Excellencies, distinguished guests, partners, colleagues and friends.
Let me begin by thanking Catholic Relief Services, and especially the professionals in that organisation working for The Bahamas, for the invitation to join you today and for bringing us together for this important discussion. I also recognise the scientists, technical experts, financial and implementation partners, government representatives and prospective international partners gathered here. Your expertise, cooperation and shared commitment are essential as we advance The Bahamas Blue Carbon Programme from national ambition to practical implementation.
Nature has a rare sense of kindness. I want to tell you how we learned that.
In 2011, The Bahamas made a decision that few countries had made before us. We banned commercial shark fishing across every mile of our waters. We declared our entire ocean a sanctuary. We did it because we understood, long before the science caught up, that a sea without its apex predators is a sea beginning to die. Some said it was sentimental. Some said it would cost us. We did it anyway.
We had no idea what those sharks would one day give back.
Years later, scientists fitted tiger sharks in Bahamian waters with cameras and tracking devices. They wanted to understand where the sharks went. The sharks led them across the Bahama Banks, mile after mile, over meadows of seagrass no one had ever fully mapped. The animals we had protected became our cartographers. They revealed one of the largest seagrass ecosystems ever recorded, hidden beneath Bahamian waters all along.
Think about that. We showed the sharks kindness. The sharks showed us our own treasure.
That is the spirit in which I come before you today. Not as a supplicant. As a steward who has been given a gift and intends to honour it.
I was born a son of Cat Island. Before I could read a book, I could read the water. My people lived by the sea. It was our road and our table. It carried the mail and it carried the sick. We did not own much, but we had the sea, and the sea had us. That is what it means to be Bahamian. We are not a people who live beside the ocean. We are a people of the ocean. The sea is not our border. It is our country.
And so you must understand what it did to us when the sea turned. I stood in Abaco after Dorian. I stood where homes had been. I have carried the faces I saw there into every room I have entered since, and I carry them into this one.
For years I have come to gatherings like this and told that story. I told it because it is true. The Bahamas contributes only a minuscule share of global greenhouse-gas emissions, yet our communities, our coastlines, our fisheries, our tourism economy, our public finances and our critical infrastructure face serious and expensive climate pressures every single year. We did not cause this crisis. We are paying for it in lives, in homes and in debt.
But each time I told it, the world gave us a role. The victim. The warning. The small sinking island in the last paragraph of someone else’s report.
Today, with the full voice of my country behind me, I tell you that role is finished. We will no longer be victims in our own story.
Because vulnerability was never the whole truth about The Bahamas. Beneath the same waters that rise against us lies one of the great living treasures of this earth. Those seagrass meadows store and sequester carbon in the seabed. They sustain biodiversity. They feed the conch and the crawfish, and with them our fisheries and our food security. They protect our coasts. They keep our water clean, and they keep our waters the colour that astronauts remark upon from space. They support the wider health of the ocean itself. For thousands of years, that seagrass has been doing quiet work on behalf of all humanity. Every nation in this room has breathed a little easier because of it. No one ever counted it. No one ever said thank you.
We are counting it now.
Today I present to the world The Bahamas Blue Carbon Programme. This is the moment a small nation stands up. This is the moment we stop being measured only by what we might lose and begin to be measured by what we give.
Through blue carbon, we connect environmental protection, climate finance, national resilience, sustainable development and responsible stewardship into a single national purpose. Our task is to understand this resource properly, protect it from degradation, and direct investment toward interventions that produce measurable environmental and national benefits. In this, The Bahamas is the tip of the spear.
We prepared for this day with discipline. In my first term, my government recognised the strategic importance of our marine assets, initiated the scientific and institutional work, and established a first of its kind legislative foundation for carbon markets and Article 6 cooperation. We enacted the Carbon Credit Trading Act, 2022 and the Climate Change and Carbon Market Initiatives Act, 2022. Together, those laws allow The Bahamas to govern its own carbon assets, to participate in international carbon markets, to protect our sovereign marine interests, and to cooperate under Article 6 of the Paris Agreement. In May of this year, the Bahamian people asked us to carry on. We are carrying on, from commitment to implementation and from foundational work to measurable outcomes.
Hear me on sovereignty. What lies beneath Bahamian waters belongs to the Bahamian people, and it will remain under sovereign and regulated national control. For us, Article 6 is not simply the sale of a carbon unit. It is the opportunity to sit at the table as a sovereign partner within a high-integrity international framework. Cooperation involving our natural assets will rest on credible governance, sound accounting and safeguards against double counting, with the benefits serving the long-term interests of The Bahamas and the Bahamian people. No one will need to impose integrity on us. We demand it of ourselves.
That is why we are building our own science. International research lit the way, and we are grateful. But a nation that intends to write its own story must hold its own pen. Bahamian decisions must be guided by credible, country-specific evidence. Never before has The Bahamas undertaken science at this sovereign scale: mapping our seagrass with satellite data and LiDAR, verifying it in the field through ground-truthing, collecting and analysing samples, and maintaining continuing monitoring. This work is establishing a national scientific baseline, improving our national emissions and removals data, and building the foundation for ongoing measurement, reporting and verification.
And this science is not only about measuring carbon. It will tell us where degradation is happening, what is causing it, and which interventions will deliver the strongest benefits.
We have backed that science with our own money. My Government has committed twenty-five million US dollars to the first phase of this national effort. That investment funds the scientific baseline, the mapping, the fieldwork, the carbon inventory and the systems required for credible implementation. We committed real resources because we believe in the opportunity and we accept the responsibility that comes with it. Scientists, ocean and climate specialists, data professionals, economists, legal advisers, conservation practitioners and financial experts are working toward one national purpose. Their findings will be presented when the work is complete, reviewed and technically validated. Not a day sooner. I will not trade our credibility for a headline.
But I will tell you this, and I choose my words with care. The Bahamas is now strengthening NDC 3.0A, our updated Nationally Determined Contribution under the Paris Agreement. For the first time, we are incorporating our seagrass biome into the national assessment of greenhouse-gas emissions and removals. The mapping, field verification, ground-truthing and sampling now under way are being integrated with an enhanced national greenhouse-gas inventory. Subject to completion, Government review and technical validation, this work will confirm that The Bahamas removes more greenhouse gases than it emits within the scope of that inventory.
Let that settle in this room. The country you were told is drowning may be helping the world to breathe.
When confirmed, it will show that The Bahamas is not only responding to climate risk. We are making a measurable contribution to the global solution. No one will ever again speak of The Bahamas only as a casualty. We will be what we have always been. A giver. A guardian. A nation carrying more than its share.
Science and legislation must translate into results, and they will. Our Programme of Activities will address the principal drivers of seagrass and marine degradation. Potential areas include conservation and restoration, sustainable fisheries, maritime zoning and physical protection, improved marine management, water-quality infrastructure, pollution control, coastal resilience and community-based conservation. We have commissioned an econometric model to compare proposed interventions and direct capital toward the activities capable of producing the strongest environmental and development outcomes. Ongoing measurement, reporting and verification will demonstrate results and guide the Programme as it develops. Every result will be measured. Every result will be reported. This is conservation as national development.
And this work is moving us decisively toward the next stage of our Article 6 journey: the authorisation and future transfer of internationally transferred mitigation outcomes, or ITMOs. The laws are in place. The Government has committed substantial resources. Our scientists and technical partners are completing the evidence, the accounting and the systems required to bring high-integrity Bahamian mitigation outcomes to the international community. We expect Bahamian ITMOs to become available once the applicable scientific, technical and sovereign authorisation requirements have been satisfied.
We will not move ahead of the science, and we will not compromise environmental or regulatory integrity. Each mitigation outcome must be credibly measured, appropriately verified, transparently accounted for and protected against double counting. We are pursuing this work with urgency and discipline so that future Bahamian ITMOs earn the confidence of partner governments, international institutions and the Bahamian people. But we are no longer at the beginning. The pathway is established and the work is advancing. If the remaining requirements are completed, The Bahamas will be positioned to offer high-integrity mitigation outcomes grounded in sovereign authority, credible science and measurable environmental action.
Now let me speak to my own people, because they are listening at home.
This belongs to you. It belongs to the fisherman who rises before dawn and deserves to find the grounds as rich as his grandfather left them. It belongs to the grandmother who watches the tide line creep toward her porch. It belongs to the child in a classroom in Nassau, in Freeport, in Exuma, in Inagua, who will learn that the grass beneath our sea is a gift we give to the whole world. I want that child to become the scientist who measures it, the manager who protects it, the leader who defends it. She should never have to leave home to do the most important work of her generation. That is why this Programme will build a new generation of Bahamian professionals in marine science, environmental studies, data science and related disciplines, capable of leading the long-term stewardship of these resources.
This is not a government project. This is a national movement. It is the movement of a people who have decided that our children will inherit pride and not pity.
Friends in this room, let me be precise about today. We are not announcing issued carbon credits or mitigation outcomes for transfer. We are presenting a country that has enacted the laws, committed substantial resources, commenced unprecedented national-scale science and chosen to lead.
The Programme will remain anchored in Bahamian sovereignty, transparent implementation, credible scientific measurement, environmental integrity and tangible benefits for our people. The outcomes we seek are practical: healthier marine ecosystems, stronger fisheries, improved water quality, greater climate resilience, stronger Bahamian scientific capacity and measurable contributions to global climate action.
To prospective partner governments: begin substantive Article 6 discussions with us now. To investors and development partners: bring patient capital, scientific and technical cooperation, capacity-building, purchase and offtake engagement, and long-term investment in Programme activities. To our sister islands across the Caribbean and the Pacific: what we build, we build for you too. When this succeeds, it will demonstrate how intentional leadership, enabling legislation, country-owned science and international partnership deliver credible climate and development outcomes, and it will offer a practical model that any ocean state can adapt. We are excited, and we will help.
For a generation, the world has looked at small islands and seen the first to fall. Look again. We may be the first to lead.
Fifteen years ago, we protected the sharks. The sharks led us to our seagrass. And our seagrass has led us here, to this room, to this moment, to a future we intend to write ourselves.
The Bahamas is no longer a victim in its own story. We are its authors. And today, before the world, we begin a new chapter.
Thank you, and may God bless the Commonwealth of The Bahamas.