Blue bonds: A market solution to the climate crisis?

The Indicator from Planet Money

NPR

Business

4.7 • 9.2K Ratings

🗓️ 15 November 2022

⏱️ 10 minutes

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Summary

Low- and middle-income countries are facing the worst consequences of the climate crisis, and rising global interest rates are making it harder to repay their debts. What if there was a way to solve both problems at once?For sponsor-free episodes of The Indicator from Planet Money, subscribe to Planet Money+ via Apple Podcasts or at plus.npr.org.

Transcript

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0:00.0	NPR.
0:07.0	Carlyle Bay is a natural harbor on the west coast of Barbados with calm waters and soft
0:17.8	sandy beaches.
0:19.4	It's where Sherry Constantine learned to scuba dive by exploring the Bay's six shipwrecks.
0:25.2	Part of my dive in experience was actually to go on those different ricks and to see the
0:29.0	turtles and the fish and the sponges and the lobsas, etc. on those ricks.
0:33.2	So a very fun place.
0:34.8	Sherry is the director of the Eastern Caribbean program for the Nature Conservancy, which is
0:39.0	an environmental nonprofit.
0:40.9	She's seen firsthand how climate change has eroded coastlines and bleached coral reefs.
0:47.5	This is when warmer temperatures cause corals to expel the algae that live there and that
0:52.4	turns the corals a ghostly white colour.
0:55.6	As a marine biologist, it hurts my heart because I'm like, okay, wow, these species are
0:59.9	so critical, they're so vital to who we are as a people, to our nations, our economies.
1:05.6	And so it's sad to see when we have bleached corals on a reef.
1:09.6	In September, Barbados committed $50 million toward ocean conservation.
1:14.7	Sherry and the Nature Conservancy helped the country get the money, but not due grants
1:19.1	or donations.
1:20.1	Instead, they helped Barbados refinance its government debt with something called a blue
1:25.8	bond.
1:26.8	This is the indicator from Planet Money.
1:28.6	I'm Whelan Wong.
	...

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