Dr. Felix Addo-Yobo, the Deputy Director and Advisor at the SDG Unit in the President’s Office, has said that a financing structure will be incorporated as part of the ongoing Sustainable Ocean Plan project to attract the necessary funding to assist Ghana’s Blue Economy development.

Speaking on the theme “Relying on a Science-based Ocean Management Approach for Ghana,” he revealed that the Sustainable Ocean Plan (SOP), which establishes the groundwork for achieving the Ocean Panel’s Transformations agenda, acts as a unifying framework for national ocean-related governance.

According to Dr. Addo-Yobo, many stakeholders in Ghana’s marine industry, who view lack of funding as the primary obstacle to the sector’s development, would breathe a sigh of relief after learning this information.

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 prioritize capacity gaps in the development and implementation of existing frameworks.

The Government of Ghana, he pointed out, 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).

SOP Arrangement Set To Be A Monitoring and Evaluation Framework

According to Dr. Felix Addo-Yobo , key findings from the OGS included 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.

The deputy Director further disclosed after looking over the data provided by the various organizations and institutions, the lack of funding for corrective and developmental projects emerged as a common problem. This according to him led government to consider including a financing framework to mobilize resources to support the country’s ocean action.

Dr. Addo-Yobo indicated that governments 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 are the investors we need, 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 there 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 organized a few weeks ago aimed at mobilizing transformative ocean action to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals.