Foreword
The Blue Recovery Hubs initiative, a partnership between the OECD and the Friends of Ocean Action (a coalition convened by the World Economic Forum, in collaboration with the World Resources Institute), was established as an accelerator platform to support countries “build forward bluer” after the COVID-19 pandemic. By providing policy support and mobilising and aligning resources, the initiative aims to advance two key objectives: (i) enhance the long-term sustainability of existing ocean economy sectors and (2) generate new and sustainable opportunities that can enable economic diversification and act as a multiplier of the Sustainable Development Goals.
The Blue Recovery Hubs place an emphasis on small island developing states (SIDS), where the economic fallout of the COVID-19 pandemic was particularly severe, but which also hold a global leadership on sustainable ocean issues. The first Blue Recovery Hub was established in Fiji in 2022, with Samoa selected as the second focus country for the initiative.
Each Blue Recovery Hub consists of three stages:
1. An appraisal of the country’s ocean economy, including its vulnerabilities made apparent by COVID-19, and the opportunities for the ocean to drive resilient and sustainable development.
2. Based on the appraisal, a “Sustainable Investment Pathway”, which evaluates the barriers to investment in a chosen area and presents a roadmap to overcome them.
3. A stakeholder roundtable to facilitate co-ordination and collaboration among stakeholders in implementing the solutions of the Sustainable Investment Pathway.
Over the three stages, the Blue Recovery Hubs initiative enables focus countries to anchor their ocean policies in robust evidence and establishes a coherent and co-ordinated framework for partnership between them, development co-operation providers, the private sector, and other stakeholders. By identifying key opportunities for intervention, the initiative also supports development partners to achieve relevant international targets, such as the commitments made by the OECD Development Assistance Committee (DAC) members in their Declaration on a new approach to align development co-operation with the goals of the Paris Agreement on Climate Change.
This appraisal report presents the challenges and opportunities specific to Samoa and allows for tailoring the next stages of the Blue Recovery Hubs initiative to the Samoan context. It is informed by a fact-finding mission to the country, as well as data analysis and a review of the latest literature, all linked to Samoa’s ocean economy.
The appraisal draws on the three analytical pillars of the OECD Sustainable Ocean Economy Country Diagnostics, which are economic and sustainability trends, governance and policy instruments, and financing flows and instruments (with a focus on development finance). The three pillars help assess alignment across Samoa’s ocean economy. In principle, socioeconomic and environmental factors should inform and guide policy ambitions, which, in turn, shape suitable institutional arrangements. Meanwhile, the financing landscape ought to support these policy priorities and adapt to the economic context.