0nly yesterday, i got information that, in collaboration with the french, we arrested another iranian dhow with 600 kilos of heroin. yes, it is a problem and we are working for us to address this problem. you won office in late 2020, so here we are in the spring of 2023. you ve had 2.5 years, roughly, to fix this and you haven t fixed it. no, no, we will not be able to fix it overnight.- what have you achieved in 2.5 years? because the director of your drugs prevention agency, marie josette louise, she says there are not enough funds or people or appropriate infrastructure to tackle the drugs problem in seychelles. 0k. the strategy is simple. 0n the one hand, we are fighting the iranians who bring the heroin. and during those 2.5 years,
fish do not carry a seychelles passport. so these two examples of our two main industries clearly show the vulnerability of our situation, plus the climate change situation. for example, we do not have a plastic factory in seychelles. yet, on all our islands, on aldabra, some of our youth, some years back, when they took to do a clean up, they collected over 20,000 tonnes. i appreciate the challenges you have, but with respect, mr president, you re not likely to get your way on getting this vulnerability index and making sure that you, with other developing economies, benefit from the climate change loss and damage cash that may be coming from the rich world. you won t get it if you, to put it bluntly, really annoy your fellow
those that have graduated, we will not have access to those funds. and this is not fair because we are directly affected. what the industrialised nations are doing to our planet, seychelles gets affected, which means that this graduation process is what i m very angry about. and that s why you want this vulnerability index, which means the key factor is not so much how poor you are, butjust how vulnerable you are to rising sea levels. exactly. this is what we need to focus on. take, for example, covid. seychelles, in the middle of the ocean, and everything else, but covid was not a climate change event. covid was something else. and overnight, our tourism industry was affected by over 80%. look at our second industry, fisheries.
you, what are we doing? seychelles is already protecting 32% of its sids aid. you have a major ocean marine conservancy protection programme. yes! but what is it for? it s not just for seychelles. 0ur emission is zero because whatever we emit, we clean up. we are 100% protecting our mangroves, 100% protecting our seagrass meadows, as i said, 32% of our ocean. what about your fish? cos 90% plus of your domestic exports are actually fish, fish exports. so can you afford to stop fishing? no, we cannot. right now, we cannot. this is why, when we put all these elements in the basket, we re saying to the world, pay heed to our call. one thing the world will not appreciate is blackmail. hang on, there is one aspect
down that rosewood tree unless the world gets together. i guess the difference between you and a country like nigeria is that you actually don t need to explore the oil because, more than anything else, you have an extraordinarily successful tourism industry and you have a very small population. yes. it s a very fine line that you re treading, though, isn t it, even on tourism? because you sell yourselves as a luxury destination with these pristine beaches, with the clear blue seas offshore. and yet the more you invest in expanding, for example, the number of hotels you have, the number of visitors per year you allow to enter seychelles, the more you risk the very qualities that you sell around the world. no, but again, this is where you ve got to know the strategy. right now, there is a moratorium on the building of new hotels. the number of visitors has been clearly defined. well, i ve seen different numbers. you had 334,000 tourists