By NEIL HARTNELL

Tribune Business Editor

nhartnell@tribunemedia.net

The Bahamas could generate up to $185m in revenues from the sale of carbon credits to finance the restoration of 11,000 hectares of mangroves destroyed by Hurricane Dorian, a marine scientist said yesterday.

Dr Craig Dahlgren, the Perry Institute of Marine Science’s executive director, told the Abaco Business Outlook conference that based on a value of $16,800 per hectare the minimum that The Bahamas can earn would be $151m.

Arguing that this nation needed to explore more creative financing mechanisms to restore Dorian-related environmental devastation, he disclosed that some 4,000 mangrove hectares in Abaco and Grand Bahama had been wiped out while another 5,000-7,000 had been severely impacted.

Describing these as “conservative estimates”, Dr Dahlgren said carbon credits and other innovative approaches were the only way to “scale up” the restoration of ecosystems such as mangroves and coral reefs and secure the private sector’s involvement.

With coral reefs valued anywhere between $250,000 per square kilometre up to $1.3m-$1.5m per square kilometre, he explained that the value of these ecosystems to The Bahamas could stretch to between $1.5bn to $6.5bn based on the country’s total natural resource of 5,000 square kilometres.

Working with the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) and Global Foundation for Coral Reefs, Dr Dahlgren said funding had been secured to help train and enlist the support of dive operators, tour operators and other tourism industry players in coral reef restoration. This even extended to tourists paying towards coral reef restoration by “selling experiences” to them.

The initiative, he added, has been projected to increase the sales of participating Bahamian tourism operators by $16m or 11 percent, with some 164 jobs created alongside the empowerment of women entrepreneurs.

Meanwhile, John Pinder, the south and central Abaco MP, told the Outlook conference that “the ceiling is sky high” for the island’s future post-Dorian and COVID once issues such as the present housing shortage are overcome.

“In Abaco, the economy is booming with more Bahamian entrepreneurs and new businesses popping up,” the parliamentary secretary in the Ministry of Tourism, Investments and Aviation said. “New Business Licences are at an all-time high. Yes, that’s right, an all-time high.

“The number of new business allocations in this short year is unprecedented. As you go through the streets of every settlement, there are new businesses, new entrepreneurs popping up everywhere building their dreams from scratch. These are positive signs and encouraging signs. Abaco is growing and rebuilding, and on the path to being bigger and better than it was before.”

Pointing to an aviation rebound, Mr Pinder said Abaco was due to receive a 50-strong private plane “fly in” this December. “Today we can see that Abaco’s future is bright,” he added. “A lot is in the works, and with continues resilience and strength Abaco is an economic powerhouse and on the path to doubling GDP in the coming years.

“Our tourism numbers has begun bouncing back close to pre-Dorian numbers, and investment is at an all-time high; demand with hundreds of millions of dollars of Abaco investment demand to start or which has already started.”