017, coupled with resulting Catch Per Unit Effort data (CPUE). The total reconstructed domestic catch was approximately 1.5 times larger than the baseline as reported by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) on behalf of Seychelles from 1950–2017 after adjustment for fully domestic catches within the EEZ. Domestic catches (i.e., excluding the large-scale industrial pelagic catches) increased by over 500% throughout the time period, growing from 1,900 t·year-1 in the 1950s to around 11,200 t· in 2017. The major targeted taxa were jacks (Carangidae), tuna-like fishes (Scombridae) and snappers (Lutjanidae). Total fishing effort in the form of fishing capacity grew from 21,500 kWdays in 1950 to over 3.4 million kWdays in 2017. The resultant artisanal CPUE displayed a declining trend over time, suggesting a potential decline in relative abundance of fish populations within the Seychelles EEZ or targeted fishing areas.
Highlights
The novel blue bonds initiative in the Seychelles has emerged as a threefold strategy to encourage and support long-term sustainability, economic growth and social equity (WorldBank, 2018b; Schutter and Hicks, 2019)
Total domestic marine fisheries catch for 1950–2017 was derived for the Seychelles following the reconstruction approach outlined in Zeller et al (2016). This catch data reconstruction was built upon the official catch statistics as reported by the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations on behalf of the Seychelles, by complementing these official records with the best available time series estimates of all unreported fisheries components using secondary data from the peerreviewed and gray literature
Since 1995, the unreported proportion fluctuated with an average of 38% until 2016, when the adjusted reported FAO baseline data suddenly declined by 45%, resulting in an unreported proportion of 63% for 2017
Summary
The novel blue bonds initiative in the Seychelles has emerged as a threefold strategy to encourage and support long-term sustainability, economic growth and social equity (WorldBank, 2018b; Schutter and Hicks, 2019). In 2018, the Seychelles issued the first sovereign blue bond in history to finance marine resource sustainability and advance the ocean economy, i.e., ocean-based economic activities (WorldBank, 2018a; Cisneros-Montemayor et al, 2019). The development of a blue economy is important to small island countries, as their societies and economies often face special challenges, such as limited terrestrial resources and economic opportunities, small domestic markets, a narrow range of domestic products and high dependence on imported goods (Briguglio, 1995; Jennings et al, 1996b; Rustomjee, 2016). The socio-economic and environmental strategies from the blue bonds could arguably contribute to narrowing inequality gaps in order to advance a fairer and more inclusive society. Inequality gaps could be addressed through government incentives such as increases in the minimum wage or asset building for fishing families, e.g., home ownership (Powell, 2014)
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