Where the Ocean Creates Jobs

The Ocean Is the Economy

Stand on any beach in Grenada, Saint Lucia, or Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, and the ocean is everything. It is the view that fills hotel rooms, the water that feeds fishing families, and the living system that defines these islands. For the Eastern Caribbean, the ocean is not a backdrop - it is livelihood, the economy, and the main engine of job creation.

Tourism accounts for nearly half of the GDP across the Eastern Caribbean. Fisheries sustain thousands of coastal livelihoods, supplying local tables and hotel kitchens alike. The health of the seas - clear waters, vital coral reefs, clean beaches - underpins all of it. Yet for too long, this vast maritime wealth has been managed with insufficient data, fragmented governance, and inadequate tools.

The World Bank's Unleashing the Blue Economy of the Caribbean (UBEC) project covering Grenada, Saint Lucia, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines with the Organization of Eastern Caribbean States (OECS) Commission driving regional activities, is working to change that - one policy, one community, one small business at a time.

Gayatri Kanungo quote: "Behind every policy and every dollar of this project are real people - fishers, women entrepreneurs, coastal communities - whose livelihoods depend on healthy blue seas. The health of the ocean and the health of the economy are inseparable. UBEC is about putting communities and its people at the center to ensure the systems around them are as resilient as they are."

Giving Fishers a Fighting Chance.

Fish supplies more than half the animal protein consumed in Caribbean islands, yet rampant Illegal, Unreported, and Unregulated (IUU) fishing, limited stock knowledge, and climate-driven changes to reef health and migration patterns undermine its potential. Better product quality and harmonized regulation could unlock significant value and build a more resilient sector.

UBEC is building the governance scaffolding these communities need - a Regional IUU Fishing Strategy, harmonized SPS Protocol, and Regional Fisheries Policy - while centering women who form the backbone of fisheries value chains, together laying the foundation for coordinated, evidence-based management across the region. In addition, supporting fishers improves quality, safety, and market access, and complements broader World Bank Group initiatives, including AgriConnect, reinforcing shared goals of stronger value chains, better jobs, and sustainable market linkages for producers.

In Grenada, Fish Aggregation Devices are helping fishers access offshore grounds more safely, easing pressure on nearshore stocks while boosting catches and income. Fishers are also benefiting from the Caribbean Oceans and Aquaculture Sustainability Facility (COAST) climate risk insurance scheme - a vital safety net proven when Hurricane Beryl struck in July 2024, triggering Grenada's first-ever payout to its fishers and marking a milestone in climate resilience for fishing communities worldwide.

On a weekday evening in Saint Lucia, a crowded room of fishing community members gathered - not to cast nets, but to learn. At the launch of the Boat Masters Training Program,150 fishers had already signed up, drawn by a simple but powerful idea: that the sea is not just a way of life, it is an economic engine worth protecting.

"When we see the blue economy, we're looking at the water, the sea per se - how much economic benefit can you derive from the sea," explained Thomas Nelson, Deputy Chief Fisheries Officer at the Department of Fisheries, Saint Lucia.

For men like Raymon Horn -a boat owner with over 15 years at sea in Saint Vincent and the Grenadines- training under UBEC's crisis response window offered something different: importance of safety at sea. "It upgraded my knowledge of fishing with safety" he said, "if you have somebody's life in your hands as a captain, you have to have the knowledge too."

Tourism that Works with Nature

Caribbean tourism is at an inflection point. The sector contributes 11-14% of regional GDP - exceeding 60% in some economies - and supports over 2.7 million jobs (~15% of local employment). But the growth model - dominated by cruise-based travel and all-inclusive resorts - delivers fewer benefits to local communities, strains coastal ecosystems and leaves women who make up a large share of the workforce (60-70%) in informal employment, under-rewarded and underrepresented.

UBEC is backing a different vision: a blue tourism economy rooted in the natural assets that make the Caribbean extraordinary, one that actively invests in protecting them - through high-value marine ecosystem-based tourism connected to the communities in the participating countries. Managed sustainably through inclusive participation, the opportunity is enormous.

In Grenada and Saint Lucia, tourism infrastructure investments are advancing, with design and supervision consultancies underway for priority sites. A new dive park facility in Saint Lucia will diversify marine tourism, while upgraded amenities in Marigot Bay will expand livelihoods for coastal communities. In Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, there is planned support for the rehabilitation of the historic Fort Charlotte - a single activity that links cultural heritage, coastal resilience, and tourism development.

When the Sea Turned Brown: The Sargassum Crisis.

Few challenges have made the stakes of ocean health more vivid than the annual onslaught of sargassum. Vast mats of seaweed - driven by warming ocean temperatures and nutrient run-off - have been washing ashore across the Eastern Caribbean each year, choking beaches, strangling fishing grounds, and generating toxic gases that harm human health and the ecosystems.

In Grenada, the influx has risen to a national priority, with Prime Minister Dickon Mitchell, leading efforts to collect, process and transform 10,000 tons - demanding better monitoring, coherent national response plans, and an enabling environment for private sector innovation to convert the sargassum crisis into a commercial opportunity.

UBEC is pursuing exactly this two-track approach: enabling the environment for government-led collection efforts while fostering private sector engagement for sargassum valorization - including conversion into commercially viable products and also building workforce skills. Through its Matching Grants Program, selected small businesses directly impacted by sargassum are receiving financing to adapt and build resilience, to turn the threat into sustainable incomes.

Nicolas Desramaut quote: "Coastal communities have long been the stewards of the marine and coastal environment. By providing targeted support to blue MSMEs in tourism, fisheries, and the circular economy, UBEC seeks to strengthen these efforts and foster entrepreneurship, which would lead to the creation of sustainable jobs."

A Region-Wide Architecture for the Future.

UBEC's defining feature is its ambition to build a lasting regional governance architecture, to support the implementation of the Eastern Caribbean Regional Ocean Policy. With the January 2026 launch of the OECS-led Regional Project Steering Committee, this 15-year series of projects is laying the policy, capacity, and evidence foundations to sustain blue finance across Eastern Caribbean nations for the decade to come.

Nobody understands the high stakes better than the local communities, fishers and tourism partners who depend on these Caribbean waters every day. This World Oceans Day, the Caribbean's message is clear: the ocean is an asset to protect, not a resource to exhaust.