A landmark initiative to accelerate sustainable ocean development across the Commonwealth has been unveiled, with the Centre of Excellence for Oceanography and the Blue Economy (COBE) at The University of the West Indies (UWI) Five Islands Campus announcing plans for a high-profile Blue Finance and Ocean Innovation Side Event. The event is scheduled to run alongside the 2026 Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM) this November, with the formal reveal made June 16 during the 11th Our Ocean Conference.
The announcement took place during a partner update session at the Commonwealth Ocean Ministers Roundtable, a gathering co-hosted by the government of Kenya and the Commonwealth Secretariat that brought together senior ocean policy leaders from across the bloc. During the session, Dr. Branson Belle, COBE’s Executive Director, shared context about the UWI Five Islands Campus and its specialized ocean research center before walking attendees through the full agenda for the upcoming side event.
Organizers have planned a multi-segment program designed to connect project developers, finance leaders, and heads of government around shared ocean priorities. The event will kick off with a public exhibition showcasing ocean conservation initiatives from local, regional, and international organizations working across Commonwealth nations. Following the exhibition, a casual but substantive “beachside chat” moderated by Charles Goddard of Economist Impact will bring together chief executives and top sector leaders to explore pressing challenges and opportunities in blue finance and ocean innovation. The program will also feature formal addresses from participating heads of government before concluding with a networking reception.
For the Commonwealth, ocean protection and restoration remain top policy priorities, rooted in the bloc’s unique geographic footprint. Commonwealth member nations control one-third of the world’s total ocean area under national jurisdiction, hold 45% of the planet’s coral reefs, and count 25 small island developing states among their ranks – economies disproportionately dependent on healthy marine ecosystems. In 2024, member states solidified this commitment by adopting the Apia Commonwealth Ocean Declaration, a landmark agreement calling for accelerated global action to restore and protect vulnerable marine environments.
The upcoming side event aims to turn policy commitments into tangible action, by highlighting the ocean’s irreplaceable role in supporting global livelihoods and economic growth, and catalyzing new investment flows for ocean innovation and conservation projects across the Commonwealth. COBE is leading event organizing efforts in formal partnership with the Commonwealth Secretariat and the Association of Commonwealth Universities.
Host COBE is based at the relatively new but fast-growing UWI Five Islands Campus, which was founded in 2019 as the fifth campus of the UWI system, the top-ranked higher education network in the Caribbean. Located in Antigua and Barbuda, the campus was established to expand access to world-class tertiary education across the region, and it upholds the same academic standards that have earned the UWI consistent placement among top global universities in Times Higher Education rankings. Today, UWI Five Islands offers more than 45 undergraduate and postgraduate degree programs across four academic schools: the School of Humanities and Education, School of Business and Management, School of Health and Behavioural Sciences, and School of Science, Computing and Artificial Intelligence. Hosting COBE aligns with the campus’s core mission to advance research and training in areas critical to Caribbean development, particularly marine science and sustainable blue economic growth.