Several environmental organizations have worked for three years on the proposal that was made official by the Government at COP26.
The Expansion of the Galapagos Marine Reserve, announced at COP26 by President Guillermo Lasso, would have a financial architecture based on the repurchase of Ecuadorian debt bonds by three large international entities, which would be exchanged for blue bonds. The operation would be for at least $ 1.1 billion. In this way, it would be the largest debt swap operation in Ecuador.
This was confirmed Roque Sevilla, president of Grupo Futuro, who is one of the proponents of the project, which was born as a citizen initiative and environmental organizations and that had been working on it for three years. Sevilla recalled that he joined the work that the San Francisco University had already been doing, with Alex Hearn and Susana Cárdenas at the helm, as he, along with Yolanda Kakabatze, were appointed in the Lenín Moreno government to advise on the issue of protection against threats from the Chinese fleet.
The project has the endorsement of the research he did Alex Hearn and his team of biologists, who put transmitters to certain fish, such as whale sharks, hammerhead sharks, stingrays, green turtles, among other marine species. This study was able to determine that these species they travel a marine mountain range that is between the island of Cocos (Costa Rica) and the north of Galapagos. Therefore, it is necessary to make this extension of the Reserve for the protection of these animals.
Additionally, it was established an international team that worked on the financing formula. This has already been presented to Minister Simón Cueva and his undersecretaries. In this way, it confirms that the largest debt swap in history can be made.
The thing is The Pew Foundation, the US Development Corporation and the Dutch Development Bank will participate in this financing. They will buy $ 1.1 billion of sovereign debt and trade it for blue bonds. These new bonds have a longer term and lower rates than sovereign bonds. The Government must continue with the payments, but the resources go directly to the protection of the reserve of the islands. Thus, the financial structure would yield some $ 14 million annually for protection to infinity, ensures Seville.
President Guillermo Lasso had mentioned on Monday at his press conference in Glasgow, where COP26 is taking place, that the country could carry out a debt swap for purposes that all the benefits are located in a trust in which the sole beneficiary is the Ministry of the Environment, Water and Ecological Transition, in order to “To have resources in perpetuity with a single objective: to preserve these reserves.”
He emphasized that these resources will also make it possible to attack basic infrastructure problems on the three main islands of the archipelago, such as drinking water and sewerage. Likewise, President Lasso reported that through the participation of the Naval Force, protection mechanisms will be deployed for the new area.
Since the Reserve’s protection initiative was born, it has had the support of the More Galapagos Group, directed by Eliécer Cruz and another group of scientists; Norman Wray, as president of the Government council; and the Galapagos Island Front, who supported the initiative. He has also supported the process Danna Bertarelli, an Italian millionaire who invests for the protection of the seas in the world. Roque Seville He recalled that the project was presented to the Government of Lenín Moreno, but there was no reception. On the other hand, in the new government, the minister Gustavo Manrique he was very enthusiastic, to the point that it has already been presented as an official proposal at the environmental summit.
Meanwhile, Jorge Luis Hidalgo, who is at COP26 as energy director of the British Ecuadorian Chamber and as ambassador of the University of Edinburgh, He explained that this Friday the San Francisco University, the British Ecuadorian Chamber and the University of Edinburgh are going to sign an agreement to develop research on the energies used in Galapagos. He explained that the idea is to support and complement the Ecuadorian Government’s proposal on the Galapagos Islands. He explained that Charles Darwin, who studied at the University of Edinburgh, focused on the evolution of species, and that now the proposal is to focus on energy evolution and climate change.
It is not the first time that Ecuador has carried out a debt-for-nature swap. In 1987, Fundación Natura achieved the first debt-for-nature swap, for an amount of $ 10 million. The money went to the protection of the natural areas of Ecuador.
Between 2005 and 2020, the debt swap with Spain for $ 52 million (for financial returns) of public investment for Ecuador for human talent, scientific strengthening, basic education in the first stage, reconstruction and equipping of hospitals that had been affected in the 2016 earthquake and in millennium schools. The Debt Swap Program began in March 2005. Between 2007 and 2011, 22 projects were executed, and between 2012 and 2016, investments were made in millennium educational units, among other projects.
In 2007, the now former president Rafael Correa also announced an environmental proposal that proposed leaving the oil on ITT land. However, although $ 1.6 billion had already been raised, the proposal did not come to fruition, as Correa rejected its conditions. (I)
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