under his rosewood tree to conserve it. at some point, he will cut 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.
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. fish do not carry a seychelles passport.
the fight against drugs was not serious. this administration is taking it seriously. and let me say, ok, you will come to victoria, you will come to the seychelles. 0k, we have ghettos where the drug trafficking is happening, but we are intervening. you say you re intervening and you ve given me a few examples, but you do seem to vacillate between punishment and treatment. sometimes you emphasise a very tough stand on punishment and sentencing, and at other times you ve got your free methadone programme that you re handing out to anybody who wants it. right now, what works best for you? but this is where, again, just like any other country, you ve got to go after the traffickers. but we ve also got to realise that addiction is a medical condition. when somebody is addicted, you cannot put that person in prison, you ve got to treat that person. and the methadone programme
so that later on, after they ve done all the experiments, they could come back and we will start the rehabilitation process of the coral reefs. for quite some time, you ve come across as quite an angry and frustrated leader. in may 2022, you said, quite simply, the rich world is failing on climate change. climate aid pledges by industrialised nations, you said, are worthless. yes, i still believe that. yeah, but the thing is, you said that, and then world leaders gathered with their ministers at cop 27, i think it was, in cairo. yes. and they agreed a loss and damage fund for vulnerable nations. that was a breakthrough, was it not? well, a breakthrough, yes. i welcomed the announcement. but now we are waiting for the conditions. and already what i m hearing is it will be for the poorer nations, meaning that because seychelles is among those that have graduated,
emerging countries. you said recently, the west prefers to give its money to countries that waste everything, where things just don t happen. that s a way of condemning so many other emerging economies, saying, we re better than them. no, no, we re not saying we are better than them. but what we are saying is, address all the issues. it s not because an island state like the seychelles is doing well that, suddenly, through this graduation process, again, you just cut off all the aid and you allow us to fend on ourselves. this will mean that the problem will come back. we re saying, help those who are more vulnerable, but at the same time, help us to maintain the level of development, help us to continue helping the world.