Caribbean Newsletter Spring 2025

Dear Friends,

I’m pleased to introduce the first edition of the Caribbean Currents newsletter for 2025. We’re pleased to share the latest in the range of ambitious initiatives our team is pursuing across the Caribbean.

In our lead story, you will learn more about the successful Debt Conversion Project for Marine Conservation in The Bahamas, which closed last November. This innovative approach to financing conservation is a giant leap forward in enabling The Bahamas to safeguard marine ecosystems and ensure sustainable development for future generations. This debt conversion and other Nature Bond-type financing arrangements are complex and require deep collaboration and a high level of trust between our team, financing partners and national governments. Building these relationships takes time, but the scale of conservation gains we can achieve is an exceptional return on the investment of time and up-front philanthropic support that is needed to bring them across the finish line.

In Grenada, we celebrated the culmination of a collaboration built on trust and the need for durable conservation at the ribbon-cutting ceremony for the new climate-smart Fisher Facility in Soubise, Grenada. We were honored to have Grenada’s prime minister and other ministers join us, alongside fishers and community members who are developing and implementing local solutions to some of the most pressing conservation challenges. Their work is replicable and serves as an example of how nature can provide solutions to climate challenges affecting local communities.

Fans of coral reefs will appreciate the update on CoralCarib, a multinational project advancing climate-smart coral conservation and restoration in Cuba, Haiti, Jamaica and Dominican Republic. With funding from the German government, we are building our partners’ capacity and leveraging their knowledge to improve and maintain the health of coral reefs, which are vital to biodiversity and the tourism-dependent economies of the region.

Reefs and other coastal ecosystems are susceptible to many local stressors that start on land and impact the sea, including sewage and stormwater. We often refer to these as “wastewater,” and after conducting research and stakeholder interviews, we launched a campaign to raise awareness of the challenges of wastewater disposal in the Caribbean. The campaign includes a range of educational assets and strategies and promotes practices to mitigate wastewater impact on the environment and public health.

Continuing the theme of land-sea connections: we are launching a large-scale watershed restoration initiative in Puerto Rico with funding support from Microsoft. This initiative is aimed at protecting nature to help secure water for people and is a testament to the power of partnerships in driving conservation and management at effective scales.

The power of partnerships is also demonstrated in the efforts of TNC’s New Jersey Chapter, which hosted a fundraiser to support our conservation work in the U.S. Virgin Islands. Kemit Sweeney, a member of our Virgin Islands coral team, inspired attendees with his storytelling about our efforts to protect sea turtles, coral reefs and the lands that make St. Croix such a special place. In a similar vein, there is a piece on our “friendraising” event hosted by our Caribbean Board in Coral Gables last fall. For us to be successful, we need to connect others to our conservation work and expand our network of supporters. To that end, when you share this newsletter with others, you are amplifying the impact of our work across the Caribbean!

Finally, we have introduced a new feature—the Trustee/Donor Corner—and in its inaugural installment

we share our appreciation for our outgoing board chair, Alicia Miñana, and introduce our new chair, Dean Hollis, and Frandelle Gerard, who has taken on the role of vice-chair.

I hope you will enjoy learning more about our work AND share this with others. I am ever grateful for your continued support and dedication to our cause. Together, we find a way.

Rob