Seychelles Turns Ocean Fragility into Opportunity, Marking 50 Years of China Ties

In March 2020, Seychelles placed 30 percent of its national waters under formal legal protection, an expanse of ocean larger than Germany. The argument comes from a former vice-president of the Republic of Seychelles, writing in China Daily's opinion section, and it is framed as a first-person account of a small country that decided it could not afford to leave its sea unguarded.

The occasion is the 50th anniversary of diplomatic relations between Seychelles and China, which began in June 1976, one day after Seychelles became independent. The author uses the milestone to describe how a nation of roughly 120,000 people, spread across 115 islands in the Indian Ocean, has tried to turn vulnerability into leverage.

The starting point is dependence. Since the first settlers arrived in 1770, the sea has fed and employed Seychellois and shaped their identity. It shows up in the tuna the country catches and exports, in the tourists who dive its reefs, and in the fact that almost everything residents consume arrives by ship. The economy is narrow, resting on tourism and fisheries, and exposed to climate shocks the country did not cause and to disruptions in global supply.

The author then widens the frame to the ocean's importance for everyone. It carries roughly 80 percent of global trade, absorbs about 90 percent of excess heat and about a third of carbon dioxide emissions, generates half the world's oxygen, and supplies around a fifth of the animal protein eaten by more than 3 billion people. Yet only 28.7 percent of the ocean floor has been mapped to the high-resolution standard that already covers more than 98 percent of the moon's surface.

Seychelles' answer was to stop describing itself by its land. Its sovereign maritime territory spans 1.4 million square kilometers, one of the largest ocean-to-land ratios in the world, and its diplomats at the United Nations have pushed to replace the label "small island states" with "large ocean states." The author says the missing piece was never natural assets but the institutional capacity and innovative financing needed to manage them.

Two financial instruments followed. In 2016, Seychelles launched what the author calls the world's first blue economy debt-for-nature swap, restructuring $21.6 million of sovereign debt to fund marine conservation. In 2018 it issued the first sovereign blue bond, raising $15 million from international investors, with World Bank backing, to rebuild sustainable fisheries.

The author concedes a limit: the country can design policy but lacks the means to carry out the science behind it, namely deep-sea research vessels, high-resolution satellite arrays and advanced marine engineering. That, in this telling, is where China comes in. After a bilateral fisheries agreement, Seychelles' seafood exports to China increased eightfold. China's zero-tariff policy for goods from all African countries with which it has diplomatic ties took effect in May and cut in-quota tariffs to zero on a wide range of Seychelles' exports.

The cooperation extends into research. Seychellois marine scientists are working with China's National Deep Sea Center and the Ocean Decade International Cooperation Center, using capabilities the author says an island nation could never build alone. The next milestone is the 2027 East African Ocean Exploration Cruise, scheduled to launch from Port Victoria, the first time a major international expedition's data and discoveries will originate from Seychelles itself.

The author's conclusion is that fragility, handled honestly and with innovation, can be the origin of opportunity, and he hopes other large ocean states will be engaged over the next 50 years for the insights they have gained rather than for what they lack. The piece is opinion, and China Daily notes it does not necessarily reflect the paper's views. The 2027 cruise is the concrete test of its claims.