Presentation short abstract

This study examines how the Bahamas and Barbados pioneer “blue economy” finance through tools like debt-for-nature swaps. It analyzes how NGOs, banks, and investors use debt to link conservation with finance, recasting oceans as assets while raising issues of sovereignty, and financial dependence.

Presentation long abstract

Among Small Island Developing States (SIDS), the Bahamas and Barbados have emerged as key testing grounds for innovations in ocean management and its financing under the banner of the ‘blue economy’. This research interrogates how new forms of blue finance are negotiated and advanced, and the actors shaping this agenda, with particular attention to the adoption of debt-based financing instruments with a unique focus on oceans, marketed as a new way to resource environmental governance - such as debt-for-nature swaps (DNS). Drawing on fieldwork and interviews, this research explores how debt restructuring has become a key channel for integrating conservation and environmental goals with financial tools, under frameworks promoted by NGO actors such as The Nature Conservancy (TNC), multilateral development banks, and private impact investors. Moreover, the study tries to trace how these actors advance forms of ‘blue’ development that hinge on financial risk redistribution rather than structural transformation. Situating “blue bonds” and DNS within the broader architecture of blended finance and climate finance, the study analyses how nature, and specifically ocean spaces and resources, are recast as investable assets. It interrogates the promises of climate adaptation and debt sustainability attached to these deals, while highlighting concerns around ownership, sovereignty, additionality, and the limited participation of local communities. These instruments seem to reinforce existing hierarchies of financial subordination and extend the logics of financialisation into environmental governance, raising critical questions about hierarchies of ownership and subordination and about the politics and limits of market-led solutions.