The IORA organizes a new workshop on Blue forest finance: financing the protection and restoration of blue forests and meadows. In fact, already on April 11th, IORA organized a webinar on this very topic.
The Indian Ocean contains a disproportionate amount of the world’s blue carbon ecosystems, and IORA Member States are well-positioned to be global leaders. However, the pressures associated with developments that erode the natural capital that blue carbon ecosystems provide have degraded these ecosystems, and some of the highest rates of habitat loss or degradation occur in Indian Ocean Member States.
In February 2020 the IORA Indian Ocean Blue Carbon Hub hosted its inaugural ‘think tank’ meeting in Mauritius, focused on blue carbon finance. At the meeting, delegates acknowledged that an ability to access finance was a critical impediment to scaling up protection and restoration of blue carbon ecosystems. In response, they agreed that it would be useful to develop a whitepaper. The whitepaper was subsequently written by a global team of experts with deep domain knowledge and submitted for consideration by Member States at the IORA Council of Senior Officers meeting in November 2021.
For this workshop, the proposed will be 2 hours on 12 May 2022, at a time zone appropriate to all Member States. The format will comprise speakers from the IORA Blue Carbon Hub and World Bank, as well as representatives from Member States to provide updates about relevant initiatives. One hour will be set aside for discussion. The workshop will be held online. Further details, including registration instructions, will be provided. IORA Member States and Development Partners may nominate multiple representatives.
As an outcome of feedback from Member States, we propose to host a short workshop on blue carbon finance and themes arising from the white paper. The workshop will be held on a virtual platform (Zoom meeting format) on this LINK
Dialogue Partners may nominate and register their participants no later than 10 May 2022. Nominated participants are requested to register by filling in this FORM