Blue Finance

Finance for a Sustainable and Nature-Positive Blue Economy

A healthy ocean can be a powerful economic engine that supports the planet, people, prosperity, and peace. Today, however, our oceans are significantly undervalued.

The ocean or “blue” economy is conservatively estimated to be worth US$24 trillion with annual benefits of around US$2.5 trillion a year. Today, this enormous value is at risk due to years of mismanagement and ocean health decline. Trillions of dollars are invested in the blue economy today, and research shows that a business-as-usual trajectory entails great risk to our economies, with a cost potentially reaching up to US$8.4 trillion over the next 15 years. That figure can be reduced by over half if the world adopts a sustainable development approach to the blue economy.

A sustainable blue economy provides social and economic benefits for current and future generations; restores, protects, and maintains diverse and productive marine ecosystems; and preserves nature. If we are to achieve this vision for a healthy ocean and thriving blue economy, financial flows must be aligned and capital redirected toward sustainable investments. And we must find creative and collaborative ways to channel capital into the seascapes and coastal communities where it is most required.

The true potential of the blue economy can only be realized if our ocean’s health is secured through a nature-positive approach—one that replaces the idea of the managed decline of our natural world with one that taps into the potential of businesses to transform corporate stewardship with new modes of working to restore nature.

The “blue” economy is worth US $24 trillion

Our Approach

Engaging financial markets and deploying capital to strengthen the environmental, social, and economic resilience of the blue economy.

WWF’s blue finance team works with key finance sector actors to redirect capital away from destructive activities and towards those that offer sustainable outcomes, while also supporting the development of new innovative financial products that drive capital into building resilient coastal communities and seascapes, where it is needed the most. We work in close collaboration with our Oceans Markets team to align financial and corporate actions to address the most pressing environmental and social impacts of the seafood, marine renewable energy, shipping, and coast tourism sectors. We also work closely with our Seascapes team, to ensure that we harness the power of financial markets to deploy sustainable financing mechanisms in the seascapes where they are needed most.

WHAT WWF IS DOING

Finance Sector Transformation

WWF and partners are working to rethink the “business as usual” approach by catalyzing the redirection of mainstream finance into sustainable and restorative development pathways. Existing financial markets power the economic activities that make up the current blue economy and are already lending and investing trillions of dollars into ocean markets. The risks of business as usual need to be clearly understood by banks, investors, and insurers at a global, regional, and local level and operationalized in their business models so that they start to shift away from financing harmful activities and toward sustainable and resilient practices. WWF is also working to highlight the opportunities of a nature-positive ocean economy. WWF is working with the finance sector to ensure sustainable seafood markets for the future, and growing our programming in marine renewables, shipping, and coastal tourism sectors.

Innovative Financial Product Design

WWF is working with financing partners to ideate and create opportunities to direct capital into place-based projects in our priority geographies that deliver nature-positive impacts across seascapes. Achieving nature-positive impacts that provide quantifiable benefits for ocean health, blue economy businesses, and communities requires thoughtful, sustained investment to pay for the costs of transition and align incentives with the sustainable development pathway. This requires that we move beyond a reliance on short-term philanthropic funding and create new, innovative approaches, that incorporate both public and private capital. Our work encompasses a range of different approaches, including establishing major funding mechanisms such as the Project Finance for Permanence (PFP) approach and developing concepts for bespoke funds or insurance mechanisms that benefit particular habitats or coastal communities.
WWF believes that when the planet regains its natural strength and flourishes, people thrive, societies prosper, and the world is more peaceful. The private sector and financial institutions have an important role to play in our planet’s future.

Seafood Traceability Investor Engagement

For investors in seafood companies, better understanding their portfolio companies’ impacts and dependencies on nature, and mitigating their exposure to the associated financial risks, is mission critical. Full-chain traceability can help with this, and can also unlock a huge amount of opportunity.

To ensure that emerging seafood traceability commitments and systems are aligned with the best practice, the FAIRR Initiative, with support from World Wildlife Fund (WWF-US), UNEP FI’s Sustainable Blue Economy Finance Initiative, the World Benchmarking Alliance (WBA), and Planet Tracker are bringing key seafood sector investors together to collaboratively engage in constructive dialogues with a core group of seafood companies.

In early 2024, 35 investors representing US $6.5T in combined assets signed on to the Seafood Traceability Engagement, and will be actively engaging with seven major seafood companies throughout the year. Phase 2 of the engagement will re-open for investor sign-on in early 2025.

For more information, please visit FAIRR’s website here: Seafood Traceability Engagement | FAIRR

Learn More

BLUE FINANCE RESOURCES

Blue Finance

Engaging financial markets and deploying capital to strengthen the environmental, social, and economic resilience of the blue economy.

Above Board: Banks' Seafood Sector Policies

A 2022 baseline assessment of banks’ publicly available seafood-related policies and procedures.

Asset Managers' Approach to Addressing Risk in Seafood Investments

A 2022 baseline assessment of asset managers’ approaches to addressing environmental and social risks in seafood-related investments.

Addressing ESG Risk in Seafood Through Finance Sector Engagement

How WWF is working with the finance sector to identify and act on ESG risks in seafood.

Case for Action: Addressing Seafood Sector Risk in Financial Markets

Why sustainability within the seafood sector matters for financial institutions.

For additional helpful resources, please visit our Resource Library

Latest News

WWF and Finance Earth Launch a New Model for Financing Fisheries Improvement

Sustainable finance is critical to scaling the transition towards more sustainable fisheries. New sustainable, efficient, equitable, and cost-effective models are needed to lead the way towards the establishment of a sustainable blue economy. To respond to this need, World Wildlife Fund (WWF), in partnership with Finance Earth (FE) and through a multi-stakeholder collaboration, designed and launched a new financing mechanism aimed at fishery transition. Finance Earth, a leading impact investment advisory and fund manager with a track record in break-through social and environmental financing models, will establish and manage this new mechanism – the Fisheries Improvement Fund (FIF). The ambition is to catalyze more than $100 million in investment in fisheries improvement by 2030. This model, designed in collaboration with leading industry players, will unlock new pathways to fund global fisheries recovery at a scale that can match the size of the challenge.

World Wildlife Fund and Amyris Team Up to Leverage Science to Protect Sharks

World Wildlife Fund (WWF) and Amyris, a leading synthetic biology company, announced a new three-year partnership aimed at leveraging science to protect ocean biodiversity with an initial focus on shark populations. This new partnership will support WWF’s global efforts to reverse the downward trends that threaten biodiversity and human well-being by repairing, restoring, and protecting the oceans.

Peru Mahi Alliance Launches at SENA with Support from Major US Buyers

The Peru Mahi Alliance (PMA), a pre-competitive partnership of 13 Peruvian mahi mahi companies, will be launched officially on March 14th at the Seafood Expo North America (SENA) in Boston, with the presence of major U.S. buyer companies. PMA represents almost 80% of Peru’s mahi mahi exports to the US and is committed to advancing the Peru mahi mahi Fishery Improvement Project (FIP) through activity implementation, political advocacy efforts, and funding.