Climate Change Impact and Structural Reforms in Kiribati
KIRIBATI
(Foley et al., 2010). A proper MSP can help to increase the stability, transparency, and predictability
of the investment climate and reduce the riskiness of investment in ocean-based businesses (the
so-called blue economy). In 2021, over 45 countries worldwide are either implementing or
approving marine spatial plans-and dozens more are laying the foundation-following guidance set
out by the Unesco-European Commision's MSPglobal (2021) initiative. However, as MSPs have
broader objectives besides fishery management, which creates more complexity in delivering a blue
economy. Key challenges include ecosystem threats (e.g., pollution, marine litter, climate change,
habitat destruction, invasive species, etc.), governance issues (lack of resources, lack of sectoral or
transboundary collaboration, and lack of governance integration) and sectoral issues
(fisheries-overexploitation and illegal, unreported, and unregulated (IUU) fishing, seabed
mining/spatial use conflicts, and the environmental impacts of tourism, maritime transport and
offshore renewable energy). In addition, this may open a broader debate about diversification and
reducing the weight of fisheries in the economy to make it more sustainable, while replacing low
value-added subsectors in fisheries with high value-added ones (see the Selected Issues Paper on
Unlocking Growth Potential in Kiribati: Taking Stock of Structural Reforms).
D. The PIPA - Kiribati's Marine Protected Area
17. In 2015, the PIPA was declared a marine protected area. PIPA was officially created in
2008 and fully banned commercial fishing in 2015. The Phoenix Islands area spans more than
400,000 square kilometers (about the size of California). It is one of the world's largest marine
protected areas and serves as a spawning ground for tuna and other fish (Hernandez et al., 2019), a
refuge for migratory birds and for rare coral reef formations. At the time, Kiribati was praised ³ for its
marine conservation efforts as a low-income developing country and served as a role model to
address problems of overfishing and mitigate climate change, by contributing to the 30-by-30 goal
(achieving 30 percent of oceans as marine-protected area by 2030) and as one of 41 signatories to
the "Because the Ocean Initiative" in 2015.
18. In November 2021, the Kiribati Cabinet decided to re-open the PIPA to commercial
fishing. As a result, the site may also have to be de-registered from UNESCO's World Heritage List.
The official reason behind the move is to generate more revenues from tuna fishing in the marine
reserve. Doing so would allow Kiribati to more fully utilize its natural resources while remaining
committed to conservation, albeit in a very different form.
19. The authorities estimated that the closure of PIPA resulted in significant foregone
fishing revenues. Fishing revenues account for about 70 percent of total fiscal revenues in Kiribati
in 2021, averaging about AUD185 million during 2015-2020 (about 70 percent of GDP). As the PIPA
accounts for about 11 percent of Kiribati's EEZs, the government estimated that the closure of PIPA
led to a decline of fishing demand by 8 percent between 2015 and 2021 (720 fishing days), which
also affected its future allocation of VDS days. In addition, there is recognition in the literature that
8 Kiribati's domestic marine conservation initiative was recognized by the United Nations General Assembly as an
exemplary model of international cooperation, coordination, and collaboration in marine protection and
conservation in 2018.
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