 Hi, everyone. My name is Haley Sweetland Edwards. I'm an editor at Time. Thank you all so much for being here. The goal of this session, as many of you know, is to discuss and really envision a new ocean economy that's both sustainable and just. And we'll talk about how multi-stakeholder partnerships can and must be involved in helping transition and diversify small island developing states economies. Two years ago, I was on a panel similar to this. And of course now the context is completely different with COVID that has destroyed roughly a third of the tourism economy and GDP for a lot of these states have dropped by roughly 7%. So we come at this session with a sense of timeliness and urgency. Thank you all very much for being here. A couple notes about the session. It will unfold in two parts. The first part is a roughly 30 minute session to broad discussion of the issues. It will be live streamed. The second is a more detailed discussion for invited foreign members and partners. If you're staying on for that second part. Please just stay on the zoom call and we'll, we'll get you over to your breakout groups. The second note is please reach out to each other using top link and virtual Congress center. This is for networking and discussing and just following up on some interesting points. This is the world economic forum after all it's the the best place to network in the world. So everyone please take advantage of that. I would like to, I guess, jumpstart this by introducing ambassador. Peter Thompson, who is a United Nations secretary general, special envoy for the ocean, and he will give us a few minutes of opening remarks to set the stage here. Thank you very much. And Prime Minister and ladies and gentlemen greetings one and all. On behalf of all the speakers I want to extend best wishes to you and your loved ones that you may enjoy a healthy and happy time in the year ahead. So many of course these are not happy times. We are facing the deepest global recession since the Great Depression and to quote the president of the United Nations General Assembly from his addressed member states last week. The pandemic has created a socio economic crisis. It's hijacked our development trajectory trajectory and it's hit vulnerable countries, especially hard. So when it comes to vulnerable countries, small island developing states, so called SIDS are in a class of their own. The majority of SIDS rely heavily on tourism for their foreign exchange earnings employment and related local industries. And the COVID-19 pandemic has caught them in a cruel twist of circumstance. Many SIDS, thanks to their geographical isolation and strictly applied quarantine restrictions have yet to be ravaged by the coronavirus. But the pandemic has put their all important tourism industries on hold. With the light of vaccinations now glimmering at the end of the pandemic's long tunnel. In this devastation we're asking ourselves what policies and practices and partnerships are needed to build back a more just and resilient ocean economy. There is just a growing acceptance I have to say that we must not return to old habits of waste pollution and over exploitation of finite planetary resources. Well, what does the blue-green recovery road entail for SIDS? Given their natural beauty and their special qualities, SIDS will no doubt continue to have vibrant tourist industries. The challenge will be how to make them less dependent on food and service imports, how to integrate them more productively into local industries, how to bring them into better harmony with the fragile island ecosystems, in short, how to truly develop sustainable tourism industry. The second response must surely be diversification of the economies of SIDS, with the view to making them less vulnerable to external shocks. Here is where the development of the sustainable blue economy holds so much promise for SIDS. And may I say the time is right for action, with capital increasingly moving in that direction. There's so much for us to discuss, so I look forward now to the ideas and solutions that will be forthcoming from this session. Thank you, Ambassador. I would like to now introduce our three panelists, beginning with Prime Minister Alan Chastonet, the Prime Minister of St. Lucia, of course. Prime Minister. Hailey, great to be here and thank you very much for the opportunity. And I just want to latch on to one thing that you said from the onset, which is this sense of urgency. And so I'm really attending today's forum with that very, very much in mind. Wonderful. Thank you. And we look forward to hearing from your unique perspective. Also, everyone participating in this, please feel free to drop questions or into the chat box after each of the panelists introduces themselves. We will turn to those questions and in the audience, the virtual audience. Our next panelist is Gloria Fuchsia-Tinaman, the Vice Chairman and Chief Sustainable Officer of Iberia Star Group in Spain. Thank you for being here, Gloria. Thank you. It's a pleasure to be here. Despite the extremely difficult circumstances, tourism is facing the most challenging times of its history. With international arrivals dropping close to more than 70% last year, going back to levels of 30 years ago, although more out of the workforce and a tremendous job description of destruction. Due to this panorama, you can hear about the argument from people saying, now is not the time to think about the oceans or now is not the time to invest in circularity or to reduce the carbon footprint of the hotels. But now more than ever, it's the time to discover the potential of the tourism sector to innovate, to reinvent itself for a resilient and responsible tourism model, making sure it will be able to overcome future adversities and crises like this one. From Iberia StarSide, we continue working with clear strategic objectives using science, the transversal implication of the organization, and we also want to be measured so we can align to the advances of the sector and serve as a reference and inspiration when possible. Our momentum hasn't stopped throughout the pandemic. Our science team has continued with our research in our core lab in the DR, for example, while they're helping us quantify how nature-based blue carbon offsets can be used to achieve carbon neutrality in our operations by 2030. I would just mention two brief examples of the work we've done in the recent months throughout the pandemic as well. We launched the People with Wealth two years ago on the business case for MPAs and their interaction with tourism, specifically on how the industry could play a role in its protection. Of all of our properties in the Caribbean, only two of our beachfronts have active MPAs, so it was clear for us that we wanted to collaborate and support on establishing new sanctuaries or protected areas. The first case of our active involvement is in Jamaica. Our hotel is located approximately to a fishing community that has been there for decades and noted a decline in their catch. We're working with a local group called Artebeza to see if we can co-establish vision sanctuary by learning lessons from a sanctuary that was just down the road of our hotel, and that after being led by fishermen for 10 years, so an increase of 200-fold in fish biomass on the exterior of the protected area. We want to see if we can recreate that model in Montego Bay while simultaneously kick-starting reef restoration in the protection area or sanctuary itself to speed up reef covering and provide alternative opportunities for the fishermen in the interim. In Aruba, the focus is on education, and this is our second example. The island is a fantastic educational program, but you can't find only ocean-focused education or saltwater aquarium with corals, and that's what we wanted to complement. You can't take care of marine ecosystems without the involvement and the pride of the local community, and many times the complexity lies in that there is little access of that community to life below water. Again, that's what we wanted to support in order to do so, we're constructing the first ocean education center housed in our new hotel in Aruba. At the center, a new curriculum base on Aruba's marine ecosystems will be taught. The center is dedicated to 22,000 kids of elementary school, so that we can enrich the marine curiosity until middle school. I could share many more examples for our advances in Spain and the Dominican Republic or Mexico, but being conscious of time, I will conclude. We have seen how the industry has been capable to make sweeping changes in the face of the pandemic for health reasons and the wellbeing of the clients. The potential has been incredible, so let's just use that potential of the industry to make a profitable and disposable tourism model that is also an ally of the oceans and climate. And I think that the time really is now. Thank you. Thank you so much, Vice Chairman. I'd now like to introduce Karen Fangs, the Managing Director, Global Head of Sustainable Finance at Bank of America. Karen. Thank you everybody. I'm very, very pleased to be here and Prime Minister and Ambassador. Thank you for being, giving us your remarks and being a part of this great panel. And Haley, thank you for moderating. So as Haley said, I run Global Sustainable Finance at Bank of America. And that really means that we're putting our allies of business and global balance sheet and resources and capabilities, capabilities together to amplify capital deployment for environmental transition and social inclusive development. What that means is that when we talk about SIDS, this really is for us to very much zoom in on the intersection between environmental preservation and decarbonization, as well as the social inclusive development part, whether it's education or healthcare or many other critical issues that have been really kind of brought to the forefront given the COVID crisis. So as Haley said at the beginning, the GDP of these nations fell by 7%. So as 70 million people total for these 58 islands and at just over 1.2% global GDP, you know, the potential for these economies to rebound fast. If we do the right thing between the public and private sector constituents to actually help these economy, not just rebound, but potentially grow at a faster pace than before by really kind of bring in the necessary capital deployment for the major industries, whether it's sustainable tourism, sustainable fishing, as well as blue carbon, which Gloria talked about, all of these different things can bring amplified revenues, if it's done responsibly, if it's done sustainably. And we have a role to play in private sector as a financial institution. We already started the journey in terms of how do we scale renewable generation in these islands? How do we work with the World Economic Forum, and the His Royal Highness, Prince of Wales, the Singapore Markets Initiative to really kind of bring additional capital and additional innovative tools such as the blue carbon, which really is just starting to show its potential now to really kind of bring necessary revenue stream to these, to these nations. So Haley, I don't know if you wanted to open up for Q&A, but I'll pause my comment for now. That would be sort of an opening thought from me. Thank you so much, Karen. That's great. I would love to open up to Q&A. First, I'd just like to hear from Prime Minister Chastanet on his perspective and what he'd like to discuss today. Thank you very much, Haley. So the quantum that we find ourselves or the quantity to find ourselves in right now is the desire to preserve our blue economy. And let's understand that in my neck of the woods, in what we call the organization of eastern Caribbean states, that size of marine reserve that we have is the same size as Germany, but only with a population of 1.4 million people. So that's a huge undertaking, even under great circumstances. We've seen and we had an earlier discussion with regards to the financial or the debt cycle that SIDS have found themselves in. And so the exogenous shocks of the financial crisis of climate change itself and the cost of resilience. And now the impact of the pandemic is taking oxygen away from our ability to fund many of these programs ourselves. So we're now find ourselves leading on the idea of debt swaps for policy exchange, I call it, in terms of a preservation of our blue ocean. And we're also now trying to really push hard on some of the economic returns from the blue economy because it's there and has certainly not been contributing based on its size and its potential to the GDPs of our country. So we're seeing things like CMOS, the conversion of segasm into fertilizer, as well as now trying to expand our fisheries opportunity. So to do these things all in a conservative way in which we're following our SDG goals and doing this in a sustainable way. The fourth one really is the funding of maintaining water quality levels. So we're combating global warming and the impact on our coral reefs and then the continuing growth of our land-based development and the fallout from that. We're actually putting greater forms of resilience into our land development to protect our reefs and on the water quality we have. So these are very difficult things to juggle. And I'm certainly looking forward and I continue working with the World Economic Forum on this country financing map, which would include the development of this incredible resource that we know that we have there. The last one I really want to put on the table is what we call the blue tourism economy. And so the idea of the cruise industry and other opportunities of growing tourism using this incredible resource that we have. We think that we have again still great potential and making sure that that potential is not only translating into returns for the businesses, but also in helping to fund the sustainability of this resource. Thank you so much, Prime Minister. Let's just jump right into discussion. We don't have that much time here. One of the people in the chat mentioned basically echoing what a lot of you said this is a time of extraordinary challenge. But challenges can be times of great opportunity. So Karen, you talked about this a little bit in your comments. This moment is maybe a moment that we can seize upon this and amplify the capital that we see funneled to SIDS. Can you talk a little bit about particularly this economic moment and why it might be unexpectedly optimistic? I am very optimistic because I feel that ESG was popular and it was a good topic for people to talk about oftentimes to feel good about themselves maybe a decade ago. Then it became sort of important, especially in the corporate sector five years ago, but now it's a must and it's a way of the future today because if you go to any Fortune 500 companies, earnings or investor call now, this is not a side topic. This is the main topic. How are you dealing with your stakeholders, not just your shareholders, which means your clients or employees or communities? What are the societal impact you are generating in addition to your bottom line profit? What are you doing in terms of advancing U.S. sustainable development goals? All these things are now becoming much more part of the corporate culture, which I think is very important constituent in addition to the government and multilateral MDBs and agencies because you need the private sector that's hiring people and really kind of driving change from a organic bottoms up perspective to come in play and the culture change and the COVID in terms of the awakening it has caused around the globe really everywhere, not just the private sector, has really, I think set the world into a different direction. Obviously the U.S. is celebrating a new administration in terms of focus on climate and I personally very much like this intersection that the Biden administration is focusing on which is environmental justice. That's the intersection between the E and the S and I think it's particularly applicable to the SIDS economy that we're talking about here. So I'm optimistic because I think the culture has changed. I think the narrative has changed. I think the focus has changed. And this is not a trend. This is really just the way of the future. It's not going to be popular for 2021 because people are awakening from 2020, but I think this is the way of the future. And how we think about our financing plan, our client advisory plan, even carbon, right, which I think blue carbon is got to be a big part of the revenue generation for these island nations to preserve their coastal lines to preserve their ocean resources to actually generate jobs and generate GDP rebound and recovery that we're talking about because conservatively between removal credits and reduction credits by protecting this coastal by lens and generating blue carbon credits to sell to governments as well as corporations that have declared carbon neutrality and net zero, which is a big, big push for the web as well. I think that the demand on carbon offsets, conservatively speaking, is in the tens of gigatons of offsets. Right now globally we're offering at about 200 million tons of offsets a year, voluntary carbon offsets. I think the blue carbon credits can add conservatively around 700 million metric tons a year. That brings an additional almost $15 billion revenue for these nations that have massive ocean resources. So I'm optimistic that the capital and the desire and the action steps are going to be here this year and beyond. Thank you, Karen. There's so much there to unpack. I think one of the points that I've heard in a lot of the discussions around this outside of this panel is where the rubber meets the road. We often talk a lot about sort of broad goals and broad funneling of SGG capital and things like that. But when we talk about these island nations, we're often talking about extraction industry and tourism. So how do we move? How do we return to tourism in a post COVID world in a way that is more sustainable and more forward looking and inclusive? I want to actually direct that answer or that to Gloria, who spoke a little bit about some of the examples of where the rubber is meeting the road on that. Yes, certainly. And despite the challenging times, it shouldn't be an exclusive vision. We always like to call it the quest towards a more responsible tourism model. And it shouldn't be exclusive. In many ways, it gives you also a lot of advantages. In our case right now, because we're working towards our strategic goals for 2030, like for example, becoming waste free, becoming more sustainable in an aspect that we want to be carbon neutral by 2030. We've also, we ordered internally a lot of our processes. We've known a lot more organization. So we're able to be prepared to bounce back better and to offer better options through destinations. And now talking about destinations, we also like to take them into account. Anytime we do any kind of project, we want to be inclusive as well. And I'll just give one last example. When we're doing our carbon offsetting programs, for example, we know there's a lot that will come from an operational systems that we're reducing our emissions by 2030, at least by 35% by the way we consume energy and another high percentage by just purchasing renewable energy in all our hotels. But when we're offsetting, we're thinking about the destinations in the communities. So 75% of the compensation we will practically have to do by 2030 will be done in the destinations where we operate. We will empower the communities to support us in doing that. We will protect the nature and we will use nature-based solutions to make them rise. And again, just to fight towards that more responsible tourism model. Prime Minister, you also mentioned the blue tourism economy. And I'm wondering, again, where the Robert meets the road there, what does that actually look like in St. Lucia right now? Well, you have the situation, for instance, the carbon tax that's being proposed. And the carbon tax comes out of the understanding now that emissions is no longer a free good. There actually is a cost to emissions. And I think that right now is the time where we have to now start understanding that the maintenance and the strengthening and the replenishing of our blue economy, there's a cost. And so therefore included in the usage of it, whatever it's going to be, has to start contributing to that development. The countries by themselves, which are given this mammoth task of managing this huge area with extremely limited resources and that those limited resources are now being undermined by debt to GDP targets and per capita GDP levels in terms of access to funding. And certainly now these exogenous shocks of which the things are outside of our control, but we have to now apply resources to it. That is causing us a problem. We're not even able to fund properly basic SDG goals, far less the maintenance of our blue economy. So whoever's using the facilities and benefits from the facilities, whatever monetization efforts are being put in, a portion of that has to be included to figure out how we're going to continue to pay for the maintenance of this incredible natural resource that we have. Absolutely. Notive justice there. We only have a few more minutes. These things go so quickly. I want to go through each of you. Karen Gloria, Prime Minister, very quickly. We have people in this session who are not necessarily totally fluent in all the jargon of, you know, blue tourism and blue carbon and things like that. So each of you, if you had one, if you just can take one minute and say what you wish, what you, what you see as the, as a very, it's the most promising perhaps or something with an enormous amount of potential that you'd like to that you wish the general public knew more about. Let's start with, let's start with you Karen. I hope that a regional cooperation, because you look at, it's a really largely divided into three different areas, right? The Caribbean and the Pacific area and the island, and the Atlantic area. So when you think about regional cooperation, having the different island nations, you know, under the leadership of the Prime Minister, who's very vocal and I think it's a great spokesman for Caribbean and kind of putting himself on the country road, you know, a financing roadmap with the Weff. We've been working on a bunch of projects. If the regional cooperation is there, we can have a more unified regulatory framework, a very unified request for proposal for renewable generation or sustainable fisheries or sustainable tourism type of financing. All of a sudden, we don't just need the St. Lucia government to put these debt, the Prime Minister articulated this point, right? It's not just sovereign debt that can finance these good causes and SDG goals anymore. I think that the regional cooperation and the unified regulatory framework and a very simplified RFP process to invite more foreign direct investment and foreign capital to come into the nation to address the blue economy, which in my, you know, very simple mind is the blue tourism, the fisheries as well as the blue carbon. These are the three components that we can scale, that we can potentially make it more bankable and make it more, you know, essentially a non on balance sheet debt for the government. And I think that will be a win-win-win for the world. And I'm just very much focused on that. I'm looking forward to that. Thank you so much, Karen. Gloria, I'm sorry to rush you, but as quickly as possible, please. No worries. I think one of the things that for us is most relevant when we're striving towards that responsible model and thinking about blue carbon solutions or any kind of solutions that have to do with sustainability is the collective action. So we remember, for example, of the sustainability task force of the World Travel and Tourism Council, but there's so much that we can do individually as a private company. So what we would make is a call for as much collective action as possible to achieve those results and that more responsible tourism model every time. Absolutely. Thank you. And let's end with you, Prime Minister. Thank you very much. Thank you. So, you know, a big one really is debt swaps that we've been talking about. So the idea that governments would dedicate policy space, i.e., making sure that we maintain a very strict preservation to marine sites. And in exchange, a third party who values justice, environmental justice, can buy that debt and repay it directly to who we have with. So it relieves the country of some of its debt obligations, but in exchange adopts the recurrent expenditure of maintaining a preservation area. Persons who are currently using it, so cruise ships, yachties, divers, that part of their package would include monies that would be allocated directly to the preservation of these areas and to the research. So, for instance, with the cruise industry of $1.50 goes off towards helping maintain sewage and landfill sites. So that's a direct thing that would reduce the amount of effluent that would be going into the ocean. And then the last one really is to be looking at it on a collective basis. So, for San Lucia to be looking at its marine space in isolation would be difficult, but all of a sudden if we're doing it as the Caribbean, and if in fact the Asian and Indian Ocean SIDS are also working collaboratively together, then we can bring more, more to the table. And therefore we can monetize what we're offering to a greater accounting becomes substantially easier. Thank you so much, Prime Minister, and a huge thanks to the rest of our speakers, our panelists, Ambassador Thompson. As one of our commentators just said, Robert House, our house is on fire, quoting Greta, these are urgent issues and we look forward to discussing them in the future.