LEGISLATION PASSED in the United States to extend the debt-for-nature swap to cover coral reef protection, provides an annual US$10 million to developing countries to bring back some viability to the world's declining coral reefs.
Passed in October, the legislation is designed to protect the world's dwindling coral reef ecosystems by reducing the debt of selected developing countries to the United States. The beneficiary nations are expected to invest the equivalent local currency of the debt forgiven in a facility to preserve, restore, and maintain coral reefs.
Jamaica was named among the countries to benefit.
The bill provides funding for the US administration to pursue debt swaps, buy-backs, and reduction and restructuring with developing nations in return for concrete efforts to protect coral reefs and sensitive coastal marine environments, said Democrat Tom Lantos of California said during House consideration.
Coral reefs are among the earth's most biologically rich eco-systems, providing harbour for some 4,000 species of fish hence their importance to the fishing industry and 800 species of reef-building corals.
In Jamaica, coral cover has declined significantly. The degree of the problem is reflected in the almost total erosion of live coral in the resort town of Negril, an area whose reefs were a substantial part of the tourism industry and its diving sub-sector, as well as the fishing industry.
Live cover, says Carl Hansen of the Negril Coral Reef Preservation Society, is between 5 and 12 per cent at different points along the coastline. This estimate was derived in 2000 in the latest worldwide reef survey done annually since 1997 by the Reef Check Foundation.
The Americans, in agreeing to the debt swap, cited a United Nations study that identified 58 per cent of reefs globally as being potentially threatened by coastal developments, over-fishing, marine pollution, runoff from inland deforestation and farming, and other human activities.
The bill will benefit low income and middle income developing countries that have established investment reforms and have some coral reef or other marine resource worth protecting.
Countries to benefit include Jamaica, Belize, Dominican Republic, the Phillipines and Thailand, among others.
