Implementing a marine spatial plan and financing the $50 million Ocean Fund should be two top priorities for Bermuda, according to one of the island’s top minds in climate finance.

Kevin Richards, the managing director of Bermuda Asset Management, and founder and co-chairman of the Bermuda Innovation and Technology Association, said the island has all the ingredients in place to position itself as “climate central” but must take action now.

BAM recently hosted a Bermuda Day Forum as part of the UN COP28 in Dubai, presenting to key stakeholders in the United Arab Emirates with potential investment interest in Bermuda.

BAM’s Bermuda Day: SDG Disrupter Summit aimed, in part, to leverage the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, which include climate action, affordable and clean energy and eliminating poverty, as a “common language”.

During the event on December 3, Mr Richards spearheaded discussions exploring Bermuda's proactive initiatives in ocean conservation, blue economy strategies, equitable access to genomic data, international finance and insurance, Web 3.0, blockchain and 5G technology.

Bermuda’s marine spatial plan aims to achieve a sustainable balance between industry and development, protecting the environment and marine resources for future generations, while the Ocean Fund is seeking to raise up to $50 million to fund a pipeline of entrepreneurial experiences to benefit the island.

Mr Richards said: “We need to get the regulatory framework for the marine spatial plan into law, and the capital raise alongside that for the Ocean Fund is equally as important. We need money to attract people to come here or to give Bermudians who have great ideas the means to actually execute them.

“If we don’t have it in place by June, then we are at risk of letting other countries around the world take advantage of the work we have done.”

The Bermuda Ocean Prosperity Programme was originally approved in 2019 in a tripartite agreement between the Government, the Bermuda Institute of Ocean Sciences and the Waitt Institute, a US environmental group committed to ocean conservation. It is an initiative that aims to advance Bermuda’s economy while also conserving marine resources, with the blue economy strategy and the marine spatial plan.

The Ocean Fund aims to support projects that fall into categories identified by the BOPP steering committee as key areas it seeks to develop — renewable energy, sustainable fisheries, sustainable tourism and aquaculture.

Mr Richards added: “Capital is looking to deploy in impact opportunities, and you have sustainability-linked loans where institutions get reductions on financing if they have proven they are doing right for the planet. All of these things are directing traffic towards what we built with the Waitt Institute. That is priority No 1.

“My concern is that if Bermuda doesn’t seize this opportunity now, where most of the world has started figuring this out and our competitors have copied our regulatory framework around digital assets, people will be taking the framework we have done with the Waitt Institute and BOPP and putting it in place.

“If we don’t hurry up and start putting these things in place, if the Ocean Fund doesn’t raise the $50m and start deploying, the capital will move.”

Mr Richards said Bermuda must take advantage of the opportunities presented by hosting its own day at COP28, saying: “We were visible. We have made it clear that Bermuda is trying to become climate central.”

Countries at the conference agreed on the need to "transition away from fossil fuels in energy systems".

The agreement includes global targets to triple the capacity of renewable energy such as wind and solar power, and to double the rate of energy efficiency improvements, by 2030.

Mr Richards, who progressed his career with one of North America’s biggest companies, General Electric, highlighted a major deployment into green and blue financing, projects and bonds.

Darren Wolfberg, founder, chairman and chief executive of Blockchain Triangle, told an international audience at the International Tech Summit in April that there is close to $200 trillion of capital that needs climate compliance, presenting a huge opportunity for the island in the area of climate finance.

According to the United Nations, climate finance refers to “local, national or transnational financing drawn from public, private and alternative sources of financing that seeks to support mitigation and adaptation actions that will address climate change”.

Mr Richards said: “We can take that business from the traditional offshore centres for funds like Cayman and the British Virgin Islands because Bermuda is on the EU Tax White List. We are early adopters to the OECD tax requirements. We have all of the ingredients to make ourselves way more attractive to investment.

“There was a story in the paper this week about a big climate fund that has chosen Bermuda as its domicile, and we have the insurance industry rebranding as the climate risk capital of the world.

“You go to the conferences in Bermuda, and look around the room — we have all of the capital we need to transform our island and our country. We need to inspire one another locally to believe that we can do it.”

Last October during Tech Week, BAM organised a 40-person thought leadership round table around food security. Mr Richards, a former Bermuda footballer, spoke about a project to introduce vertical farms at football clubs around the island.

He added: “In the next one to three years, there should be job opportunities around fish farming, deep-sea fishing as well as traditional inshore fishing, and vertical farm technicians, and technician jobs around renewable energy installation and maintenance.”

Mr Richards said he made connections with investors and influencers during his trip to Dubai, inviting them to join the discussion and invest in technology and innovation in Bermuda.

He said: “I feel very confident coming back from that trip that we have major interest and as a business Bermuda Asset Management is trying to be the one to facilitate that structure so that we can bring the capital to Bermuda to finance these sort of technologies.”