A Deputy Director and Advisor at the SDG Unit at the Office of the President, Dr. Felix Addo-Yobo, has revealed that as part of the ongoing Sustainable Ocean Plan project, a financing structure will be included to invite the requisite capital needed to support Ghana’s Blue Economy development.
The Sustainable Ocean Plan (SOP) serves as a unifying umbrella for national ocean-related governance, which lays the foundation for implementing the Ocean Panel’s Transformations agenda.
This piece of information will draw a huge sigh of relief from many stakeholders in Ghana’s maritime industry who identify the lack of financing as the major stumbling block to the development of the sector.
Dr. Addo-Yobo was speaking on the latest edition of the Eye on Port panel programme on Metro TV on the subject ‘Relying on a Science-based Ocean Management Approach for Ghana’.
He said ahead of the SOP, an Ocean Governance Study (OGS) was conducted to come up with a strategic analysis of the national frameworks supporting ocean governance, including an overview of the nation’s legal and institutional frameworks for oceans to identify and prioritise capacity gaps in the development and implementation of existing frameworks. The Government of Ghana did this with the Division for Ocean Affairs and Law of the Sea of the United Nations Office of Legal Affairs (DOALOS) and the Norwegian Agency for Development Cooperation (Norad).
According to him, key findings from the OGS include unresolved maritime border issues, illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing, and maritime security.
In line with these findings, six pillars were outlined for necessary action, namely ocean health, ocean wealth, ocean equity, ocean knowledge, maritime security and ocean finance.
He said reviewing the reports submitted by the various agencies and institutions, one common challenge was the lack of finance to support corrective and developmental projects. This, according to him, led government to consider including a financing framework to mobilise resources to support the country’s ocean action.
Dr. Addo-Yobo indicated that government’s obligations render it very difficult to allot resources to the implementation of the various interventions under the SOP, but believes that “if we are able to structure opportunities, then there is potential to attract private funding. Critical to the Sustainable Ocean Plan financing framework would be consideration for where we will get money, who the investors we need are, and how we can package the various needs within the needs as investment opportunities for private funding”.
As part of the SOP arrangement, the national development expert revealed, will be a monitoring and evaluation framework to consistently track progress of implementation with the help of scientific research.
These actions are directly tied to the National Blue Economy Summit organised a few weeks ago, aimed at mobilising transformative ocean action to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals.
