Increasing finance for a healthy ocean

The Ocean Finance Handbook: new guide seeks to demystify the investment landscape of the sustainable blue economy

Geneva, Switzerland, 16 April 2020 – A report published today by Friends of Ocean Action, The Ocean Finance Handbook, is a guide to support an increase in finance flowing towards the sustainable blue economy. The Handbook provides a key resource to enhance understanding of finance for a healthy ocean and generate conversations between financial institutions and marine-based businesses, conservation professionals and ocean project managers.

Released today during a Friends of Ocean Action webinar, The Ocean Finance Handbook offers a guide to a range of funding options for sustainable ocean-based industry and marine conservation. Numerous opportunities are currently emerging that promise financial as well as social and environmental benefit – that are in urgent need of finance. In parallel, significant new opportunities for private investment are becoming available due to innovative new financing models and instruments.

“The sustainable blue economy is emerging as a key element of humanity’s resilient future. It is therefore important that we create better understanding of what is involved in investing into the sustainable blue economy. The Ocean Finance Handbook aims to get the ocean and finance communities onto the same page when we’re talking about this investment. It guides our moves towards ocean resilience and recovery, towards encouraging public-private partnerships, and the necessary innovations for capital to flow at scale into the sustainable blue economy. As the world grapples with the recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic, the sustainable blue economy is a vision of hope for a better blue-green future,” said Ambassador Peter Thomson, UN Secretary General’s Special Envoy for the Ocean and Co-Chair, Friends of Ocean Action.

The aim of The Ocean Finance Handbook is to foster a shared understanding, to ensure all stakeholders are speaking the same language for a sustainable blue economy. The report sketches out the different sectors of the blue economy, outlines pre-requisites and co-requisites for funding, and discusses the types and sources of capital and investment models that currently exist. Case studies in the report help illustrate what impact investing, parametric insurance, using philanthropic capital, seed investment and bond issuances mean in practice.

Friends of Ocean Action is a group of global leaders from a range of the private, public, academic and non-profit sectors, who are fast-tracking scalable solutions for a healthy ocean. It is hosted by the World Economic Forum and led in collaboration with the World Resources Institute.

MEDIA CONTACT

If you would like further information, interviews or any other assistance, please contact Gemma Parkes, Head of Communications, Friends of Ocean Action, on gpa@weforum.org or +41 79 305 2977.