Category: Latest News
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What Another Blue Economy Framework Offers Seychelles
By Nirmal Jivan Shah UNEP’s new report, Transitioning to a Sustainable Blue Economy: A Practical Framework, arrives in a field already well supplied with policy guidance. African governments can consult the African Union’s Africa Blue Economy Strategy and UNECA’s Africa’s Blue Economy: A Policy Handbook, while IUCN has developed principles for a Regenerative Blue Economy.…
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Why conservation and development debates get stuck
By Nirmal Jivan Shah Why do debates over the environmental impact of development so often end in acrimony, despite the studies and public consultations? A proposed hotel beside a wetland can quickly become a dispute about motives, with conservationists accused of obstructing progress and developers of putting profit before everything else. Once each side expects…
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Tonnes of fishing gear and plastic are washing up on Seychelles beaches. We tracked where it was coming from
Alex Albinski, University of Oxford and Noam Vogt-Vincent, University of Oxford Vast quantities of plastic and fishing gear are washing up along the shores of the Seychelles, destroying fragile ecosystems and causing significant economic problems. Aldabra Atoll, a Unesco world heritage site in this archipelago nation of 115 islands, is estimated to have accumulated more…
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New Study Charts Seychelles’ Lobster Fishery Transformation
New research in Marine Policy has shed light on the current state of Seychelles’ spiny lobster fishery. The study reveals a significant shift in how Seychelles obtains its lobsters. Through 87 interviews with fishers, hotels, restaurants, and the general public, the researchers discovered that the reliance on imported lobster has skyrocketed: a staggering 96.6% of…
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Seychelles’ first floating solar project expected to be operational in December
(Seychelles News Agency 11.7.2026) Installation work on the solar panels for the Seychelles’ first floating photovoltaic project, in the Providence Lagoon, is approximately 10% complete. The 5.8-megawatt power station is now scheduled to enter commercial operation in December this year. Once the floating solar farm becomes operational, it will comprise 9,980 solar panels that will…
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MPAs need people and resources
By Nirmal Shah A new preprint (not peer-reviewed yet) led by some great researchers says that fewer than 100,000 full-time workers are responsible for about 36 million square kilometres of MPAs, roughly one worker for every 370 square kilometres. On land, protected areas employ about 555,000 people across 20 million square kilometres, or one worker…
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Education Is Economic Strategy: What Seychelles Can Learn from China’s University Revolution
Nirmal Shah Seychelles has just concluded its first Science, Technology and Innovation Forum, a 3 day initiative that brought together local and international experts to discuss the country’s future. As expected, digitisation, artificial intelligence and emerging technologies dominated the agenda. Obviously people looked towards advanced economies particularly the United States. But there is another country…
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Great Blue Wall report showcases five years of impact on ocean regeneration across the Western Indian Ocean
Mombasa, Kenya, 17 June 2026 — At the 11th Our Ocean Conference (OOC11) today, the Great Blue Wall unveiled its first Impact Report (2021–2025). The release comes five years after the launch of an ambitious vision to regenerate ocean ecosystems and strengthen coastal livelihoods across the Western Indian Ocean, and it offers compelling evidence that large-scale…
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State ofCoastal and MarineNature-Based Tourismin the Western IndianOcean (WIO) Region
This a pioneering regional report on nature-based tourism in the Western Indian Ocean led by the African Leadership University School of Wildlife Conservation with funding from WIOMSA SCALABLE project grant. Despite coastal and marine tourism acting as a cornerstone of the region’s Blue Economy, it has historically been understudied. The report bridges this gap by…
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Mauritius criminalises ecocide
Source: Ecocide International Mauritius has become the latest country to introduce a domestic crime of ecocide. Classified by the United Nations as a Small Island Developing State, it faces significant environmental risks, including sea level rise and pressure on marine ecosystems that underpin key sectors of its economy such as tourism and fisheries. The provision,…