Barbados Bond Captures Award

Barbados has won the global, highly-commended Sustainability-linked Bond of the Year Award for its Blue Bond for Ocean Conservation at home.

The Environmental Finance Bond Awards for 2023 were recently announced by Environmental-Finance.com, an online news and analysis service established in 1999 to report on sustainable investment, green finance and the people and companies active in environmental markets.

The online service said the awards celebrate the leading green, social, sustainability and sustainability-linked bond and loan deals in 2022 and recognise market innovations.

Last September, Barbados announced that it had completed a debt-for-nature conversion backed by a US$150 million guarantee from the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) and The Nature Conservancy (TNC), which allows the country to reduce its costs of borrowing and use any savings to finance a marine conservation programme from the Barbados Environmental Sustainability Fund (BESF).

The Barbados debt-for-nature conversion underpinning the $73 million Barbados marine conservation sustainability-linked bond, is expected to save the island $50 million over the next 15 years in the Credit Suisse deal.

One Environmental Finance Bond Awards judge described the bond as a “a showcase deal for the country – very timely, objective and nice collaboration with a multilateral institution”. Another said it displayed “measurable impact, unlike the vast majority of sustainability-linked bonds”.

The deal, which has been guaranteed by the Nature Conservancy (TNC) and the Inter-American Development Bank (IADB), saw Barbados receive a loan of $150 million to buy back some of its sovereign debt.

Prime Minister Mia Mottley previously said the move was Barbados taking action in the climate fight.

She said “With the help of the Inter-American Development  Bank and the Nature Conservancy, this Blue Loan project will allow Barbados to secure and protect our marine environment and also help us expand our Blue Economy, both of which are of critical importance to our people and our very way of life. Through this innovative debt conversion project, our Government will commit to protecting and effectively managing up to 30 per cent of Barbados waters. In short, this is a game-changer.”

There were 58 different Environmental Finance Award categories that included Green Project Bond of the Year for Clean Energy Connect won by Japan and Social Bond of the Year: Financial Institution which was jointly won by the development banks of the German federal states of Brandenburg, Hamburg and Rhineland-Palatinate. emmanueljoseph@barbadostoday.bb